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First Steps With the Raspberry Pi
An anonymous reader writes "The Raspberry Pi received an extraordinary amount of pre-launch coverage. It truly went viral with major news corporations such as the BBC giving extensive coverage. Not without reason, it is groundbreaking to have a small, capable computer retailing at less than the price of a new console game. There have been a number of ventures that have tried to produce a cheap computer such as a laptop and a tablet but which never materialised at these price points. Nothing comes close to the Raspberry Pi in terms of affordability, which is even more important in the current economic climate. Producing a PC capable of running Linux, Quake III-quality games, and 1080p video is worthy of praise." Beyond praise, though, this article details the hooking-up and mucking-about phases, and offers some ideas of what it's useful for.
With the price of 'smartphones' now, you can get a cheap china-sourced device that is about as small, and has all the communications you need AND even has a built in touchscreen.
Sure it may not have a lot of data i/o devices on board, but it has audio in/out and they have usb, so that is covered too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why not install Python on whatever computer is already around the house? Or Scratch? Or have them write JavaScript in the browsers they already use? I think that would be a more effective way to introduce them to computer programming.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
As a resident of the USA, how can I get one of these things? Everything I've seen up to this point just talks about how to order one if you're in the UK. Are there no other options apart from paying to have one shipped internationally?
Is the Broadcom datasheet freely available for the SoC? In my experience, Broadcom is evil when it comes to forking over the exact specs and interfacing requirements for its chips. If there's no datasheet for the SoC, then my enthusiasm for tinkering with one of these is basically nil. Still a neat little gadget, I suppose.
Make your own secure file repository, joining the cloud computing revolution?
Last I checked, that's called a file server. Not the "cloud computing revolution."
The first step with the Raspberry Pi is to be able to get one...
Agreed - if you want a Pi that also has camera, GPS, wi-fi, 3G radio, mic, speaker, LED light, touchscreen, keyboard, battery, and a case, I've bought Android phones as cheap as $29 off-contract. They make fantastic do-anything devices, from remote cameras to GPS trackers, and all you have to do is download an app off the Market. There are also Android SoCs in a USB/HDMI stick for excellent prices.
But if you want a hobbyist device with USB, GPIO & ethernet that you can build a project around, the Pi is a great device to play with. Pre-built phones may be more capable, but they're also less flexible in many ways.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The Raspberry Pi received an extraordinary amount of pre-launch coverage
No kidding? (24 articles on /. ...)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
This is another review of the Raspberry Pi that mentions the lack of a real time clock. Some even say that this cannot replace a standard computer, DVR, web server, etc. without one. However, real time clocks don't seem that useful. Looking at the Wikipedia article, they don't seem do list any real benefits other than offloading the time functions from the main CPU, alarms (which I'm still not sure what those are) and keeping track of time when the computer is off. So, how do those functions really affect its appropriateness as a computer replacement, DVR, etc.?
But how can we be sure that the Raspberry Pi be manufactured on that sort of scale? Or are we instead likely to run into shortages that parallel those of a newly launched video game console?
alarms (which I'm still not sure what those are)
Ability to wake up at a scheduled time is important for a DVR, which needs to be able to wake up and record video at a scheduled time.
keeping track of time when the computer is off
That's the big one. Otherwise, you're going to have to be able to connect to an NTP server before you write to any file so that you can know what the last modification time is going to be.
Thanks to everyone and their mother hyping this thing up as the biggest revolution in computers since the PC people like me who have actual real uses for the damn things are now forced to buy other similar picoITX embedded systems. While other offerings may not be as fast, have as much memory, or hit that price target, I can get them, get my task done, and move the fuck on.
The longer PI takes, the less I care
That's because there's more to computing than software. Think the early days of computers when one was knowledgeable with hardware and software. Decades of layers have removed that experience for most. There's still some who understand what it's all about like robotic and embedded systems programmers.
But your SBCs don't have a development community forming around them - the hype and hoopla is exactly what is noteworthy. Just like the Arduino community, couldn't make me yawn any wider, but it's important because help is there for people who need it.
If we didn't feed the trolls, they might wander off and bother people who don't know how to handle them.
I received my Raspi a few days ago and the first thing I have tried is running OpenElec to run XBMC and it runs very well. So many things to try not enough time.
This device has HDMI output, but now I've heard too often here on /. how HDMI is seriously DRM-encumbered.
There is a lot of protected content out there, and there are too many horror stories how HDMI devices don't want to talk to each other or give degraded video etc. My TV doesn't have HDMI (it's too old); a new one probably will. But I'm really worried about all these stupid restrictions being put on the system. And as such am not really eager to start using HDMI.
Now a device like this is likely not to have much support for those content flags and whatnot: how does this affect the final performance of HDMI? Will there be problems when trying to play video from this Raspberry Pi?
For those you can't wait for a Raspberry Pi the current price on Ebay is about $90, I think it will drop to $50 in a couple weeks as about 100,000 will ship this month. I flipped mine for 3x Sure I would like to keep one, but the software and community is pretty much Alpha right now and I have more patience than money.
http://downloads.element14.com/raspberryPi2.html
'Apple' is not a food name.
Steve and Steve named it after a record company.
I see what you are saying. Learning computers? Ok, let's look at RasPi:
RasPi: $25. Monitor: About 100. Mouse/keyboard: 20 or so. Power supply: 5. Speakers: 5. SD card: we'll say about 20. So we're talking about $175, total for a 700 Mhz machine. I'll bet you could do as well on Craigslist looking for used laptops.
I think the "thing" with RasPi is its hackability. Sure, you could learn to program on any capable machine. But this thing has...other applications. It's small. Embedded small. And very capable. And has lots of exposed I/O which a laptop wouldn't have. This is a device to inspire future geeks, not teach the masses how to program. I think that's the idea.
Honestly the first things I thought when I heard of this project were all pretty black-hat, I must admit. A nifty little proxy you could hide in a wall at a college dorm or computer lab. Or little dinky tor nodes hidden around third world countries. Or stick it in an Altoids tin with a battery near a public wifi spot and have it bittorrent things for you. Or a dinky little sniffer you could leave somewhere strategic running Aircrack or Wireshark and pick up later. Not that I'd do any of these things, or would advocate such, of course, oh heavens no. But you have to admit...a fully capable computer of this size and price - there are a lot of naughty things you could do with it. With nearly zero consequences. Twenty five bucks isn't a lot to gamble.
I think that's the gist, honestly. It's like an arduino on steroids. A little tiny Rorschach test. When you look at it what do you see? What can you make it into?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The big differences between Arduinoish models are mainly
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes, they've typically got a television at home. And a keyboard, mouse, and USB hub cost $5 each.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yeah, no shit polesmoker, but why don't you tell it to the open source shitbrains who keep using retarded food names for their half-assed projects.
One cool thing about the Raspberry Pi is that the OS is entirely on the SD card, so if you want to experiment with other OSs, or want to make a backup, or trash the one you're using, etc., you can just pop out the card and read it in a standard reader instead of "installing" things onto the on-board flash by negotiating with a BIOS.
If the Via APC can do this, then I'm fine with you calling Android a better OS, because you can easily replace it if you don't like it. If not, then it's much more limited. But still, Yay! for more memory.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I think many people here are forgetting a few important things about the Pi...
- Linux vs Android : I've had a few Android devices now - none of which have the functionality and ease of use compared to a Linux device, all the way from a Linux Modem or VoIP system to the back end of an ESXi cluster (or vSphere or whatever they call it these days), for someone with a decent understanding of Linux/Unix varieties the Raspberry Pi is the obvious solution. Entire companies have ran on server's that have less grunt than a Pi and now its all been reduced down to the size if a phone... AND
- Power Consumption (and price) : 3 watts at peak usage.... 3 watts!!! Does this mean that I can just use 4 x AA rechargable batteries and a 30cm (12") x 30cm Solar panel and run it forever (or until the batteries need replacing)? Maybe put a small panel on the parcel shelf in your car so your CarPC is always running and ready to go? How about something more critical like medical equipment which can have sensors plugged into the GPIO and use solar/wind/batteries to monitor patients in poor areas? No other commercially available system in the past has had this much CPU Power/Ram with such little energy consumption and price, citizens of 3rd world countries might have a chance to "own" a computer and, even better - its open source - which will boost Linux usage worldwide and take a market share from the big players like Apple and Microsoft.
- Size : And weight. It wont be too long until we see computers like this embedded into clothing and other parts of every day life, and the Pi is just the start of that, as tech gets smaller and cheaper, we'll be able to product it in abundance - data for example - we went from trading Floppy Disks, to Harder Small Floppy Discs, to CD's, and hard drives, to DVD's and now its time for solid state joy, what next? Trading complete plug in system.....
- Autoplay? Screw that... for $50-$100 my cost, I can now give a customer a box and all they need to do is plug in HDMI and turn it on, it will give a full length video presentation on any screen or TV with HDMI in, with a keyboard and mouse you can give them a fully interactive product to play with, and with a wifi adapter and internet access you could use the box as a tech support node in their office, add a camera you have a portable video conferencing screen.
- Hmm I might want Autoplay (Annoying Customers) : You know, the type that harass you on how to play their mp4 rip of Game of Thrones, generally family members and friends that charging a decent rate to help would make you look like an ass so you do it for free to be nice? They will be a thing of the past, you can give them a box that plugs into their TV - which they plug *THEIR* USB stick into, and it will play almost any format with an easy to use menu. I'm no economist but I predict the savings and health costs purely because of this will be in the billions.
People need to stop being so obsessed with having the fastest and greatest and look at what they can do now. I paid almost $2000 for a Dual Celery 466 with 256 meg ram, 18 gig 7200 rpm HDD and a Voodoo 3, now days a $50 card would eat it alive and use 1/200th of the energy. In a time when the world is having an energy crisis this kind of thing is kind of important. I run my laptop, stereo and lighting in my smoking/drinking room on 12v batteries (also preparing for zombies), and once we get decent USB LED projectors, the Pi is going to be the main part of it all.
fuck I feel old now /rant...
I'm not signing anything
I've bought Android phones as cheap as $29 off-contract.
Can you give us some recommendation as to what brand of Android phone you got for $29, off contract, and where you got it?
Thank you !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Maybe not for the same price as 35 dollar, but then again the RPI doesn't cost 35 dollars in this country but 55$ when you calculate all the "hidden" costs.
Wait a little and you will have ARM based (Allwinner) hack friendly that will do circles around the RPI. There are a lot of similar devices in the pipeline.
Mele A2000 can be picked up as cheap as 70$ last times I looked
* Cortex A8 1Ghz
* Mali GPU (if I'm not mistaken completly open source driver instead of RPI blobs)
* 512MB DDR RAM
* SATA
* HDMI/VGA/Component
* HDMI / Optical Out / Stereo
* Ethernet/WIFI
* Extremly hackable
* Case
Oh and btw it already runs ubuntu/debian
The MyCleanPC troll made me miss GNAA.
Quite the accomplishment.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Do they support standard Arduino shield interfaces (weird pin-spacing and all)?
Yes, this and also
Do they plug conveniently into a breadboard (thus, non-shield models, and usually small)?
Aside from the button and the LED and the boot loader, this is what makes an Arduino "full-featured".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I know, I know, RasPi is for UK kids
Let's see what we need to get 3rd world kids to hack into RasPi
* Used keyboard
* Cables
* USB / transformer
* Display device / monitor
Anything else?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I've been playing with my Raspberry Pi today (just twiddling with 'ncurses' under C). I see it being excellent for learning it is perfect as the standard reference platform for a lot of CS courses from "Introduction to Programming" up - but maybe a bit out of it's depth at OS the design level.
For around the same cost as a text book everybody it ensures that everybody will have the same hardware, the same OS with all the same toolsets. This will avoid the "Jimmy owns a Mac, and I have 32 bit XP, and Bob has an Android tablet" problem. As a bonus it also has zero product licensing issues...
Sure, you wouldn't want to compile a big project on it, but for anything you would do in school it would be fine.
Cheap made-in-China USB to TTL interfaces have been a lot less than $10-20 for a while which is probably why most Arduino clones have a USB programming interface built in...
In the 80s (or was it the 70s) there was a craze to get people cooking with chinese woks. Basically, they were just frying pans and were promoted for making stir-fry food (other uses are available: satellite dish, giant saucer).
Because of the publicity and cheap prices they were popular for a time. Lots of people bought one - or were given one. There were books published on the back of that popularity. However, after a brief trial most woks ended up in the graveyard of kitchen gadgets; the cupboard under the sink.
The Pi is going through the same phase. It's received massive (in the geek world, at least) publicity - enhanced by its scarcity: an accidental piece of marketing genius, given that many better alternatives exist. The "buzz" around it is truly amazing and lots of people either have bought one or are waiting to order one. However, I haven't actually seen anything that anyone has made using a Pi.
Mine arrived a few days ago and it's like going back to the 1990's so far as having to futz around to get it to do anything useful. The Linux implementations for it are poorly documented, incomplete and lack features. I'm sure that most people, once they get past the novelty of connecting a naked circuit-board to their TVs and realising it's too slow to play videos, too limited to surf the internet and too lacking for games, flash and anything else except terminal-level programming that it, too will end up in the cupboard under the sink, next to the wok.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The lowest cost PBX ... http://www.raspberry-asterisk.org/
Cheap made-in-China USB to TTL interfaces have been a lot less than $10-20 for a while which is probably why most Arduino clones have a USB programming interface built in...
Indeed, I bought one as a finished product (with a DB9 and a Mini-USB on it) for $6 or so from DealExtreme. There's still cheap Arduino clones that require ISP, though. Luckily you can mostly program with the STK500 which is cheap cheap cheap.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
the $25 price for the RPI is mainly a marketing trick, as it was the (probably) the (initial) production cost.# The UK sale is around 29 GBP ---> 44 USD , ok Element14 said that the price included the postage (2nd class Royal mail, cost for this package is around 1.10£) so the remaining 27.9 £ --> around 42.8 USD definitely MORE than the 'advertised' 25 USD
Even if I have to shell out half as much again on a BT keyboard/trackpad, I'd still have larger screen, better compatibility and more typing comfort than I would on a tablet and for a fraction of the cost.
They are trying "List of open source games that can be ported to the R-Pi"
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5395
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I am still waiting for my Pi, and probably will for quite some time, however while I wait let me put in my endorsement for a version of the XAMPP project for the Pi. One of the things I wanted to use mine for was a simple web development server, but XAMPP doesn't do builds for ARM yet. There is a niche there.
That's a barrier for me - HDMI output instead of VGA. You won't often find HDMI-capable monitors/TV's put out on curbs for free as happens with VGA monitors about every weekend around a larger metro area such the Research Triangle in North Carolina, my "home base". I have 1 TV with HDMI, and it is dedicated as the family TV, and I have 2 monitors with HDMI, 1 dedicated to home office use. I have a half-dozen VGA monitors kicking around, and can readily get more "from the curb" in comparison.
That illustrates my frustration with even thinking about planning project for an RPi (if I can ever get one) - it takes a high-value resource compared to old throwaway PC's that work with old throwaway monitors.
The Raspberry Pi isn't typically sold bundled with a 24-month commitment to a separate cellular voice and data plan. Instead, it uses the existing data connection in your home that I assume you're already paying for.
Little is known to date about a RiscOS (open) port to the Pi, but this I find fascinating. The dated OS could be a reasonable match to the limited hardware.
http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/783?page=12#posts-11917
They should maybe figure out how to mass produce these.
All I need is Skype on it. No skype though.
Different Markets, the Pi is targetted at the UK where wide flat screen TV have been the norm for much longer than the US. Chances are the old living room TV that has been relegated to the kids bedroom has HDMI. 4 years ago, seeing old fashioned 4x3 CRT TVs on sale in Canada came as quite a shock.
Normally, no - you either get your choice of a board that's shaped like a standard Arduino and can support the Arduino shields, or else a board (such as the Teensy or Really Bare Bones Board) that's narrower and has all the pins on 1/10" spacing so it can plug directly into a standard breadboard, leaving you room to connect it to other things. While most of the Arduino connectors are on 1/10" spacing, a few of them are offset for historical backward compatibility reasons.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yeah, I knew the answer, I was asking it rhetorically. My only Arduino is a Nano. I have some other AVR devices, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"