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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.
A "cheap china-sourced device" smartphone would not do these things for me:
- Media Centre PC.
- MAME box capable of hooking up to my TV.
- Learning tool for programming, networking, and other computing stuffs (that is also incredibly easy to reformat if you balls anything up).
- Have GPIO ports so I can use it for some silly robotics/mechatronics projects.
Could you actually find me a smartphone with HDMI out (1080p), ability to use USB peripherals, and cost within 3x as much as the RPi?
Space is something I wouldn't bother comparing because I would stream to my RPi as well.
Restoring firmware on the RPi is a matter of formatting the SD card, most phones are quite easily permanently bricked.
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."
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"?
there u go
http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-43016/l/broadcom-datasheet-for-bcm2835-soc-used-in-raspberry-pi
A flavor of Android 2.3 is better then Debian???
A lot of people are buying the Pi to run XBMC. Since it can support 1080p flawlessly and the Via APC cannot, well... for many people the choice is obvious.
With any luck, the (relatively) open nature of the Pi and increasing size of the community will make it a more interesting option than competing boards, which is the reason why the Arduinos are still very popular despite being outclassed hardware-wise by other boards.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
Not fair to even include battery life in the equation as the PI has no battery, so it has 0 battery life. Better to count the Android devices battery as a built in UPS.
When I was growing up, I had access to labs full of TRS-80 computers, for a couple of hours a week. One summer, I had access to an HP something or other with a nice 320x240 graphic display for a couple of hours a day for a few weeks.
When I got my own computer, I had access during every hour of free time I cared to spend with it for several years.
It's the difference between exposure and immersion. Lance Armstrong probably wouldn't have developed into as strong a cyclist as he is if he could only ride for one hour once a week during school.
Absolutely this. The point of the Pi isn't that computers are inaccessible to these children, it's that they can have one each to play around with at their own speed.
While most of the devices will probably just collect dust, there'll be some kids who'll go crazy with the things. Break the OS? Really quick to reimage the SD card. Break the device? Cheap enough to get a new one. Its theirs to play with, and theirs to break.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
1080p output on $99, 4" cell phones is only a few years away. If not new, then through the used/craigslist channels. It's too bad the OLPC project didn't invest more heavily in cell phones.
This 4th of july I'll be launching an old blackberry curve a couple hundred feet in the air using fireworks simply because it's worth more to me as a disposable video camera than anything else. In 2008 that phone cost $250 with contract.
Honestly these near-daily advertisements for sub-cellphone hardware on slashdot are getting tiring.
moox. for a new generation.
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 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.
Learning should not be done on a minimalistic system. It simply isn't worth it. Get an old PC for that. You don't want your learning to be constrained by irrelevant factors such as lack of RAM or poor performance or insufficient disk space or unavailable libraries. Get a PC, load a development system and install every development package under the Sun. Your task would be to learn how to code in $foo, not to discover problems with interpreter of $foo on architecture $bar. It is not always easy even for experienced coders to port an already working software from the development system into the embedded target.
I think you're missing the point somewhat. The PC is a heterogenous environment, so you will always have to deal with funny little quirks of compatibility in libraries etc. It's only when you get a homogenous, uniform environment that you stop having to work your way around machine-specific problems.
No, not everything is available on the Raspberry Pi... yet. Yes, someone has to port it. But that's the job of the early adopters, and it only needs done once, and then it is available to everybody.
By the time the first in-a-case Pi comes out, there will no doubt be a hell of a lot of stuff available for it.
The secondary effect will be that there will be better software coverage for all variants of ARM Linux, and Linux users will be able to start migrating away from the Linux i386 and x64 architectures. I've been waiting a long time for desktop Linux to cease to be a PC OS, as it limits its appeal. A desktop ARM Linux would be in direct competition with dumb terminals in the enterprise, and would offer the added bonus of being able to do mixed-mode local and network computing -- maybe they'd still want to use Microsoft Office remotely rather than LibreOffice locally, but they could use Firefox locally without bother.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'