Slashdot Mirror
A Least Half a Million Raspberry Pis Sold
hypnosec writes "The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced that it could have sold over a million units of its credit-card-sized computer, the Raspberry Pi. Announcing the achievement, the foundation wrote that one of its distributors, Element14, has sold over half a million units of the Raspberry Pi, and even though the foundation doesn't have up-to-date figures from its other distributor, RS Components, it is expecting to have sold its millionth unit of the computer."
Curse duplicate articles - I always end up posting in the wrong one. In that post you'll see a couple of things I use them for. I also plan on making a sporadic-E monitor for 6m, 2m, and 70cm amateur bands. That way it can ping me when there's DX afoot.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
You know Jobs must have left detailed plans for it.
I'll admit I haven't done this yet (can't get my hands on one!) but I plan to use two as a cheap drivers for my 5'th and 6'th monitor. Currently I'm using an old (AMD sempton 7something) box to do this, but a Raspberry Pi should do nicely (all I really need is an X server as I just forward the apps to the display currently..)
You don't think Silicon is an appropriate element for a technology company?
They aren't a killer app type of product, they are something that a hobbyist can play around with. At $25 or $35 they are almost disposable and can be the basis for all sorts of projects. They are small, portable, and don't require much power, and cheap. I want to see if I can create a RTK like setup (it won't be realtime) but need to first find some USB GPS receivers that will dump the raw data instead of already processed data.
Time to offend someone
A lot of people seem to be using them as home theater PC's. They apparently run XBMC quite well. I would be all over one right now if I didn't already have an AppleTV running Crystalbuntu.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I got one, hooked it up to a USB webcam, and set up a cron job to do time lapse photography. There's a utility to stitch together a bunch of stills into video, which you can actually run on the Pi itself.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
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!
It's an educational product - a little Linux computer that is designed to be cheap (major plus-point for schools) and provide all the tools necessary to learn about computing and programming. It has a kind of "Geek Port" on it (a bit like the old BeBox did) where you can connect up all kinds of electronic breadboards (homebrew or shop-bought) and you can use the Pi to interface with these things. Car-PC guys have been going nuts over the Pi, for instance.
My own Pi is for Samba4 - I currently have an old budget AMD-powered box that used for running Win2003 server to provide Active Directory, file/print, and some SNMP polling for my Cisco routers (via Cacti) - it is basically idle, yet draws a lot more power than the Pi does, and takes up a hell of a lot more space than the Pi does, and makes a lot more noise than the Pi does. I shut that server down every night because it's too wasteful of electricity - not so the Pi, so I'll also be installing a TACACS and RADIUS server on it so I can teach myself about those technologies. I am also using this as a way to teach myself about Linux as I've never really had much success with it so far. It seems to be quite a capable little machine - the processor isn't as powerful as the one in my old Win2K3 box but it doesn't need to be in order to get the job done.
He's Jesus, for Christ's sake.
I deployed one as a webserver at my in-laws. My father-in-law is a psychologist with a small but lucrative client base. He currently has a website running on a host from netsol @ $140/year. I looked at his metrics and he gets a hit a day if hes lucky. I dropped his website on the raspberry pi and am serving it from his house under a different URL. If the site holds up after a year, ill move the domain over to his house server and save $140/year. While not a killer app, it exposes a real world use case. I think that you wont find a 'killer app', but rather a huge range of special use cases.
Good-bye
I'm wondering what people are actually using the Pi's for.
First, half a million of these will build a decent sized Beowulf cluster. What you'd do with that all depends on what type of super villan you are.
So many uses so little time. I love my Pi, and am planning on buying one or two more.
It has programmable pins !!! which can be used to switch relay s and control electronics, no weird usb breakout box needed. If you end up frying it, your only out $35 or $25.
It is an amazing video player, pushes 1080p H264&MPEG2, with Dolby digital without a sweat (mpeg2 license cost about $2). Run XMBC on it and you can control it with the TVs remote, The best support of CEC I have ever seen. I am in the process of using mine as a dvr.
It takes only 2 watts to power!! Perfect server for a low traffic website. Cheap to keep running 24/7. Plus its completely solid state so no fan issues, no noise.
True there are other options out there for all of this, but none of them have the wealth of documentation, or community support that the Pi has.
Mine is controlling the heating system in my house using FHEM. It replaces an old notebook which was previously doing the same job.
Can you post the URL of your F-I-L's website?
The Raspberry Pi doesn't need a killer app. It's a general purpose computer, so you can do pretty much anything you want with it, up to a point.
The main problem with the Raspberry Pi is that it has an extremely limited USB controller within its Broadcom BCM2835 device hardware. It's so limited that many applications requiring USB simply fail to work at all. When it fails, the entire USB chain and the networking system collapses.
Unfortunately this problem is not something that can be fixed any time soon, if ever. The BCM2835 was never designed to be used this way, so by selecting this particular Broadcom chip the Raspberry Pi was effectively designed with a built-in hardware fault.
Does this mean it's useless? Absolutely not! If your application can stay clear of the USB issues, you have a very nice little ARM board for next to no money. Test it first and you'll be fine. If your USB and networking collapses, well, you only lost $35, and you can still use it for something less demanding of USB.
No points so i just want to thank you for posting this. Adafruit is really pushing education right now, I have great respect for that woman.
Good-bye
For me, I've got a Raspberry Pi hooked up to an ODAC/O2 (audiophile DAC/amp) in a comfortable location for listening to music with headphones. Connected to Wifi, it reads the music from a NAS in another room and runs a mpd server controlled by my phone or tablet.
It's really nice to have a noiseless, compact music server that can be hidden away rather easily.
It runs Linux. It can do anything Linux can do, as long as you can live with somewhat limited RAM and CPU speed.
I added a USB hard drive to mine, grabbed a SqueezePlug SD card image, and I'm using it as the MP3 server for my Squeezebox audio players. SqueezePlug started as a bundle of Debian + Logitech Media Server built for PogoPlugs, then also various NAS devices. The Raspberry Pi turned out to be such perfect hardware for the purpose, that the developer has dropped support for other devices.
Prior to that, I left my Mac Mini up 24/7 running Logitech Media Server. It would leak memory and leave the OSX desktop unusable. The Pi uses less power, it's easier to admin, and it's silent.
I do feel I should experiment with other uses -- mine has never had a mouse, keyboard or monitor connected. Just a USB hard disk and ethernet.
Also, a 5MP camera addon is imminent. I'll be sorely tempted to get another Pi for some low budget Kite Aerial Photography. Just set it to take a photo every 10 seconds, and launch it.
Even a jailbroken AppleTV appears to do little more than work as an XBMC streaming device. Raspberry Pi has so many more applications - it's a general computing device.
I'm using my 512 Pi for XBMC (via Raspbmc) and it has come a long way. Booting from SD but running the OS from a USB drive really improves the speed and navigation of menus, so that there is little to no lag now. I really enjoy using XBMC now (CEC passthrough and I don't even need a separate remote). For $35 and effectively using a device that was never designed to do what I'm using it for, I have zero complaints.
Time to debug those very small shell scripts that you used to replace the "editors".
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Sold and shipped are two very different things.
Isn't that right, RS Components???
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/391521/20121005/rs-components-raspberry-pi-raspi-allied-customer.htm
No, you can mount a lot of USB storage devices to an RPi ( http://raspi.tv/2012/how-to-mount-and-use-a-usb-hard-disk-with-the-raspberry-pi), not so with an AppleTV ( https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4054508?start=0&tstart=0).
Depends on what you consider to be a "killer app" I suppose. I have mine running Debian as a very cheap, very low power-draw "always on" computer for my home network, to mastermind a few background tasks, run a few low intensity "server" applications, and to act as an SSH-able gateway to my home network. You wouldn't be able to find much better for that sort of task for $35.
I've also used mine to run RISC OS 5, which runs beautifully on it. For anyone nostalgic for that old system, there is no better way to put together a fully functioning replica of your old Acorn boxes using modern hardware.
Really though, it's not about "killer apps". As sibling posters have said, it's about having computers so cheap that you can use them in any old hobby project, regardless of how idle the project or how likely it is to accidentally destroy the hardware. If that doesn't appeal to you, it probably isn't worth buying one.
I see people successfully using Raspberry Pi as a xbmc box. I'm wondering if anyone is using it as a MythTV frontend?
Funny thing, I ordered a cubieboard this morning before this story was posted:
http://cubieboard.org/
Two of my roommates have RPis. One of them has two of them. I watched them both struggle with the RPi units when they were first setting them up. Those things are god awful. Graphics requires a binary blob, and the USB power source causes a lot of stability problems. Since the Ethernet is attached by USB, this normally manifests by the Ethernet dropping off, the kernel spewing messages about it, and the whole system reduced to a grinding mess as syslogd tries to write all that noise to the SD card. Running off of USB power is just ridiculous.
The cubieboard is 2x as fast, has 2-4x the memory, a SATA port, and Ethernet on the SoC rather than via USB. And, since it doesn't power off of a USB port I expect it to be a lot more stable. Most importantly to me: it doesn't require a binary blob for standard graphics.
I'm using one to build a vehicle management system for my rock crawler project. The platform is a 2nd generation Toyota 4Runner, which has a double-din dash opening that currently houses a broken CD player / tape deck combo.
It will house a 7" touchscreen display driven by the RPi, which will accept bluetooth A2DP audio (already have that working) and forward it to an amplifier, use a 3-axis gyro / accelerometer module to give vehicle positional and attitude data represented as a gimbaled graphic on the display, offline GPS navigation, and a "digital switchboard" for vehicle accessories like differential lockers, on-board air compressor, lights, etc. through an electrical relay control module.
Way more functional than your average in-dash navigation touchscreen thing from the car audio manufacturers, at half the price.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
AppleTV, like RPi has arm processor, GPU, ehternet and USB. Unlike RPi it also has a case and PSU. It only costs $100. Now all they need to do is open it up to apps.
That sounds about right. 400% more expensive, fancy casing, apple logo, more limited functionality than the competition. They'll sell millions most likely.
I had the same plans when I bought my Pi. But along the way I found out that there was a bit cutier gadget with better hardware for XBMC, but in general for other programmed stuff too.
The MK 802 series (there is I, II and III models), UG802, GK802 etc. There are the size of a bigger USB stick, contains HDMI, WLAN, flash, more RAM than Pi, higher clocked and dual/quad core CPU than Pi and some even bluetooth.
Costs a bit more, can run Android and XBMC from there, though not all got direct hardware codec support yet.
The way you phrase that question sounds like you don't want to hear an answer.
I have the raspberry pi and a mk802 III. Both are cool devices but I think the raspberry pi is better for xbmc and hacking, while the mk802 III is great for browsing the web, playing flash videos, and most other media purposes.
Why do I think the pi is better for xbmc? one word Raspbmc, its a xbmc focused distro that has perfect CEC support (tv controller can be used to operate xbmc flawlessly), Full SSH and FTP support, and enough ram/cpu power left over to run a low traffic webserver. Plus I love the open nature of the pi and am looking forward to finding something to do with its GPIO pins.
The mk802 III is also cool, but its Android only (there's an effort to port ubuntu to it, but it will be a while before its finished). Plus you need to hunt down directions on how to root it, and you can't ssh into it, can't run a server, etc. Don't get me wrong, I still like it, Its powerful and its really awesome for running android apps on the tv. But It is not as fun as the pi.
I got mine in the middle of last month from Element14. It arrived 3 days after I ordered it and they said it would take weeks.
I ran it for a couple of weeks with raspbian as a print server and last night I replaced my old TV connected media PC that ran XBMC with the Pi running OpenELEC. The media files are stored on a FreeBSD server in my basement and the Pi accesses them through an NFS mount. Works great for everything so far, though the interface is a bit more laggy than the old media PC. It's still very usable and for the power savings over that old P4 machine it replaced I'll deal with the minor lag.
I have several SDHC cards with different config images on them (print server, XBMC, etc).. It's nice to have a little low power device which can change into a completely new machine by simply swapping a little SD card.
The Pi's 2 USB ports are standard USB that you would find on any personal computer.
Except most devices you would want to use with a Raspberry Pi don't actually work. The ports themselves are fine. The USB controller is a joke.
Well all right, the ports themselves aren't actually fine, there are lots of problems with how they deliver power (or fail to) and hot plugging has issues as well.
They have the same general shape as a standard USB that you would find on any personal computer, I'll give you that.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Actually "quite well" is an understatement. It plays videos impressively. The system menus are laggy because there's no X and thus no 2d accelerated desktop components, because technically there is no desktop. Distros like raspbmc and openelec don't use X. It's not even installed. Hence it doesn't consume RAM nor require configuration.
If you want a full desktop you can get the distro recommended by the raspberrypi.org that implements a desktop and allows you to run GUI apps. Even without a desktop you can still ssh into your Pi and do updates, monitor temperature, update the packages (and install new or remove old ones) from your desktop/laptop computer without having to get up and to type away at the Pi's keyboard.
If you overclock the system this performance improves. It doesn't void the warranty if you don't exceed their OC limits. Even so, it's only $35.00, so if you blow one buy another. My Pi is overclocked in all categories, which isn't hard to do nor hard to determine issues with overclocking. Adjust up or down as you see it is stable or unstable. If it helps to run this off a USB HDD rather than a flash drive (which are known to be slow to write) then do so. For simplicity sake I don't run from an external USB HDD. I do have my Drobobox attached with 4 drives installed in it, and I have samba set up so any computer can access those files from shares created on the Pi. I've played 3 videos on different computers, via these shares, including one of them on the Pi (and music on another computer) at the same time with little to no lag on the Pi.
You can also use XBMC remotes such as yatse (which is far better than the remote from the XBMC devs). You'll not notice the screen lag and it won't annoy you because you aren't interacting with the screen. XBMC can be configured to enable the web server allowing access your Pi's XBMC via your web browser (to start and stop and queue up content). With remote control software (for Android) like yatse and the XBMC dev's remote you can even browse the web (or, if you have a favorite podcast player, browse your available podcasts (either stored locally or directly from the web)), and then tell your android device to play on an external player. Doing so directs the URL to your Pi's XBMC. In otherwords you could be watching a video podcast on your Android device and with a tap tell it to begin playing that same podcast on your Pi's XBMC.
The Pi also has a distribution that is targeted to run Asterisk. Currently I have a mini itx mobo running an asterisk server. For me, it would be nice to have asterisk installed and configured with my current Pi.
There are few if any media boxes that provide DVD support. The ATV, many Google TV boxes, the ROKU, the WD media box, the Boxee Box, and the various other dual core and quad core Pi copycats don't have DVD support. Nearly no tablet (Android, iOS, nor Win8) support DVD drives yet play media well. With the Pi you can at least plug in an external DVD drive and with the right software, such as libdvdcss2, you can play back DVD content, that is, if the distro you chose hasn't removed support (which would be very short sighted). Support for any given device that is supported in Linux is also supported on EVERY Pi, IF, the distro chose to LEAVE those features in rather than remove them in an effort to shave off some memory demands. Even so, this doesn't preclude someone else from adding it back, BECAUSE Linux is Open Source, hence so are the distributions for the Pi.
There's really no comparing the ATV product to the Pi.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.