A Least Half a Million Raspberry Pis Sold 212
hypnosec writes "The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced that it could have sold over a million units of its credit-card-sized computer, the Raspberry Pi. Announcing the achievement, the foundation wrote that one of its distributors, Element14, has sold over half a million units of the Raspberry Pi, and even though the foundation doesn't have up-to-date figures from its other distributor, RS Components, it is expecting to have sold its millionth unit of the computer."
They are remarkably versatile (Score:3)
Curse duplicate articles - I always end up posting in the wrong one [slashdot.org]. In that post you'll see a couple of things I use them for. I also plan on making a sporadic-E [wikipedia.org] monitor for 6m, 2m, and 70cm amateur bands. That way it can ping me when there's DX afoot.
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Like http://www.dxmaps.com/spots/map.php?Lan=E&Frec=50&ML=M&Map=NA [dxmaps.com]
Or do you mean a map maker, or something that actually gathers the raw data?
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B. something that actually gathers the raw data.
I love and use that site and am subscribed to get alerts. The problem is that I get alerts for openings where I can't hear anything as well as no alert when there's an opening I can use. If I scan the SSB portions of those bands, I can tell when there's an opening at my QTH, and maybe even include an audio snippet in the email. I could also include what stations the cluster 'heard' in the freq that popped my local squelch. If I wanted to have my house look lik
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maybe even include an audio snippet in the email.
Maybe if you SDR'd it you could include an image. I've always wondered what 6 looks like during a big opening during a contest. I already know what it sounds like...
Also sometimes you can ID beacons looking at a waterfall. I've done that on 20m.
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They could have sold many times that if they'd actually upped production so we could buy them.
Is it time for the $1,500 Apple iPi yet? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Its called AppleTV (Score:4, Insightful)
AppleTV, like RPi has arm processor, GPU, ehternet and USB. Unlike RPi it also has a case and PSU. It only costs $100. Now all they need to do is open it up to apps.
That sounds about right. 400% more expensive, fancy casing, apple logo, more limited functionality than the competition. They'll sell millions most likely.
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But can you control the relay of the serial commands to the cameras with the AppleTV device? Or use it to take over the Windows PC in your Winlink system?
Dunno. Not going to bother trying.
We're talking about wide functionality here rather than price,
No, actually, the specific part of the original statement I was replying to, which I quoted in my reply, was only about price. Once you figure in the extra stuff you get with AppleTV, and correct the original failure at simple math, the prices don't seem that outrageous after all.
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He's talking about the $25.00 model which would make it 4x the cost.
There's no reason to debate that.
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He's talking about the $25.00 model which would make it 4x the cost.
I've never seen the $25 model anywhere for sale, and even at that price, 4 times the cost is only 300% more, not 400% more. Add in the things the AppleTV comes with that the $25 Pi doesn't and you're back to maybe twice as much (or just 100% more).
There's no reason to debate that.
If that was what had been written, yes, it is still wrong, so yes, there is a reason to debate it. Considering it isn't what was said ...
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Doesn't change the fact that there is a model and it is $25.00.
Agreed - not enough functionality in AppleTV. (Score:4, Insightful)
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And that's great. For people who want to tinker about creating or adapting programs for a hobby, the RPi seems like a great, simpl(ish) and cheap way.
Personally I got a lot of enjoyment from programming the Propeller based Hydra board a few years ago. I'm sure a lot more fun than I'd have with the RPi, but that's a taste based thing. And the Hydra costs about 6 times the price.
Why do people that don't like Apple bitch when Apple doesn't serve a particular market?
Maybe one day Apple TV will have apps. But it
One thing you've got to like about Apple. (Score:2)
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I can second this. I only use my AppleTV for Plex (an XBMC fork) and sometimes Netflix. The rest of the content channels are useless to me. I'm debating buying one or more raspberry Pis for applications that won't have them hooked up to a TV.
Re:Its called AppleTV (Score:5, Informative)
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This is also incorrect. Because one distro that has customized their kernel that doesn't include the ability to mount some USB devices doesn't mean that any other kernel can't do that with ease.
OpenElec won't mount my Drobobox but Raspbmc does. So do a number of other distros.
Don't fall for some article where the author doesn't understand how Linux and the various distributions work.
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Your statement is totally false. Just a big lie.
The Pi's 2 USB ports are standard USB that you would find on any personal computer.
Re:Its called AppleTV (Score:4, Interesting)
The Pi's 2 USB ports are standard USB that you would find on any personal computer.
Except most devices you would want to use with a Raspberry Pi don't actually work. The ports themselves are fine. The USB controller is a joke.
Well all right, the ports themselves aren't actually fine, there are lots of problems with how they deliver power (or fail to) and hot plugging has issues as well.
They have the same general shape as a standard USB that you would find on any personal computer, I'll give you that.
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I think just about everything you said is false. Couldn't help laughing as I read it.
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Yes, they were limited in power output in earlier board releases, but all problems were solved by plugging in a powered USB hub.
Spread your misinformation elsewhere.
What do I do with one? (Score:2)
I got a Raspberry Pi for xmas. There was a point in my life where this would have been the coolest thing ever, but right now, I'm kind of wondering what to do with it. This is further complicated by the fact that the only HDMI display in the house is the living room TV.
About the only thing I've come up with is maybe putting XBMC on it so I can stream videos off my home server. However, that would require running some network cables to the TV first. Is there a decent WiFi adapter for this thing?
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Is there a decent WiFi adapter for this thing?
There is a list here [elinux.org]
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Thanks. I haven't had a computer running Linux in about 10 years. Lots of good helpful responses here.
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Some of the various XBMC distros for the Pi have *limited* built-in wifi adapter support.
Personally I just installed XBMC (from a PPA) on top of standard Raspbian (which already supported my USB wifi adapter). As long as your adapter is supported by Debian, you should be OK doing this.
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Geez, you're really pushing the old Android phone thing pretty hard. Did a raspberry eat your mother or something?
I don't have an old Android phone. What now, o' wise one?
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If someone is trying to say how useful a Raspberry Pi is, it had better be an example where there aren't other products which do the job cheaper, better, and faster all around.
If you are doing it just because you like to experiment or "play", I don't have the slightest objection, as long as you're up-front about it, and don't pretend it's a practical usage case.
A BRAND NEW Alcatel Venture costs under $40, w
Re:What do I do with one? (Score:5, Informative)
I've done a few Arduino-like experiments using their Pi Cobbler breakout board. I got mine to output status information (date/time, IP Address, network stats) and/or a twitter feed on a cheap 16x2 LCD display. With a cheap wifi dongle and one of those USB emergency cellphone chargers for power, it's completely independent of wires, so I'm thinking about adding some motors and maybe a few IR sensors to create a basic rover. Once you get the distro setup to auto-login and install TightVNC server and enable SSH, you just need to give it a network connection to control it remotely from a PC. I only hooked mine up to an HDMI TV once on first boot to get those things running. Now I just turn it on and wait for the IP to appear on the LCD display and SSH or VNC into it.
I agree that initially it was tough to come up with useful things to do with it, but the Adafruit tutorials went a long way toward inspiring me and walking me through the more mundane details of taking care of the basics (SSH, VNC, WiFi, etc.) so that you can focus on actually doing something cool with it. You can also search around for BeagleBone or Arduino + Ethernet Shield projects for ideas since the Pi can do most of what those can at a fraction of the price. Good luck!
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Just get a wireless bridge and plug it into that. As a benefit, if you get one of those and a switch setup behind your living room TV you'll be able to get anything you want from that area connected to your home LAN without ever having to worry about purchasing separate wireless adapters.
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Well, it depends on what things you want to automate, really.
You could plug in any old 802.11b wifi adapter and drive the TV making it an information display of some sort. What do you like displayed? Current train timetable, weather forecast, news?
Rpi + old nokia cellphone and you interact with it via SMS or something. That will even work while the power is out / will draw much less power than leaving your internet connection on when you're out.
Make a time lapse video of something interesting, using an old
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Lucky :).. I don't have any HDMI displays in the house.
I also got one for xmas. I may try using it as a headless always on server though. Although we are looking at buying a TV now... primarily so I can use my $35 Pi.
As a music server (Score:3)
For me, I've got a Raspberry Pi hooked up to an ODAC/O2 (audiophile DAC/amp) in a comfortable location for listening to music with headphones. Connected to Wifi, it reads the music from a NAS in another room and runs a mpd server controlled by my phone or tablet.
It's really nice to have a noiseless, compact music server that can be hidden away rather easily.
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Good idea. I've got a whole house sound system that's not really being utilized. Right now, I just plug in my cell phone and use that as a music server. Thanks.
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The ODAC implements the UAC1 (USB Audio Class 1) interface and works without any drivers on all major OSes. Great pains were taken to maintain this property -- many higher-end DACs require a proprietary driver or use UAC2 which isn't supported everywhere.
For me it Just Worked (tm) on the Pi. Highly recommend it!
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Amazon sells inexpensive HDMI-to-DVI or RGB cables. I got mine for like $12.
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You can get an HDMI to SVGA/DVI/Display port converters for pretty cheap so you can hook it to any monitor you want. I also picked up a 802.11N 2.4Ghz WiFi adapter from AirLink for less than $10. I got both at Amazon.
How many have actually shipped? (Score:2)
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Who has these in stock for U.S. delivery?
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Not only that but Newark doesn't actually stock them at all, they are shipped from some other warehouse, but they will lie and tell you they have them in stock, then you get a notification that they don't have them in stock, blah blah blah. They're liars and frauds and I won't do business with them again.
Raspberry Pi = Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
So many uses so little time. I love my Pi, and am planning on buying one or two more.
It has programmable pins !!! which can be used to switch relay s and control electronics, no weird usb breakout box needed. If you end up frying it, your only out $35 or $25.
It is an amazing video player, pushes 1080p H264&MPEG2, with Dolby digital without a sweat (mpeg2 license cost about $2). Run XMBC on it and you can control it with the TVs remote, The best support of CEC I have ever seen. I am in the process of using mine as a dvr.
It takes only 2 watts to power!! Perfect server for a low traffic website. Cheap to keep running 24/7. Plus its completely solid state so no fan issues, no noise.
True there are other options out there for all of this, but none of them have the wealth of documentation, or community support that the Pi has.
Turn over the business to McDonalds (Score:2)
Then billions and billions of pi's would be sold.
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Downside: The McDonalds Raspberry Pi would run too hot.
Upside: You could sue them!
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But then they'll run super hot and frequently fall into your lap.
"A least"? (Score:3)
Sold vs. Shipped (Score:2, Interesting)
Sold and shipped are two very different things.
Isn't that right, RS Components???
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/391521/20121005/rs-components-raspberry-pi-raspi-allied-customer.htm [ibtimes.co.uk]
But still no..... (Score:2)
A board. I need a rasberry Pi A. I also want a higher horsepower version.. I have been using the A13 based olimex boards that overclock to 1.6ghz nicely (1.8 if you add a heatsink) to do a LOT more than the RasPi's do for higher power projects.
Anyone using this as a MythTV frontend? (Score:3)
I see people successfully using Raspberry Pi as a xbmc box. I'm wondering if anyone is using it as a MythTV frontend?
Cubieboard (Score:2, Interesting)
Funny thing, I ordered a cubieboard this morning before this story was posted:
http://cubieboard.org/ [cubieboard.org]
Two of my roommates have RPis. One of them has two of them. I watched them both struggle with the RPi units when they were first setting them up. Those things are god awful. Graphics requires a binary blob, and the USB power source causes a lot of stability problems. Since the Ethernet is attached by USB, this normally manifests by the Ethernet dropping off, the kernel spewing messages about it, and the
Running my PI as an Asterisk PBX (Score:2)
Got my PI Monday and got it setup with Asterisk 11 and FreePBX 3 beta. The site raspberry-asterisk.org has a prebuilt image and from there you can easily update to the latest versions. This is going to be mainly for testing/playing at home, but I may deploy one to setup a small 4 DID/10 extenstion FreePBX install to supplement an old POTS pbx.
Re:What do they do? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll admit I haven't done this yet (can't get my hands on one!) but I plan to use two as a cheap drivers for my 5'th and 6'th monitor. Currently I'm using an old (AMD sempton 7something) box to do this, but a Raspberry Pi should do nicely (all I really need is an X server as I just forward the apps to the display currently..)
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It's 2013 and you can't get a Raspberry Pi?
Have you also failed to see Gangnam Style?
He's still waiting for the nyan cat video to end.
Re:What do they do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What do they do? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't use USB. Use the integrated I2C bus, and this thing [adafruit.com]. It's cheaper, doesn't suck power through the already limited USB on the RPi, and gives you 10 location updates per second in exactly the form you're looking for.
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A lot of people seem to be using them as home theater PC's. They apparently run XBMC quite well. I would be all over one right now if I didn't already have an AppleTV running Crystalbuntu.
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Re:What do they do? (Score:5, Informative)
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The MK 802 series (there is I, II and III models), UG802, GK802 etc. There are the size of a bigger USB stick, contains HDMI, WLAN, flash, more RAM than Pi, higher clocked and dual/quad core CPU than Pi and some even bluetooth.
Costs a bit more, can run Android and XBMC from there, though not all got direct hardware codec
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I have the raspberry pi and a mk802 III. Both are cool devices but I think the raspberry pi is better for xbmc and hacking, while the mk802 III is great for browsing the web, playing flash videos, and most other media purposes.
Why do I think the pi is better for xbmc? one word Raspbmc, its a xbmc focused distro that has perfect CEC support (tv controller can be used to operate xbmc flawlessly), Full SSH and FTP support, and enough ram/cpu power left over to run a low traffic webserver. Plus I love the o
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It's interface is better than that of your standard 3d tv, but it's no XBMC.
Also, while it ships with a remote, it's got no CEC support, so you can't use your TV remote the way you can with a raspberry pi.
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Actually "quite well" is an understatement. It plays videos impressively. The system menus are laggy because there's no X and thus no 2d accelerated desktop components, because technically there is no desktop. Distros like raspbmc and openelec don't use X. It's not even installed. Hence it doesn't consume RAM nor require configuration.
If you want a full desktop you can get the distro recommended by the raspberrypi.org that implements a desktop and allows you to run GUI apps. Even without a desktop you
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It's an educational product - a little Linux computer that is designed to be cheap (major plus-point for schools) and provide all the tools necessary to learn about computing and programming. It has a kind of "Geek Port" on it (a bit like the old BeBox did) where you can connect up all kinds of electronic breadboards (homebrew or shop-bought) and you can use the Pi to interface with these things. Car-PC guys have been going nuts over the Pi, for instance.
My own Pi is for Samba4 - I currently have an old b
Re:What do they do? (Score:4, Informative)
URL (Score:5, Funny)
Can you post the URL of your F-I-L's website?
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No! Stop it! You're going to slashdot slashdot !
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If it's for his practice, can't he just write it off?
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They're still expenses. But you can think of them as being discounted by your marginal tax rate.
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This is why I didn't go into business or finance!
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A: $140?! At near-zero bandwidth, unless storage is large (i.e., you're storing 10+ gigs of data on the site for public access), find a cheaper provider. Asmallorange's lowest plan is a few bucks per month. Amazon's cloud stuff may be almost free, too, based on a hit/day metric.
B: I'd presume FIL is writing off the expense, so real after-tax cost is down roughly a third from there. $30 bucks becomes $20.
C: With domain registration, you'll still end up having some cost. Back up to $30.
D: If all you get i
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B. He has no budget, no writes offs, pro-bono accountant (/wrists)
C. He has an office with a business connection, i plan on moving the device to the business connection when/if i take it live. As of now, the only person hitting the site at his house is me.
D. I realize i could get a better deal on hosting, but keep in mind all my work on th
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Move him over to a shared hosting plan for $12-15 a year. Many providers have plans in that price range.
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I've set it up as a gateway into my home network (low power, can leave it on, no spinning disks), and not worry about needing it for something else... Runs all the basic stuff, ssh, wordpress, and I have it on a screen with things like emacs loaded.
It doesn't do anything that bigger computers can't, so, unless the form factor issues are critical, there aren't many killer apps.
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I'm wondering what people are actually using the Pi's for.
First, half a million of these will build a decent sized Beowulf cluster. What you'd do with that all depends on what type of super villan you are.
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I'm wondering what people are actually using the Pi's for. I haven't heard of the killer app to run on these things yet.
That's up to you to decide. It's a hacking platform.
Re:What do they do? (Score:4, Interesting)
The sky's the limit, except for USB (Score:3, Informative)
The Raspberry Pi doesn't need a killer app. It's a general purpose computer, so you can do pretty much anything you want with it, up to a point.
The main problem with the Raspberry Pi is that it has an extremely limited USB controller within its Broadcom BCM2835 device hardware. It's so limited that many applications requiring USB simply fail to work at all. When it fails, the entire USB chain and the networking system collapses.
Unfortunately this problem is not something that can be fixed any time soon,
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Are you sure your power supply is powerful enough?
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I'm wanting one for XBMC. Specifically http://openelec.tv/ [openelec.tv], which has a RaspPi build.
Once someone gets one in stock, I'll order one. Three more if they work as advertised. It looks perfect, combined with one of these [adafruit.com].
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Just order it from Element14 and get on the waitlist. They get stock every few days and fill their backorder first. You'll probably have it in 2 weeks or less.
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I got mine in the middle of last month from Element14. It arrived 3 days after I ordered it and they said it would take weeks.
I ran it for a couple of weeks with raspbian as a print server and last night I replaced my old TV connected media PC that ran XBMC with the Pi running OpenELEC. The media files are stored on a FreeBSD server in my basement and the Pi accesses them through an NFS mount. Works great for everything so far, though the interface is a bit more laggy than the old media PC. It's still very
Re:What do they do? (Score:5, Interesting)
It runs Linux. It can do anything Linux can do, as long as you can live with somewhat limited RAM and CPU speed.
I added a USB hard drive to mine, grabbed a SqueezePlug SD card image, and I'm using it as the MP3 server for my Squeezebox audio players. SqueezePlug started as a bundle of Debian + Logitech Media Server built for PogoPlugs, then also various NAS devices. The Raspberry Pi turned out to be such perfect hardware for the purpose, that the developer has dropped support for other devices.
Prior to that, I left my Mac Mini up 24/7 running Logitech Media Server. It would leak memory and leave the OSX desktop unusable. The Pi uses less power, it's easier to admin, and it's silent.
I do feel I should experiment with other uses -- mine has never had a mouse, keyboard or monitor connected. Just a USB hard disk and ethernet.
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Also, a 5MP camera addon is imminent. I'll be sorely tempted to get another Pi for some low budget Kite Aerial Photography. Just set it to take a photo every 10 seconds, and launch it.
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The way you phrase that question sounds like you don't want to hear an answer.
Re:What do they do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on what you consider to be a "killer app" I suppose. I have mine running Debian as a very cheap, very low power-draw "always on" computer for my home network, to mastermind a few background tasks, run a few low intensity "server" applications, and to act as an SSH-able gateway to my home network. You wouldn't be able to find much better for that sort of task for $35.
I've also used mine to run RISC OS 5, which runs beautifully on it. For anyone nostalgic for that old system, there is no better way to put together a fully functioning replica of your old Acorn boxes using modern hardware.
Really though, it's not about "killer apps". As sibling posters have said, it's about having computers so cheap that you can use them in any old hobby project, regardless of how idle the project or how likely it is to accidentally destroy the hardware. If that doesn't appeal to you, it probably isn't worth buying one.
Vehicle management system. (Score:3)
I'm using one to build a vehicle management system for my rock crawler project. The platform is a 2nd generation Toyota 4Runner, which has a double-din dash opening that currently houses a broken CD player / tape deck combo.
It will house a 7" touchscreen display driven by the RPi, which will accept bluetooth A2DP audio (already have that working) and forward it to an amplifier, use a 3-axis gyro / accelerometer module to give vehicle positional and attitude data represented as a gimbaled graphic on the dis
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There's a father/son project that turns their multitude of Pis into a semi-super computer.
It doesn't take much to figure out what the Pis are used for. Just go to the web and look it up. People seem to be using it as a media center. I use mine as a media center, web server, and samba server, all at the same time.
Though the media center seems to be the most common use it is by far the only being that it is a general computing device unlike the ATV which is just a closed media center for Apple and their co
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"You can't seal it in a wall"
Why? I can seal them in the wall just fine.
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MCM electronics had them in stock from Nov24 to today.. did you really look at all the vendors? 4 days before christmas I bought 2 of them.
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Are you serious? Or trolling? Distributors purchase in bulk, but you don't get instant real-time-updating retail orders information from the distributors. Even the fucking article explains it:
"They're only one of two official distributors; we don't have completely up-to-date figures from RS Components yet, but Farnell's news suggests that we're well on the way to having sold our millionth Raspberry Pi" the foundation added further