Slashdot Mirror
Eben Upton Talks About the Raspberry Pi USB Computer
An anonymous reader writes "I contacted the Director of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Eben Upton, and he graciously gave an interview pertaining to his foundation, the Raspberry Pi device, and how the device relates to robotics. The Raspberry Pi device is basically a $25 Linux PC on a credit card sized board! This microcomputer looks perfectly suited as a low cost, micro form factor, low power, PC performance robot brain."
did you make me RTFA?
Your summary is lacking.
...doesn't using a multipurpose OS kernel with non-optional subroutines that aren't specifically directed toward running the robot or whatever other machine this thing will be stuck in kind of waste resources? I always thought that if one was writing the operating code for a single-purpose machine, one would write it in a language capable of being directly loaded after POST in the manner of an OS without any overhead of another OS, or else one would make it load in the manner of a BIOS at power-on. Or, maybe some hybrid of the two if the machine has to store data in RAM or on disk for some subroutines, like those that learn about the environment.
I've used Linux since Slackware 2.0, and I don't see the Linux kernel necessarily being the best choice. It's way too big and way too general-purpose.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
A heck of a lot cheaper than the Gumstix board I bought a few years ago! and about 1/6 the price of the Beagle Board I bought last year. Looks interesting.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
The main processor is an ARM-based application processor with ... 128 MB of Ram ...
There is a picture of Firefox running (along with console, Inkscape or whatever that is). I am currently running Linux, and when I look at the Firefox process, it shows 186MB used. So.... 128MB of RAM, really?
[blockquote]Our obvious competitors are devices like Beagleboard and Arduino. We're cheaper than Beagleboard, and offer better processing and multimedia capabilities than either. Our interfacing is weaker than Arduino, but we'll be addressing this through add-on boards.[/blockquote]
So feature vs feature, how different will this be from the Arduino?
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
I was doubting the "robotics" claim because all I could see in any of the descriptions was that it has USB and Ethernet. Usually to control motors one needs more low-level I/O than that.
I was wondering if they would consider having analog inputs or PWM outputs, but I don't think it's the case. Having to use a tx/rx to shell out these services to a small microcontroller would be a crappy, inefficient solution.
However, I found in one of the comments that one of the developers claims they have "roughly 16 3.3V GPIO lines, 2 3.3V I2C and a 3.3V SPI." So you'll need to add your own driver chips, which makes sense, but at least high-speed interchip communication will be available.
I know that they're targeting robot makers but, if they built a version with two quality NICs, this would make a great competitor to the high-end prosumer routers such as the ASUS RT-N16, which costs about $65. Getting Moonwall on there would be great.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
The board is dominated by the connectors. It looks like 80% of realestate is USB, HDMI etc. They should at least go with small connectors for these features. There are common and small connectors and cables available.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
I wonder how this would do as a Mythtv frontend (and possibly backend as well, recording DVB-T, would it be fast enough?). It sounds like a great project, not just for students, but for all kinds of hobbyists.
Mr. Upton's goal of a cheap easy to program PC is missed on this device. I realize it's hard to get the kids excited about assembly language, but that's really what made those 8-bit PCs great for training kids. The 8 bit computers were anything but cheap (several hundred dollars, if not over a grand for an Apple ][ is not cheap in the 1980s), but they were mostly easy to program. Sure, you can bash BASIC all you want for teaching sloppy habits, but the commands were fairly easy to remember and most anyone could get lines on the screen. Later on you could start to read/write directly to memory on some machines and have lots of interesting things happen.
While I'm not a programmer today (other than Excel, Access and the occasional batch file), I do have a much better understanding than most of how computers work because of the 8 bits. If I were introduced to computers and programming using a full-blown Linux distro, no matter how inexpensive, I'd not know much more than any MCSE who got certified at the community college. To me the Arduino platform is much better suited to teaching programming skills to people who are new to the process.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Sorry to be an Eyore here but I'm not seeing the point. The stated goal is improving the future crop of CS students but by giving them what is essentially a small PC with HDMI and Linux you aren't going to get that. They will approach it like a PC and quickly all development will be very high level languages, LAMP stacks, etc. While they admit that it CAN be used for robotics, even though they don't expose any embedded interfaces, that doesn't seem to be their focus since it is aimed to be operated via the USB port from a 'real PC' or hung from (and powered from?) the HDMI port on a flat panel display.
If you want kids exploring hardware give em a board with USB on one end and hardware interfaces on the other. Then they can hook it up to a PC or smartphone and get busy. Oh wait, that already exists. And if they show aptitude introduce them to Arduino or real AVR programming. If you can get a machine that still has a parallel port you can buy an AVR programmer for $5 and have a simple AVR based circuit up and going on a breadboard for $25, cost of breadboard, programmer, everything included. Yes, for $25 per kid total bill of materials you can put kids in front of an embedded programming environment except for an old laptop with a parallel port. Who can't find somebody with a stack of old laptops willing to donate? Windows 95/98 machines are overkill for running an AVR development environment.
Democrat delenda est
I am thinking of the power coming from a standard home electrical wall outlet , and a configuration of USB devices:
USB Hub with 8+ ports with the following devices plugged in to it
Keyboard,
Mouse
DisplayLink(2+)
1T+ Disk
Eithernet
Printer
32-bit machines with an Arduno form factor look promising. The usual Arduno ATmega 128 is rather limiting.
Putting a bloated non-realtime OS like Linux on a board that directly controls hardware may not be the right answer, if you want, say, to do vision, balance, and motor control on the same CPU. But there aren't many alternatives. QNX no longer encourages hobbyist use, nobody likes Windows CE, and LinxOS costs too much. Most Linux-based robots have additional, smaller CPUs running the motors. Robots that need fast and tight coordination between the high and low levels, like BigDog, tend to run QNX.
" To me the Arduino platform is much better suited to teaching programming skills to people who are new to the process."
This is a robotic platform, more powerful than Arduino, and its goal isn't teaching.
At that time the fastest available Intel processor was the P100 - 100MHz. While technically it could address 4GB of RAM, in that day that much RAM might cost $64,000 - and of course there was no platform that offered nearly so much.
Now we're talking about platforms that are very different. For CES in January, which is probably the optimistic launch window for this product, we expect quad-core 1.5GHz ARM processors with 1GB of RAM and up to 64GB of storage in a cellular phone package at tens of millions of units of economies of scale.
Increasing the hardware performance by two orders changes the software somewhat. Using a common software platform and build tools reduces time-to-market, risks of missing the launch window, and expands the potential market. It's a good thing. Modern Linux isn't as performant as it once was on smaller platforms, but its platform flexibility and toolchain are second to none. A key example is kernel and drivers. ARM platforms get Linux kernels first and that's what power-on testing is done with. Device vendors know this and finish their Linux device drivers first so engineers can get to work on systems designs that include their products soonest. It's a race and if they aren't first with drivers for best-in-class featuresets, they sell nothing. If they win the race, manna from heaven. Other operating systems might or might not get drivers someday, but neither the fact nor timing is certain.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
180 million units per year for Linux based Android platforms does funny things to pricepoints and toolchains. You can get a full-blown Linux that supports programming in C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, Ada, and Go through the GNU Compiler Collection - and drivers to support all of these for almost any imaginable peripheral in a generation one platform. A great many other languages are available for free that plug into this. Students can build and test on a Linux PC and migrate to the ARM product or use an emulator.
That's a lot of choice to have. It lets you start just about anywhere you want - high level, low level, whatever. Any other choice of platform is going to limit your options. And where you start is where you can end because Linux doesn't top-out anywhere from this micro platform to High Performance Computing. Start anywhere else and eventually you run out of road. With Linux the student's investment in learning is well protected with a rich history and a long road ahead.
We've had enough of learning things just to forget them again. Respect the students' time by teaching them durable truths, not disposable fads.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I read that as "Ben Elton"...
Umm trololol?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
.55M units per day x 365 = 198 million units per year. For instance. The trend is up so the given number was discounted.
wah? the rest of your post has unresolveable issues. Try again when you sober up. I'll wait here. I want to help you but you have to not be drooling on yourself.
Help stamp out iliturcy.