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Windows Hardware Linux

Raspberry Pi Passes 10M Sales Mark (bbc.com) 102

Posted by msmash from the yay dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The Raspberry Pi has sold 10 million units -- continuing its success as the most popular British computer ever. The computer, about the same size as a credit card, was first released in 2012 and is widely used as an educational tool for programming. However, it can also be used for many practical purposes such as streaming music to several devices in a house. A new starter kit for Raspberry Pi, including a keyboard and mouse, has been released to celebrate the success. The kit also includes an SD storage card, official case, power supply, HDMI cable, mouse, keyboard and guidebook -- it costs $130 and will be available in the coming weeks. The Pi, which is manufactured in Wales, has been adopted by pupils, programmers and inventors around the world.
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Raspberry Pi Passes 10M Sales Mark More

Raspberry Pi Passes 10M Sales Mark

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  • I'm still waiting for the zero.

  • I got a Pi 3 recently. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Thursday September 08, 2016 @09:14AM (#52847813) Journal

    I got one recently and they're frickin awesome.

    I got the official touch screen as well which is really sweet. I expect there will be a bunch of naysayers pointing out how you can get faster/cheaper things which blow the Pi away.

    Sure you can, but it's under 30 quid, more than fast enough for what I want and has an excellent user community and documentation. I don't really care about shaving 50% off something already really cheap especially when it will inevitably cost me much more time in even the short term.

    Oh also, the kernel provides access to GPIOs in /sys/class/gpio, including select() to wait for edge events. How cool is that? I never knew and that's going to save time screwing around with, well, GPIOs.

    • I got one recently and they're frickin awesome.
      I got the official touch screen as well which is really sweet. I expect there will be a bunch of naysayers

      If they've got the USB working properly now then it's awesome. If they don't then it's useless to me. Have they got the USB working properly now?

      • Re:I got a Pi 3 recently. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Feral Nerd ( 3929873 ) on Thursday September 08, 2016 @10:16AM (#52848159)

        I got one recently and they're frickin awesome. I got the official touch screen as well which is really sweet. I expect there will be a bunch of naysayers

        If they've got the USB working properly now then it's awesome. If they don't then it's useless to me. Have they got the USB working properly now?

        Depends on what you mean. I connect a 2W USB WiFi board to my PI using USB and I'm getting 150mps out of it and stream video for up to a kilometer. Other than that I mostly connect keyboards, mice, external USB drives, webcams and occasionally a USB sound card. Of course I'm not constantly plugging, un-plugging and then and re-plugin my connected devices at runtime but up until now I have had no problems.

      • Re:I got a Pi 3 recently. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Kinwolf ( 945345 ) on Thursday September 08, 2016 @10:20AM (#52848191)
        I think you'll have to explain what you mean by "properly"

      • If they've got the USB working properly now then it's awesome. If they don't then it's useless to me. Have they got the USB working properly now?

        Works for me. It's got 4 ports. I use the keyboard port regularly, but not the others. I've not tried any heavy use, but I've not had any errors either. I will be runnnig a memory device on there soon, though.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by chispito ( 1870390 )

        If they've got the USB working properly now then it's awesome. If they don't then it's useless to me. Have they got the USB working properly now?

        It is what it is. I'm trying to think of the very limited set of applications you must have in mind that it would be "useless" when there are so many successful projects people use them for.

        • I'm trying to think of the very limited set of applications you must have in mind that it would be "useless" when there are so many successful projects people use them for.

          Doing any kind of heavy USB I/O used to cause massive errors and failure, on earlier Pis. So I want to know if they've got it right this time.

    • You have yet to see Pi 3.14!

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Feral Nerd ( 3929873 )

      I got one recently and they're frickin awesome.

      I got the official touch screen as well which is really sweet. I expect there will be a bunch of naysayers pointing out how you can get faster/cheaper things which blow the Pi away.

      Sure you can, but it's under 30 quid, more than fast enough for what I want and has an excellent user community and documentation. I don't really care about shaving 50% off something already really cheap especially when it will inevitably cost me much more time in even the short term.

      Oh also, the kernel provides access to GPIOs in /sys/class/gpio, including select() to wait for edge events. How cool is that? I never knew and that's going to save time screwing around with, well, GPIOs.

      For the most part I agree. Unfortunately the main reason I use the PI is simply because of the widespread community support and the avaialbility of software for it. The PI is not without flaws. For one thing the PI has no A/D converter which is a major flaw from my point of view. It also has no internal charging circuit, the CHIP 9 Dollar computer has one and that's a big plus for the CHIP. Finally I'd like a version of the PI to be available off the shelf:

      1. A) without those clunky old 40 pin strips solde

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Qzukk ( 229616 )

        If I wasn't replying, I'd give you a +1 for (B). Compact or not, it's a huge pain in the ass to have a bunch of those patch cables, not just for USB A but for the USB power and the HDMI as well. With points to soldier to, it'd be easy to cut cables to fit.

        • If I wasn't replying, I'd give you a +1 for (B). Compact or not, it's a huge pain in the ass to have a bunch of those patch cables, not just for USB A but for the USB power and the HDMI as well. With points to soldier to, it'd be easy to cut cables to fit.

          I created my own USB cables by buying USB connectors on Adafruit, leaving off al the plastic crap and soldering them myself using thin copper wire. That cuts the amount of space you need for the connector down from something like 4-5 cm down to 1 cm. However, those USB connectors are a bitch to solder, especially mini and micro USB. I know you can order customised raspberries but for small projects that's not practical. if you have 20 pre production prototypes to assemble for user testing then it's imprac

      • Unfortunately the main reason I use the PI is simply because of the widespread community support and the avaialbility of software for it.

        I'm not sure why that's unfortunate. It's kind of the reason. It's not the most powerful or the cheapest, but they sell then for a long time and community support is excellent so they work with out the screw-with-it factor.

        The PI is not without flaws. For one thing the PI has no A/D converter which is a major flaw from my point of view.

        Come to think of it that is quite an

    • I've got a couple of PI-B's I use as access points. I've used beagle bones for project thingie's as the beagle bones have built in A/D. Not a great A/D but good enough. So far I have a pool controller, garage door controller, irrigation controller HVAC monitor and just recently added current monitoring to the A/C compressor and fan. All these inexpensive SBC's have made some really amazing projects easy to build. I also have to give credit to cheap components too. Thermistors, current probes, wifi, cheap mo

    • Unfortunately, most of the 'community' thinks that it's an acceptable solution to require their own boot image to run some ported software. God forbid you would want to do something unheard of, such as having both a media player software (Kodi or Plex) and still have access to a web browser without having to fucking reboot, or go through dependency hell to get things working.

  • LOVE these things!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You'll want this bad boy right here http://arm.slackware.com/ [slackware.com], and this OMX Remote [google.com] on your phone.

    Silent media player, 1080, NFS mount, remote control. Priceless.

    Oh, and the Canadian dollar goes a long way in the UK these days :)

  • Try putting it in your wallet, I dare you.

  • It's only credit-card sized in two dimensions. It's more like a full deck of playing cards in the world most of us inhabit away from the screen.

    It's also terrible that they are celebrating their $30 to $35 SBC by selling something triple the price. A starter kit like that often goes for more like $70 near me including the Pi 3. http://www.microcenter.com/sea... [microcenter.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by c10 ( 595575 )
      What's that in football fields?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by IMightB ( 533307 )

      Umm the $70 price point includes:

      heatsinks
      power cable
      hdmi cable
      case
      32GB microsd

      none of which are needed if you already have the parts laying around. Even the case is relatively optional.


      • Speaking of optional...

        The heatsinks sold for SOC are pointless. The original design of these chips was for usage in thin smartphones. No conductive heat distribution is expected to be available in this application.

      • Right. You get all of that for $70, which was my point. So why is the celebratory starter kit $130, enough to buy another Pi on top of the $70 kit and an inexpensive keyboard and mouse?

  • The computer, about the same size as a credit card, was first released in 2012 and is widely used as an educational tool for programming.

    Baloney. It's lots bigger then a credit card!

    • Baloney. It's lots bigger then a credit card!

      Hey, size isn't everything (you insensitive clod)!

  • Target market (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rijrunner ( 263757 ) on Thursday September 08, 2016 @11:50AM (#52848769)

    The interesting thing here is that people are complaining about how the Raspberry Pi operates when used by people who were not its primary customer when it was designed.

    When it launched, it was launched, it was done as a teaching system and it has been aimed more at replacing the arduino than PC's, where this is very cost competitive given its vastly greater capabilities.

    That is does not have all the functionality of a desktop is not surprising. That is not what it was designed for. But, the low cost is really causing people to think about the system and deploy it in very surprising ways. (We are using them at my place of business in our NOC for all our monitoring systems where more powerful systems are just overkill.)

    • Ya, plus the commercial use. Consider companies like homeseer using it as a base for their home automation controllers. I bet they place many orders for PIs.

  • I'm still looking for a way $15 or less (for each tv) to automate about 25-30 tv's just to switch them on in the morning and off in the evening.

    A outlet timer can handle most tv's but a bit less than half won't switch back on when connected to power and need to be manually switched on.

  • They are getting loads of publicity about their Windows 10 that actually transforms the Pi into a vegetable. People will read the articles and think, "I must buy one of these and install Windows 10 on it". Having done so its vegetative qualities under the Windows 10 curse come out in full force and the poor punter has to return it as it "wasn't as good as expected". Then tells all his friends how "rubbish" the Pi is.

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