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Pi to Go: Hot Raspberry Pi DIY Mini Desktop PC Project

Posted by timothy on from the tab-a-slot-b-fruit-x dept.

MojoKid writes "Hot Hardware recently set out to design a custom mini desktop system with the popular Raspberry Pi single board computer. People have configured the device for a variety of applications, from micro-servers to low cost media players. Basically, the goal was to turn what is currently one of the cheapest bare-bones computer boards into a fully enclosed mini desktop computer that could be taken anywhere without the need for cabling or setup. This small DIY project is just one of many examples of the flexibility of the Raspberry Pi's open architecture. And to think you can even run Quake and Minecraft on it."

11 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Pi Madness by maxrate · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This simply isn't newsworthy.

    1. Re:Pi Madness by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They built a crappy laptop. What many people are missing is that the Raspberry pi is best for two groups of people. Underprivileged kids who will use the Pi as the basis of a scrounged together machine. Or for people needing a fairly decent machine for their embedded project (robot, car computer, etc).

      To simply reinvent the laptop seems like a waste of a Pi.

    2. Re:Pi Madness by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They built a crappy laptop. What many people are missing is that the Raspberry pi is best for two groups of people. Underprivileged kids who will use the Pi as the basis of a scrounged together machine. Or for people needing a fairly decent machine for their embedded project (robot, car computer, etc).

      To simply reinvent the laptop seems like a waste of a Pi.

      an underprivilidged kid scrounging together a machine from a Pi would indeed be news...

      everyone I know who has bought a pi has a job.

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    3. Re:Pi Madness by RabidReindeer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They built a crappy laptop. What many people are missing is that the Raspberry pi is best for two groups of people. Underprivileged kids who will use the Pi as the basis of a scrounged together machine. Or for people needing a fairly decent machine for their embedded project (robot, car computer, etc).

      To simply reinvent the laptop seems like a waste of a Pi.

      Three^W four kinds of people. A RPi pulls only around 5 Watts of power. Sufficiently low that it's you can make it solar-powered, which can come in handy for those of us who occasionally suffer multi-day power outages or want a "computer fix" away from civilization The main power draw, in fact, would be the display.

      Another use of a RPi is for a low-power satellite system, for things like word processing, email, or recipes in the kitchen. Take an old monitor, tape an RPi to the back of it, stuff a WiFi ethernet USB dongle into it, and connect it to the SAN. Add keyboard and mouse as needed (or use Bluetooth).

      At $25 for the minimal Pi and $35 for the loaded version, you can practically hand them out as party favors. It's almost certain that whatever you plug into them will cost more than the computer itself, but fortunately. with the possible exception of HDMI, a lot of us have spare parts gathering dust anyway.

  2. You're kidding me, right?!?!??! by OzPeter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Someone puts some electronics in a box and that's newsworthy???

    If so, then I've got a suggestion for you. Just follow me around at work for a week and you'll get enough stories for a year of stories like this.

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    1. Re:You're kidding me, right?!?!??! by mikesnap · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Most technology is classified as electronics in a box. If you have such an interesting job where everyday would bring in thousands of views then seizing the opportunity to post your amazing work would be a good idea. -The Author

    2. Re:You're kidding me, right?!?!??! by toygeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And that *deserved* to be noticed. That's a very neat project! Useful, original, and creative. Certainly far more creative than the kludged together "computer" mentioned in TFA.

      Yours demonstrates the complete opposite end of the Raspberry Pi spectrum. Putting a computer where you'd least expect one, which I think is what the Raspberry Pi excels at in at least this aspect.

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  3. This just gave me an idea... by maxrate · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Buy a notebook computer.

  4. Rasberry Pi is about education by tuppe666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    uhm, they wont mention it because it would defeat the whole purpose of RPI in the first place.

    http://www.raspberrypi.org/about
    "There isn’t much any small group of people can do to address problems like an inadequate school curriculum or the end of a financial bubble. But we felt that we could try to do something about the situation where computers had become so expensive and arcane that programming experimentation on them had to be forbidden by parents; and to find a platform that, like those old home computers, could boot into a programming environment."

    The pi is about education, and part of that is the price. Its the price of replacing a whole board or simply swapping an sd card. The fact that you might plug one into a $2000 TV even is not the price we are talking about. Its about the cost of hacking the computer without worrying about its price.

  5. To: the critics, by MacTO · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You are perfectly correct: we should discourage people from entering the field of electronics by focussing upon advanced projects. Yes these projects are exciting to read about, but they are impractical for the novice to attempt building. It's impractical because it's too complex to understand, too expensive to botch, and tedious for those who don't have the construction skills. We should also discourage people from entering the field of electronics by instilling the mentality that it ain't worth trying if it ain't new, thus ensuring that any project is out of reach of the novice.

    After all, we wouldn't want to encourage people to get into electronics by pointing to articles about stuff that they can actually try doing.

  6. half baked by pbjones · · Score: 3, Insightful

    there are better solutions. RPi in a plastic case? where is the news?

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