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First Photos and Video of Raspberry Pi Model A
coop0030 writes "The first photos and videos of the Model A production samples are now available. The Raspberry Pi Model A is the newest low-cost computer from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Compared to the popular Model B, the Model A forgoes the Ethernet Controller, has 256MB of RAM, and has a single USB port. A benefit of the missing Ethernet controller is that power consumption is reduced. This allowed them to reach their goals of a low-cost $25 computer. The release date is for sometime early in 2013."
I would too. But the goal was always for a $25 computer that's a useful, low cost learning tool. You can't fault them for actually making that happen.
I'd rather see a $45 Pi with more Ram etc.
You can buy a more expensive development board, if you want more ram.
They should have waited until they could get the cost down with 512MB of RAM. Having used both the 256 and 512 Model B, I found that no amount of tweaking could make the 256 model run a web browser acceptably on a Linux desktop. Modern Linux desktops and browsers have gotten too bloated. LXDE is painfully slow, while KDE and gnome desktops are just downright unable. The 512 model has no such issue.
Judging from their forums, there's a significant number of people who think removing the Ethernet controller/USB hub chip is going to solve or at least substantially reduce the Raspberry Pi's problems with USB. It won't. Unfortunately, but predictably it doesn't look like the Foundation have done anything to correct this misconception. Isochronous transfers which audio interfaces, webcams etc. rely upon won't be affected much, if at all by this change, i.e. they will still be utterly broken. If you get one of these types of devices working at all with your Pi you should consider yourself lucky.
Interesting. I saw a post just like yours when the Raspberry Pi was first announced. End result was demand was so high it was quite difficult to get. We'll see how it pans out this time.
Can we please get some photos of the Raspberry Pi in its natural environment; sitting unused, covered in dust on some hipster-geek's shelf?
...except it wasn't.
The goal was to stop the erosion in what is perceived to be "computer skills" and interest in computer science as computing in UK schools had become about "Office" and Consumer computing had become "electronics". In fact the cheap part is in response to computers being expensive and arcane. [from http://www.raspberrypi.org/about%5D
I personally am convinced that the costs involved in raising the costs slightly to increase "memory" not anything else is incredibly wise. I have used GNU/Linux on little memory and its not fun...and Android seems to have similar requirements.
It's the newer model with 512MB RAM and screw holes (whoever fucked that up in the first place... it's mind boggling)... but it's not made in the UK. Not sure what that's about, I thought they were supposed to be now.
Some of them are, some of them aren't. There have been multiple reports of the recently Chinese manufactured Pi's having questionable soldering and reliability problems. See here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=22473 and http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=24571
Not so much a joke as a reality as is shown right here
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If you have a PDP-11 why do you want a raspberry-pi?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
There are a few others in the RPi space now. This board might be more up your alley: Cubieboard
And why would anyone choose this model over B, with twice the ram, Ethernet, and a second USB port for a measly 10$ savings?
Lower power requirements. A lot of embedded device people don't care about the RAM and the ethernet. Who'd like to drag a network cable in their little robot?
To be fair, you can get Arduino clones for a lot less than that...
You can even make one yourself. Solder a $3 chip to a piece of perfboard and write "Arduino" on it. It'll work just the same.
The official $30 Arduino is for people who want their voltage regulators, USB interface, etc. all on a single board. Apparently that's a lot of people...
No sig today...
Because they:
1. Don't care much about that difference
and
2. Buy lots of them in which case it's a saving of not 10$ but 30% - and that's a lot.
Real life is overrated.
I bought one and I'm sick and fucking tired of hearing about it. I don't want to hear one more fucking thing until ICS or later is running on it, personally, since that was the news that got me to buy one, and then they never released it, and Liz never adequately explained why.
Raspberry Pi serves as a reminder to the community as to why we still need electronics companies. Apparently, we are not yet capable of producing and delivering a product this complex without doing it badly, even with all the support you could ever hope for from the vendor.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And to teachers who have to find money for thirty of them.
No. Well...maybe. Actually, yes. It really just depends.
The B now comes with 512
That emulator is proprietary, but this one http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ isn't, and emulates a couple of dozen different minicomputers. Seems like a good candidate for porting to the RasPi.
No. Well...maybe. Actually, yes. It really just depends.
More interesting is a $15 Pi with lower HW specs : no audio; no serial (only 1 USB, like Model A); no HDMI (only VGA) or even no video. But also integrated wireless mesh, preferably a snapin daughtercard for either Bluetooth, Zigbee, or even WiFi.
The purpose of these devices is to bootstrap British youth Computer Science education. That education better focus on networked distributed computing, preferably wireless for mobile or just ubiquity. Only one of the machines on the network needs better specs, for human interface. The rest should interface to the many things we have to make smart.
I personally would buy thousands of those low spec devices each year. I'm sure there's a market for hundreds of millions, probably many billion of them. Though most of that market will probably be served by stickon, postage-stamp sized devices powered by ambient (heat, light, flexing) energy and cost under $1, we have to get there steadily. I don't know why Chinese exporters aren't selling Model A and Model B for under $20 already (they're $80+), and a $10- Model C stripped down from there.
--
make install -not war
How does the developed world lack imagination? It's producing these devices, and generating the demand for them, and using them in the applications. Indeed most innovation comes from outside the third world. Yes, third worlders are busier just surviving, but the developed world is supplying plenty of imagination.
Your post was sent from the developed world, and shows plenty of imagination.
Now, I won't disagree that plenty of developed worlders are idiots without imagination. But they've outsourced it to people like us, which is how we address the problem. The species lacks sufficient imagination, but that's not really what we're talking about here. There's plenty of imagination to go around, though it would be better if there were more.
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make install -not war
It is shipping the first batch. Users have apparently shown unboxing videos and the like. The preorders are for the next batch.