Raspberry Pi Hits the 2 Million Mark 246
The Raspberry Pi project that we've been fans of for quite a while now has hit a new milestone: Today, they announced that as of the last week in October, the project has sold more than two million boards. Raspberry Pi is anything but alone in the tiny, hackable computer world (all kinds of other options, from Arduino to the x86-based Minnowboard, are out there, and all have their selling points), but the low price, open-source emphasis, and focus on education have all helped the Pi catch on. If yours is one of these 2 million, what are you using it for? (And if you favor some other small system for your own experiments, what factors matter?)
Re:Sorry, still not getting one. (Score:4, Informative)
Meh, makes a perfect DLNA server and irssi box, sat behind my TV downstairs - low power, low noise, cheap and cheerful. I don't see what benefit an ARMv7 would bring for me in any of the uses I have put mine to.
Re:It's quite ridicules isn't it? (Score:2, Informative)
The Raspberry Pi is the Microsoft Windows of the OS world.
I'm pretty sure Microsoft Windows is the Microsoft Windows of the OS world. Don't know what you were going for there.
For parent, OS = Operating System.
For GP, OS = Open Source.
Confusion removed, HTH.
How I use my RP (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the time, my RP, coupled with a 8-Relay board ($20 on ebay,) reports (via SMS) whenever any of my house doors are opened or closed, as well the garage door. Further, it has a web server with a small app that allows me to raise/lower the garage door.
A picture of the board I constructed can be seen at http://www.blacksteel.com/pics/RP.jpg - the board has since been re-arranged a bit to give me better access to the HDMI port. The software is pretty minimal - a shell script to handle periodic polling of the various magnetic reed switches on the doors, it also keeps track of all changes in a mysql database. A php script to handle opening/closing the garage door (and animating the process in an image using data from the switches!)
Also, whenever I have a movie that can't be played back by my old but still working Apple TV 1 running XBMC, I use OpenElec XBMC on my RP - it's not the most responsive XBCM in the world, but it plays back high resolution MKV's whereas the ATV1 can't keep up.
All in all, it's an amazing board and I have other plans for it, grin. I likely will get another one or two at some point.
Re:How I use my RP (Score:4, Informative)
Thanks for sharing that. I've always wondered how people use these devices.
BeagleBone Fully Documented; Broadcom Proprietary (Score:4, Informative)
TI fully documents their system on chip (SOC) chips.
Broadcom doesn't.
This alone makes Broadcom (which is in the Raspberry Pi) completely non-free and craptastic, and the BeagleBone worthy of consideration by a hacker.
F Broadcom. F Raspberry Pi. Don't waste your time on non-free systems which you have to reverse engineer because the documentation is purposely incomplete.
The fact that there are significant reverse-engineering efforts going on
https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/wiki
https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/
is proof that the Broadcom chip in the Raspberry Pi is anything but open.
Re:Sorry, still not getting one. (Score:3, Informative)
No special mucking around, idle, ethernet connected, no display.
Pi 340mA@5V, BBB 230mA@5V.
Re:Sorry, still not getting one. (Score:5, Informative)
I have a few different arm boards including two raspberry pi boards. Power consumption / power efficiency is NOT a selling point of the pi, if comparing to other arm boards. The pi has no low power states, it is full power all the time. The pi also uses linear voltage regulators, so very inefficient.
My original model panda board has 1G ram, is several times faster than the pi, and uses half the power most of the time, and has the same peak power.
My odroid U2 is at least 10 times faster than the pi, has 2G ram, and uses about the same power (or a little less) most of the time (but it has crazy high peak power if running at 100%cpu with a massive heatsink). If you pull the heatsink, it thermal throttles to still way faster than a pi, and keeps the peak power consumption pretty close to the pi.
I don't have a beagle bone black, but I would suspect it is lower power consumption than a pi.
The selling point for the pi is the community around it is _much_ larger than any of these other SBCs.
Sleeping in a drawer (Score:2, Informative)
I end up using the t-shirt more than the pi itself.
Re:Sorry, still not getting one. (Score:5, Informative)
How exactly do you boot a pi without the binary blob videocore bootloader?
Oh right, you don't.
I boot a pi by applying power to it.
Nothing says I have to use the closed-source video. This is not a machine you'd pick for stunning video graphics anyway. I use ssh or run completely headless.
Re:BeagleBone Fully Documented; Broadcom Proprieta (Score:5, Informative)