Ask Slashdot: Why Buy a Raspberry Pi When I Have a Perfectly Good Cellphone?

scorp1us writes "I've been looking into getting a Raspberry Pi, but I end up needing a case, a display, and some way to power it, and wanting some degree of portability. It seems to me that even the most outdated cellphone has far superior features (screen, touch screen, Wifi, 3g/4g camera(s), battery etc) in a much better form factor. The only thing that is missing are the digital/analog in/out pins. So why not flip it around and make a USB or bluetooth peripheral board with just the pins? I've been looking for this and can't find any, but does anyone know of any in the corners of the internet? I don't care what phone platform."

Comments

Arduino Uno

[rwa2]

Done in one (pun intended)

Solid, lots of add-on modules, vibrant hacker community. And it has its own programmable processor so if your application permits you don't even have to have it attached to your PC to collect and process data.

Re:Arduino Uno

[SQLGuru]

With an Android phone, you just need this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go

Buy one here: http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/micro-to-micro-otg (site might be blocked at some work locations as they might think it's hacking related)

Re:Arduino Uno

[Joce640k]

an Arduino plus an Ethernet shield (around $60).

You can get it for a lot less than $60 of you don't buy official Arduino hardware.

eg. A $6 Arduino clone: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=arduino+pro+mini plus a $12 W5100 module: http://www.ebay.com/itm/111025516885

(or use a $4 Ethernet module if you don't need the official Arduino Ethernet library: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=arduino+ENC28J60 )

if you can overcome the IO problem

You can build an Arduino USB I/O controller for about $1.25 with a Tiny85 plus a copy of v-usb

Android development kit

[Tim the Gecko]

How about this? - http://www.adafruit.com/products/885 - IOIO Mint - Portable Android Development Kit

Re:Android development kit

[chrylis]

The OTG is the latest IOIO. Ytai is still working on crazily trying to pack even more features on the thing (apparently, his goal is to fit in every single sort of IO that the ATmega is capable of), but the OTG is the current state-of-the-art.

Better choices than a Raspberry Pi.

[hamster_nz]

You should look at the other ARM boards out there e.g. pcDuino. More memory, more I/O, onboard flash, Linux or Android.

However there are some things that you can do with a micro-controller that can not be done with a full OS - e.g. bit-banging I/O to one-wire temperature sensors. I've even used a full USB 1.1. HID driver implemented completely in software, which would be impossible with an full OS running!

It's also fine if you have an iPhone

[SuperKendall]

A lot of people especially in the Americas and western Europe carry an iPhone, for which development of accessory hardware is far more expensive.

Only if you plan to sell it. If it's for personal development, just jailbreak the phone and connect to the serial port pins of the dock connector as per this SO post.

Obviously anyone looking to build custom hardware can handle the simple task required to hook up to it.

Optionally of course, you can do anything you like with Bluetooth LE without any licensing from Apple - and commercial apps are allowed to do BTLE communications in the background because of the low power consumption. That's what I would start with as an approach unless you need more bandwidth for some reason.

Rasberi Pi != cellhone

[davydagger]

1. price- no cell phone is that cheap
2. better documented hardware with FOSS drivers.(NO cellphone has FOSS drivers, or firmware). In fact its hard if not impossible getting firmware extracted, or proprietary binary drivers for a general purpose OS for your cell phone.

Its not like desktop OSs, where you can just download the latest nvidia or ATI drivers for linux from the vendor

3. Cell phones are made for android which is NOT a General Purpose OS, and can be restrictive.

4. Rasberri PI by default boots from an SD card, making running whatever OS you want, without hacking easy. There is also no need to root it.

5. the Rasberri PI also has hostmode USB ports, for plugging devices in, your phone most likely does not, if your lucky OTG.

6. There are other ARM protoboards and dev boards that are not the PI which have ARM class CPUs. Most of them run any OS you put on them. RasPI is not the first nor will be the last.

Re:Received an iPhone as a gift

[Microlith]

Sell it and buy something they can use as they see fit? I hear Apple fans gibber on constantly about the resale value of their devices, so you should be able to get a good price I suppose.