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Raspberry Pi Hits the 2 Million Mark
The Raspberry Pi project that we've been fans of for quite a while now has hit a new milestone: Today, they announced that as of the last week in October, the project has sold more than two million boards. Raspberry Pi is anything but alone in the tiny, hackable computer world (all kinds of other options, from Arduino to the x86-based Minnowboard, are out there, and all have their selling points), but the low price, open-source emphasis, and focus on education have all helped the Pi catch on. If yours is one of these 2 million, what are you using it for? (And if you favor some other small system for your own experiments, what factors matter?)
Tell us about it. What do you cook up with Arduino kits, and how do you use them?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
ARMv6 is outdated, ARMv7 is the way to go. And I'd rather have a not-so-beefy GPU than one that takes binary firmware blobs.
First Raspberry Pi is powers an Asterisk VOIP system
Second Raspberry Pi, is a low end NAS device for system backups
Third Raspberry Pi is running RaspFi as a squeeze slave
Fourth Raspberry Pi is running a Squeezebox server
For some reason the RPi always seem to get so much bitterness here. Apparently there are a lot of self-described nerds on a tech website for nerds who cannot imagine the use of a very small, cheap, low power hackable computer with moderate computing power.
I find this very strange.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
ARMv6 is outdated, ARMv7 is the way to go. And I'd rather have a not-so-beefy GPU than one that takes binary firmware blobs.
Of course, if the tech doesn't fit, you must ... not purchase it. Or something like that
On the other hand, 2 million purchases seem to think that forking over $40 for a board isn't a TERRIBLE idea.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
Wow... iPhone vs Rpi, this ought to be good. Fight!
I've built an older iPhone into a wall to serve as a control panel for my home automation system. Works great and a bargain at the 2nd hand price I paid, but I've picked up a Pi as well as an Arduino to try and create more of these wall mounted controllers. The reason to switch to these platforms? More control over the form factor, easier to program, easier to interface with other hardware (like dimmers), ability to use tactile keys rather than a touchscreen, etc. I haven't decided yet between Arduino and the Pi.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
My RPi is loaded with RaspBMC and I use it to watch videos I have stored on my main machine.
It is hooked up directly to the USB port of my TV so it powers up when I turn the TV on, and turns off when I'm done.
It is powerful enough to stream 1080p over SMB/CIFS, and I got a 10EUR IR remote that needed exactly zero configuration (plugged in the USB receiver, counted up to 10, it was ready to go).
Sure, it's not the fastest machine on earth, but for what I use it it's miles better than DLNA or similar crap.
I wanted to build a fun little project over the summer to scare cats out of the garden.
The RPi was a great platform to work with for a casual project like this. Having the GPIO was a real winner here.
I wrote it all up for others to peruse and have offered enough information that anyone could build it for themselves.
http://norris.org.au/cattack/
There are *quirks* to this hardware, but it is not a commercial device, it is for education use. I was telling my teacher-in-training friend that I don't know if I'd want to use the RPi in class with 30 students all finding the quirks at different times: it would be chaos! But for a single enthusiastic student working through these problems will give them a fantastic introduction to troubleshooting and the real life pain that comes with getting something to work.
Most of the time, my RP, coupled with a 8-Relay board ($20 on ebay,) reports (via SMS) whenever any of my house doors are opened or closed, as well the garage door. Further, it has a web server with a small app that allows me to raise/lower the garage door.
A picture of the board I constructed can be seen at http://www.blacksteel.com/pics/RP.jpg - the board has since been re-arranged a bit to give me better access to the HDMI port. The software is pretty minimal - a shell script to handle periodic polling of the various magnetic reed switches on the doors, it also keeps track of all changes in a mysql database. A php script to handle opening/closing the garage door (and animating the process in an image using data from the switches!)
Also, whenever I have a movie that can't be played back by my old but still working Apple TV 1 running XBMC, I use OpenElec XBMC on my RP - it's not the most responsive XBCM in the world, but it plays back high resolution MKV's whereas the ATV1 can't keep up.
All in all, it's an amazing board and I have other plans for it, grin. I likely will get another one or two at some point.
TI fully documents their system on chip (SOC) chips.
Broadcom doesn't.
This alone makes Broadcom (which is in the Raspberry Pi) completely non-free and craptastic, and the BeagleBone worthy of consideration by a hacker.
F Broadcom. F Raspberry Pi. Don't waste your time on non-free systems which you have to reverse engineer because the documentation is purposely incomplete.
The fact that there are significant reverse-engineering efforts going on
https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/wiki
https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv/
is proof that the Broadcom chip in the Raspberry Pi is anything but open.
It was probably meant the other way around:
Microsoft Windows is the Raspberry Pi of the OS world.
In terms of performance, that sounds about right.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I made a photo booth which was installed inside of an old phone booth in a local cafe for a new-media art festival this past summer. I used a Raspberry Pi, a usb webcam, a big red button connected via GPIO, a coin slot connected via GPIO, and an ethernet cable running to the router in the back room. People would insert their dime or two nickles and the button would light up. Pressing the button would take a photo. The Pi then uploaded the photos to a website which looped through all of the photos taken during the festival. People could visit the website on their own devices, but there were also a few screens set up around the town in shop windows displaying the photos. The program to do all this was a simple python script with a loop.
You can still see the photos taken here: http://donttakemypicture.org/
The site uses javascript to keep checking for new photos and to change the photo displayed for you every few seconds.
Wow! Said like a true Open Source fundamentalist. I'm hoping you wrote that on an OpenRISC based computer, not a PC with a closed source CPU, closed source BIOS, closed source chipset, closed source video adapter... :-)
I like my hardware Open, however I don't mind shelling out $35 for board to do stuff with. Download and write an image SD card, plug it in.
Up and running in 15 minutes, with no 'wasted' time or money..
I like Raspbian, but it would be nice to have the Ubuntu packages built for the Pi.
Bit of the back story on the project page explaining why the Pi didn't have Ubuntu from the start.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-raspberry-pi-build-cluster-for-ubuntu/x/5206923
Any, but I'd pot the thing in epoxy inside a metal shell and it wouldn't be user-accessible other than a simple non-root interface to change price per gallon and any other required functions.
If it breaks, throw it away and replace it. If faults are found in the future, ship a later version and swap 'em out.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
There are other hardware RNGs available, but none as inexpensive as a PI. Also because the PI has an RJ45 connection, it can be plugged into my router where it can serve random numbers for all computers on my lan.
We're in the golden age for software development. I prefer an "open" solution like the Beagleboard but I received an R.Pi v2 for free and have made it part of my low-power dev environment. I'll describe this environment for the amusement of ye 'dotters.
I installed a $10 hardware clock in the R.Pi and I power the it with a spare power cord from an Amazon Kindle.
I run Raspbian (Debian) with Icewm DE. I use the R.Pi for coding (Java, C++, Perl, Go) and I push Mercurial updates to a code repo on a Sheevaplug running Debian Wheezy. The Sheevaplug's power supply had failed (typical problem, melted capacitors) but I wired the mainboard to an AC adaptor from a USB hub.
I've overclocked the R.Pi to 900MHz. This isn't enough CPU to browse the Internet directly from the R.Pi with Iceweasel/Firefox, but Midori and NetSurf work well enough. On a Pogoplug V2 (running Debian, you see the pattern here), I have lighttpd and a Perl program that fetches and summarises RSS feeds for me. I can view the RSS summary from the R.Pi using NetSurf or Midori. (Dillo doesn't do tables well.)
When I need to do Web research that requires Flash or special plug-ins, I use rdesktop to connect to a VM instance of Firefox (M-Windows XP or Debian) installed on an AMD box running VMware ESXi server. ESXi server is free.
I have all this running with an APC battery back-up. The APC unit can run for some time with only the ARM kit to power. I have another APC UPS feeding my modem, router, and assorted switches.
It's a versatile dev environment and it didn't cost much. None of it would be possible without Linux. I'll say it again: this is a golden age for software developers.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
While TI documents most of the am3359 SOC it does not provide any documentation for the Imagination Technologies PowerVR GPU core which is proprietary. To the OP, as far as I know there are no non-proprietary GPUs (more or less beefy) on any ARM SOC so good luck on finding one without binary blobs.