Slashdot Mirror

http://www.research.philips.co...
Roll your own:
https://learn.adafruit.com/ada...

Easy.

Or use dnsmasq.

I get the whole idea, but frankly I'd start with something else than a 320x240 display with a composite video signal.

Something like this?

Take off the tinfoil hat. Sony once sold a camcorder with an IR mode that there was some brief controversy about, but that's about it. Lots of hobbyists modify cameras to see IR. Lots of cheaper cameras have crappy filters and pick up quite a bit without modification. Canon specifically sells (or sold, it's quite old now) a version of one of their SLRs without an IR filter. You can buy one for $25 to hook up to your Raspberry Pi.

Uh, No. Apple chargers are smarter.

Here's a reverse engineering of the Apple ability to negotiate higher power levels than are supported by the standard at that USB version level, assuming Apple cables, and an Apple charger:

http://learn.adafruit.com/mint...

In this case it's an Atmel atTiny85 instead of a PIC chip, and a tri-color RGB LED instead of three separate LEDs, but yeah, it's not all that complex. It also has a printed circuit board, not particularly complex, and yes, you could build it yourself on breadboard. You could also snark about how Arduinos cost ~$30 when they only have
You could also buy a Digispark for ~$9 which has a Tiny85 and a voltage regulator, and breaks out the pins for convenient access, with room for headers so you can build the equivalent of an Arduino shield. Instead of a USB socket, it uses the trick of printing traces on the PCB in a layout that acts as a USB Type A plug, so it's more compact and doesn't need a wire.

Or you could spend ~$8 for an Adafruit Trinket and add an LED; it may be a shade less convenient than the Digispark just because they put the connectors on two sides of the board instead of one (so it's harder to use an RGB LED, but you could put it on the back of the board.)

would it be possible to generalize this design to drive an array, of -- say -- 10 or 20 RGB LEDs ?

Sure. Addressable LED strings are cheap, and widely used for annoying blinking holiday decorations. If you don't want to solder, here's an assembled USB light string controller.

Adafruit is now accepting bitcoin. I think they're crazy.

Wireless Tor AP built with a Raspberry Pi: http://learn.adafruit.com/onion-pi/overview

There are some electronics projects for young (4-6 yro) children out there, but besides building a few pre-set projects, how do you get kids interested and excited about building things? They might think some blinking lights are cool, but how do you put a narrative around it? I've found toddlers and younger kids love toys, and the entire fantasy world surrounding them, that correspond with books and TV shows. Is there something equivalent for electronics?

Is Sparkfun actually cheaper? I had the impression that they were more or less direct clones of the Adafruit product, only sometimes slightly worse. A good example of this is the repurposed old Nokia 84x48 LCD screens. Both Adafruit and Sparkfun sell it for about the same price ($10), but the Adafruit model comes with the necessary level shifter while the Sparkfun one instead lies on the package (saying it is 84x84). When you go to find the code for it, the code all comes from Adafruit. I know which one I would buy when given the choice.

http://www.adafruit.com/contact/

"Please note: Adafruit does not have a retail store, orders cannot be picked up. Our factory is not accessible for visitors at this time. "

What the hell is wrong with you? She won't sleep with you Thanshin.

It appears that way. For example:

http://www.adafruit.com/products/1535

No schematics. No BOM. Details for FCC certification were kept confidential:

https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/ViewExhibitReport.cfm?mode=Sum&calledFromFrame=N&RequestTimeout=500&application_id=375407&fcc_id=S6OBLUEFRUIT

So, is Adafruit still Open Source or not?

You can build these, Ambilight clones for you TV:

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/11/04/ambipi-ambilight-clone-raspberrypi-raspberry_pi/

http://player.vimeo.com/video/30043456

There were actually quite a few verified cases where Google suspended or even purged accounts over the names policy. A few links I found from a quick search:
Wikipedia's "Nymwars" article names a few
Google Plus deleting accounts en masse
Limor “Ladyada” Fried's brief post on being suspended
Violet Blue: Too Much Unnecessary Drama
William Shatner's Profile Temporarily Removed From Google+

Last Iheard, Google was allowing obvious pseudonyms in the "also known as"type field, but still required a "realistic"name for the account. (I use a "realistic"pseudonym myself.)

This isn't news. You can already do this by buying the kit from adafruit.com or by buying one already built at PAPARouter.com(It's in the .sig). In short, Raspberry Pi + Debian + Tor. If you're browsing, make sure to use https everywhere.

He must be really tired from trying to stay relevant.

Onion Pi

If by "electronics" you mean "a couple resistors" ... you're basically correct. Apple creates a voltage divider on the data lines to tell the device what the charger is capable of. Credit where credit is due to MintyBoost.

The original USB spec allowed for 100 mA power with a negotiated increase to 500 mA over the data connection. Nobody bothered to implement this, and most everything will just supply 500 mA regardless.

Apple decided 500 mA wasn't enough, and created their own proprietary (albeit simplistic) system for communicating the power capability (which includes upping the voltage in the newest chargers, I think).

The rest of the industry simplified things even more by just shorting the data lines. USB 3.0 officially increases the power capabilities.

End result: original poster to the thread is PROVABLY WRONG. Apple chargers are very much proprietary, from the wall wart all the way to the device connector.

Because in the world of technology, things advance whether you like it or not.

I see this bullshit all the time, and it sickens (and saddens) me. You have completely and entirely have forgotten the purpose of computers (re: technology): to solve problems or accomplish purposes that would otherwise be extremely time consuming or too difficult to do otherwise. If what you have works, there is no reason to change it. Most software today changes solely for the sake of change.

Some things don't "advance" because they just work.

And windows XP would suck on a touch screen. I don't call that "just working".

Because in the world of technology, things advance whether you like it or not.

I see this bullshit all the time, and it sickens (and saddens) me. You have completely and entirely have forgotten the purpose of computers (re: technology): to solve problems or accomplish purposes that would otherwise be extremely time consuming or too difficult to do otherwise. If what you have works, there is no reason to change it. Most software today changes solely for the sake of change.

Some things don't "advance" because they just work.

I would love to see you argue your point with the individuals/companies mentioned in said article. I can assure you completely they would say the same thing I have.

LED stripes look like crap because you can see the individual LEDs. If you want a TRON look, nothing beats EL wire.

Get to a Maker Faire. Several years ago I spent awhile talking with Bre Pettis about his new machine from MakerBot without realizing who he was. Take the kids! Solder your own badge! Learn how to make your own air powered rockets! My kids aren't even into robots think it is a blast. A word of waring... they make you sign a serious waiver for a reason. They expect you to pay attention to your surroundings and not blindly walk into that quadcopter demo. Make sure your kids are not texting as they walk. Look for some of the small booths/tables with guys that brought in their home brewed stuff. They were you not that long ago and would love to talk about hot to get started. The fancy booths are people looking to sell stuff. If your not looking to buy your own laser cutter.... they will let you look and they will be polite but they are looking to sell stuff.
http://makerfaire.com/

If you decide you want to start now and want to learn how things work....

Get this kit for $49:
http://www.adafruit.com/products/193

Follow the tutorials starting here:
http://learn.adafruit.com/lesson-0-getting-started

Soon you will be a master of blinky lights. Think of it as "Hello world" for robotics.

If you think, "HOLY CRAP. I AM MAKING IT REALLY DO THINGS" Then continue. If you went, "HOLY CRAP, I JUST WASTED $50 AND A FEW HOURS OF MY LIFE TO MAKE A STUPID LIGHT BLINK" you might consider some of the more expensive options or re-consider your desire to do this. If you want to continue...

If you have an old printer laying around then rip some motors out of it. In fact anything that has a motor or is older electronics will soon be looked at with, "Hey, that has a nice transformer in it. Those are some nice through hole resisters. Would you look at those hardened steel rods! I wonder why they did it this way?"

Things to consider furthering the addiction:
motor shield with some basic motors
digital multimeter
Soldering iron, do not get one of those nasty Radio Shack $20 pieces of junk. You wouldn't try to build a small deck with a handsaw. This is one of the more expensive pieces you will buy, but it is one of those tools that you will use and will appreciate not having a junk one. This does not mean you need to get a super solder re-work station. Get one with a base station and dial control. Temp controlled would be great.
Go to a nearby electronics place that sells this stuff and buy some general wire, breadboard etc. They will appreciate the business and might be there someday when you really need that one part and don't want to wait for shipping. I was amazed to find one near me. They were rather knowledgeable compared to some certain chains (they had a soldering iron on the counter just in case)
An old computer with the following ports: MIDI(computers used to have a port with real IO, oh my), serial, USB, parallel. You might want to eventually talk to ports and individual pins without the OS in the way. Windows stopped allowing this with XP. A P4 is fast but gets warm and very power hungry. A PIII not so hot or power hungry but not as fast. An old laptop works great for this since it has a small footprint.

Start to follow a few web sites:
http://hackaday.com/
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/?main_page=blog
http://blog.makezine.com/
http://dangerousprototypes.com/
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
http://diydrones.com/
https://www.sparkfun.com/

Get to a Maker Faire. Several years ago I spent awhile talking with Bre Pettis about his new machine from MakerBot without realizing who he was. Take the kids! Solder your own badge! Learn how to make your own air powered rockets! My kids aren't even into robots think it is a blast. A word of waring... they make you sign a serious waiver for a reason. They expect you to pay attention to your surroundings and not blindly walk into that quadcopter demo. Make sure your kids are not texting as they walk. Look for some of the small booths/tables with guys that brought in their home brewed stuff. They were you not that long ago and would love to talk about hot to get started. The fancy booths are people looking to sell stuff. If your not looking to buy your own laser cutter.... they will let you look and they will be polite but they are looking to sell stuff.
http://makerfaire.com/

If you decide you want to start now and want to learn how things work....

Get this kit for $49:
http://www.adafruit.com/products/193

Follow the tutorials starting here:
http://learn.adafruit.com/lesson-0-getting-started

Soon you will be a master of blinky lights. Think of it as "Hello world" for robotics.

If you think, "HOLY CRAP. I AM MAKING IT REALLY DO THINGS" Then continue. If you went, "HOLY CRAP, I JUST WASTED $50 AND A FEW HOURS OF MY LIFE TO MAKE A STUPID LIGHT BLINK" you might consider some of the more expensive options or re-consider your desire to do this. If you want to continue...

If you have an old printer laying around then rip some motors out of it. In fact anything that has a motor or is older electronics will soon be looked at with, "Hey, that has a nice transformer in it. Those are some nice through hole resisters. Would you look at those hardened steel rods! I wonder why they did it this way?"

Things to consider furthering the addiction:
motor shield with some basic motors
digital multimeter
Soldering iron, do not get one of those nasty Radio Shack $20 pieces of junk. You wouldn't try to build a small deck with a handsaw. This is one of the more expensive pieces you will buy, but it is one of those tools that you will use and will appreciate not having a junk one. This does not mean you need to get a super solder re-work station. Get one with a base station and dial control. Temp controlled would be great.
Go to a nearby electronics place that sells this stuff and buy some general wire, breadboard etc. They will appreciate the business and might be there someday when you really need that one part and don't want to wait for shipping. I was amazed to find one near me. They were rather knowledgeable compared to some certain chains (they had a soldering iron on the counter just in case)
An old computer with the following ports: MIDI(computers used to have a port with real IO, oh my), serial, USB, parallel. You might want to eventually talk to ports and individual pins without the OS in the way. Windows stopped allowing this with XP. A P4 is fast but gets warm and very power hungry. A PIII not so hot or power hungry but not as fast. An old laptop works great for this since it has a small footprint.

Start to follow a few web sites:
http://hackaday.com/
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/?main_page=blog
http://blog.makezine.com/
http://dangerousprototypes.com/
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
http://diydrones.com/
https://www.sparkfun.com/

Get to a Maker Faire. Several years ago I spent awhile talking with Bre Pettis about his new machine from MakerBot without realizing who he was. Take the kids! Solder your own badge! Learn how to make your own air powered rockets! My kids aren't even into robots think it is a blast. A word of waring... they make you sign a serious waiver for a reason. They expect you to pay attention to your surroundings and not blindly walk into that quadcopter demo. Make sure your kids are not texting as they walk. Look for some of the small booths/tables with guys that brought in their home brewed stuff. They were you not that long ago and would love to talk about hot to get started. The fancy booths are people looking to sell stuff. If your not looking to buy your own laser cutter.... they will let you look and they will be polite but they are looking to sell stuff.
http://makerfaire.com/

If you decide you want to start now and want to learn how things work....

Get this kit for $49:
http://www.adafruit.com/products/193

Follow the tutorials starting here:
http://learn.adafruit.com/lesson-0-getting-started

Soon you will be a master of blinky lights. Think of it as "Hello world" for robotics.

If you think, "HOLY CRAP. I AM MAKING IT REALLY DO THINGS" Then continue. If you went, "HOLY CRAP, I JUST WASTED $50 AND A FEW HOURS OF MY LIFE TO MAKE A STUPID LIGHT BLINK" you might consider some of the more expensive options or re-consider your desire to do this. If you want to continue...

If you have an old printer laying around then rip some motors out of it. In fact anything that has a motor or is older electronics will soon be looked at with, "Hey, that has a nice transformer in it. Those are some nice through hole resisters. Would you look at those hardened steel rods! I wonder why they did it this way?"

Things to consider furthering the addiction:
motor shield with some basic motors
digital multimeter
Soldering iron, do not get one of those nasty Radio Shack $20 pieces of junk. You wouldn't try to build a small deck with a handsaw. This is one of the more expensive pieces you will buy, but it is one of those tools that you will use and will appreciate not having a junk one. This does not mean you need to get a super solder re-work station. Get one with a base station and dial control. Temp controlled would be great.
Go to a nearby electronics place that sells this stuff and buy some general wire, breadboard etc. They will appreciate the business and might be there someday when you really need that one part and don't want to wait for shipping. I was amazed to find one near me. They were rather knowledgeable compared to some certain chains (they had a soldering iron on the counter just in case)
An old computer with the following ports: MIDI(computers used to have a port with real IO, oh my), serial, USB, parallel. You might want to eventually talk to ports and individual pins without the OS in the way. Windows stopped allowing this with XP. A P4 is fast but gets warm and very power hungry. A PIII not so hot or power hungry but not as fast. An old laptop works great for this since it has a small footprint.

Start to follow a few web sites:
http://hackaday.com/
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/?main_page=blog
http://blog.makezine.com/
http://dangerousprototypes.com/
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
http://diydrones.com/
https://www.sparkfun.com/

This should be on slashdot because ...

If you were smart, you'd just get any one of the VESA mount Raspberry Pi cases and mount the pie on the monitor

Oh, and in a 10 second Google search, here are a few that do the same thing but you know, a long time ago.

http://blog.parts-people.com/2012/12/20/mobile-raspberry-pi-computer-build-your-own-portable-rpi-to-go/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1952418207/all-in-one-raspberry-pi-case
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/05/17/raspberry-pi-in-oak-case-with-monitor-piday-raspberrypi-raspberry_pi/

You can find all the required parts by visiting pretty much any website of a large Raspberry Pi dealer (Adafruit, Element14) that has a dedicated RaspPi section and you'll find a list of all the parts, ready made, to be shipped to you to do just this.

Its not like this guy had to even 'find parts'.

And these are cooler (alas, the don't really qualify since they don't have monitors attached):

http://supernintendopi.wordpress.com/
http://raspi64.blogspot.com/2013/03/all-buttoned-up.html

If this kind of crap post belongs on slashdot, so does everytime I take a shit, as its equally as impressive and as rare of an accomplishment.

Limor "Ladyada" Fried. She tends to be in most of their things. Somewhat like Jobs-led Apple or Musk-led Tesla, the company's public image is pretty heavily centered around the main person. In fact the company's "About" page isn't actually about anything else.

Check out http://learn.adafruit.com/reading-a-analog-in-and-controlling-audio-volume-with-the-raspberry-pi/overview which I happened to be reading about 5 minutes ago. I'm not familiar with the One-Wire protocol but you can certainly bit-bang good ole analog sensors on the Pi. In Python, even.

How about this? - http://www.adafruit.com/products/885 - IOIO Mint - Portable Android Development Kit

I already have a beagle board and a beagle bone, is there anything the Pi can do that the beagle boards can't?

You can buy four Pis for the price of one Beagleboard. Maybe that means you can do four projects rather than one, but the Pi has a somewhat older CPU.

The only reason for you to get one is if you've made a project with the Beagleboard which doesn't use all its power. You could move the project to a Pi and use the Beagleboard for something else.

(I don't own a Beagle-anything. See also http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/06/18/ask-an-educator-whats-the-difference-between-arduino-raspberry-pi-beagleboard-etc/ )

Good analysis. I suspect that the project was founded by ... I don't know what. Guys without any experience with embedded systems is my bet. The cost difference, in bulk, of a small 16 mhz 8-bit CPU with 0.5k RAM and a 100mhz 32-bit CPU with 128K RAM is about a dollar.

If they had spent the extra dollar per unit they could have had a device that could take care of all of the I/O formatting, etc, etc and been a stand-alone device.

(Even without spending the dollar, you can get a lot of performance out of an old 8-bit CPU if you know what you're doing.)

In stock here: http://www.adafruit.com/category/105

Also Adafruit's "Show and Tell" and "Ask an Engineer" shows often have a lot of interesting Pi-related topics. http://www.adafruit.com/blog/

In stock here: http://www.adafruit.com/category/105

Also Adafruit's "Show and Tell" and "Ask an Engineer" shows often have a lot of interesting Pi-related topics. http://www.adafruit.com/blog/

You can make them removable by soldering snap buttons onto the pads and sewing the backs into the fabric. You wire it up using stainless steel conductive thread. Here is an example: http://learn.adafruit.com/flora-snaps

Don't use USB. Use the integrated I2C bus, and this thing. 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.

I'm wanting one for XBMC. Specifically http://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 has a great series of lessons on how to get it setup and examples of some interesting uses. They also have a ton of useful accessories, cases, etc.

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!

From what I understand of the process, astronomers measure the drop in light as a planet passes between a star and us to determine its size and distance from said star. So what happens in the case of an Earth like planet with an advanced civilization, or perhaps if there is a lot of volcanic activity? Wouldn't that alter the expected result, and screw up their calculations?

There is a transistor character (all characters are listed on this page). No mention of a cross-dressing nun though.

. One version is the cobbler kit http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-pi-cobbler-kit/overview for 7.95.

You could make that with an old floppy-drive cable and a $1 IDC DIL header.

That would be the "74LVC245 - Breadboard Friendly 8-bit Logic Level Shifter" https://www.adafruit.com/products/735 otherwise known as "Shifty"!
You don't even want to know what she has planned for Power Supplies (AC/DC, AC/AC, and DC/DC)!

What's gonna happen when someone wears something based on this: http://www.adafruit.com/products/659

I imagine this https://www.adafruit.com/products/950 would give TSA agents pause, especially if its modified even further (blinky lights, toggles etc).

Does this count?

netv open source HDMI overlay generator

you need to download it directly from this page and click the download link:
http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-raspberry-pi-educational-linux-distro/occidentalis-v0-dot-1

I totally agree. The adafruit site is a very good place to get ideas, and there are some great Adafruit videos on YouTube.

PS: "Getting Started with Arduino", by Massimo Banzi is very good for people with less experience, though this doesn't apply to the poster's friend.

You're right, it does come out to almost $70, although you left out a few purchases.

5 dollar supply in a free case(if you buy from RS, the shipping box makes an excellent case, better than element14 which shipped a crappy chipboard box with one layer of bubblewrap), and a RPi that only cost me $5 or $7 in shipping because I bought from a local branch instead of the UK headquarters of the distributor.

Including shipping for the power supply(approx $3.87 if I bought it alone, actually less) and a 1 meter HDMI/DVI video cable($1.60 shipped from Amazon), my total cost was no more than $54(e14) or $56(RS).

Although that also doesn't include the SD card($5, shipped from amazon, but I already had some), but then you didn't either. If I do add a real case to the two I have, I'll probably just buy one sheet of plastic at the hardware store($5) and some of standoffs($1) instead of paying $25 for it. After that, it is indeed $65 or $67 for a "$35 computer"

On the plus side, I also had the somewhat dubious piece of mind that if, in the rush to ship, they let production quality slip, I could RMA and get a replacement in a few days instead of having to ship it back to China at my expense.

Do you want Networking?
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9026 It is more expensive than a Pi.
Wifi? Bluetooth? Well USB dongles can add that to the Pi.
Want to do your development on the board without a PC? A Pi with a Keyboard and Monitor will do that.
Want to play Audio? Here is a kit for you.
http://www.adafruit.com/products/94
Want to develop using Python, Ruby, Basic, Smalltalk, Lua, Perl, Lisp Scheme, Erlang, or Haskell? If it is an interpreted language then it may just be a compile away for the Pi.
There are all sorts of options the pi opens up.
The Arduino is great because of the broad support and community. It is early days with the Pi still but the idea of using Smalltalk for an embedded device interests me a lot.

http://www.adafruit.com/category/63 http://www.sparkfun.com/categories/76

Although you're making a "glass half full" kind of prediction, it's not hard to imagine that the opposite of your guess might occur in the US: All the other ARM licensees might see this as a fantastic coup for Broadcom, and follow suit with their own competing $25 - $35 boards.

After all, Texas Instruments already has their own $5 SoC available and used in their BeagleBone, so they could quite easily remove features from that board and release something into the Raspberry Pi price niche for education. (The BeagleBone's $89 places it far outside the Raspberry Pi's price niche.)

The Chinese will of course follow suit with boards based on their wildly successful Allwinner A10 ARM device, which is far better than Broadcom's SoC (on specs) and only costs $7 in production volumes. Expect a pile of competitors from that quarter!