Project Seeks To Build Inexpensive 9-inch Monitor For Raspberry Pi 176
angry tapir writes "A Kickstarter project is aiming to bring an inexpensive 9-inch portable monitor to the popular US$25 Raspberry Pi PC, which comes without a keyboard, mouse or monitor. The "HDMIPi" will include an LCD panel that will show images at a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. Computers can be hooked up to the monitor via an HDMI controller board that can be wired to the LCD. The display is being made by Raspi.TV and Cyntech."
Re:Gee, they're going to build an ARM-based comput (Score:5, Interesting)
HDMIPi? Come on! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Gee, they're going to build an ARM-based comput (Score:5, Interesting)
There are tons of hardware add-ons to the Pi that are simply not possible with a PC (and difficult with most tablets).
Re:Gee, they're going to build an ARM-based comput (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. The other thing that people seem to choose to ignore is the value in a standadised platform and a helpful community around that. All the things the RPi does is possible by other means, of course, but what happens when you're starting out and don't know what you're doing? There's a big community around the RPi, magazines, tutorials, forums, all people who know what hardware you have and can answer your questions directly.
I'm a programmer by trade, but I know very little about analogue electronics. RPi community means I can get out into building physical things, which would be far harder if someone just threw a USB GPIO board at me with no extra help.
Not just for Raspberry Pi (Score:5, Interesting)
I shoot videos with my DSLR. And I have often wanted a portable HDMI monitor for my rig. When I looked, I was quite surprised to find out that no reasonable options exist. Most portable HDMI monitors utterly suck. They are bulky and max out the resolution at 800x480 or 1024x768. The ones that do not suck are uber expensive. Since this is just a hobby for me, I did not want to shell out the big bucks.
I have been quite surprised that I can buy a $200 Nexus 7 tablet with 1080P display, but cannot get a 1080p or even a 720p portable monitor for anything even close to that.
Re:Found several... (Score:4, Interesting)
7" HDMI touch, under $100:
Not at all comparable. For a start it's a private one-off eBay listing, not something that anyone can buy from a website. It is also not HD, and in my experience you often can't use this kind of screen's native resolution directly as it is designed to only accept SD, 720p and maybe 1080i. That's okay for a TV but useless for a computer where you want sharp pixel perfect font rendering.
Re:Gee, they're going to build an ARM-based comput (Score:4, Interesting)
The way I see the Pi is the point is the kids do get root. They get to own the computer and as "reinstall" is "dump data on a SD card" it is "safe" to work this way.
It is not the only way you can do this but it is cheap (good for the parent) and completely customizable by the kid and becoming fairly well supported by the community.
As part of an IT course I could easily see this "spilling out" of IT, your programing section teaches you language X, the metal work class has you make a case, the electronics class has you make use of the GPIO pins and you write your English homework in Abiword on it.
Plus the price means you could give one to each of your student (or at least give a SD card knowing that they could buy one and it would be identical to the one at school when you plug in your SD card).
Re:Gee, they're going to build an ARM-based comput (Score:4, Interesting)
Because it can run off of 4 AA batteries for a very long time or run off of a $12.00 solar panel. Let me guess, you ASSUME that everyone on the planet has electrical power or Stable electrical power.
get me a low power display and suddenly you have a computer that is useable in a 3rd world classroom that can run a lab of 10 of them for a day off of the teachers car battery.
Rich people hate it because it levels the education playing field.