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Official, Customized Raspberry Pi Versions Coming Soon (linuxgizmos.com)

Posted by timothy on from the no-one-wants-any-durian-pie dept.

DeviceGuru writes: The immensely popular Raspberry Pi will soon be offered in customized versions, through an exclusive arrangement between Raspberry Pi Trading and Element14. According to the companies' announcement, Element14 will provide design and manufacturing services to OEM customers to create 'bespoke designs' based upon the Raspberry Pi technology platform. That's weird U.K. English for saying that contracts for creating customized Raspberry Pi SBCs will entail substantial NRE fees and 3,000 to 5,000 unit orders, depending on the nature of the customization. The tweaked Pi's are likely to have revised board layouts, additional or alternative functions, interfaces, connectors, and memory configurations, and more. A handful of unsanctioned Raspberry Pi knock-offs have already appeared over the past couple of years, including various Orange Pi and Banana Pi flavors, which certainly didn't involve any 'bespeaking.' More info is at Element14's CustomPi page.

93 comments

  1. "English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bespoke is not "weird UK English". It's common English and used in the USA as well, I've heard and seen American colleagues use it regularly.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    1. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by GeekWithAKnife · · Score: 2


      It is weird, Like that commercial with the pig that gives you bacon.

      Anyhoos I talk English real good. So there, that'll learn ya.

      --
      A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
    2. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 2

      much more british than american. I hear indians (who speak something closer to british english) say that word; but I never hear US born folks saying that. I'm over 50 and the first time I heard that word was just a few years ago. its just not common here and its quite a dated old fashioned word.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    3. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No it's not, but "bespoke design" is a pretty rare way to describe custom designed electronics.

    4. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by jareth-0205 · · Score: 2

      Bespoke is not "weird UK English". It's common English and used in the USA as well, I've heard and seen American colleagues use it regularly.

      Yeah, especially since the substitute phrase contains two obscure three-letter-acronyms that I had to look up... and I couldn't actually find what "SBC" means.

    5. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      It is definitely weird in the Americas. Here in Canada if you used it, nobody would know what the hell you were talking about - even though we know that Brits use boot is a car trunk and bonnet for a car hood, and a lorry is a large delivery truck.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    6. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by risom · · Score: 4, Informative

      and I couldn't actually find what "SBC" means.

      Single Board Computer.

    7. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by truck_soccer · · Score: 2

      and I couldn't actually find what "SBC" means.

      Small Block Chevy

    8. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's used all the time in the UK... usually in relation to tailoring. A bespoke suit.. one that's custom made for you.

    9. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by jabuzz · · Score: 1

      And according to Wikipedia increasingly common in the USA

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Anyway the Raspberry Pi, ARM and Element14 are all British companies so stop being so dam parochial.

    10. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "That's weird U.K. English for saying that contracts for creating customized Raspberry Pi SBCs will entail substantial NRE fees and 3,000 to 5,000 unit orders, depending on the nature of the customization. "

      As opposed to U.S. English, which is "weird" acronym-laden gibberish?

    11. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by DeathToBill · · Score: 1

      And what do you call it when you go to your tailor to have a shirt made? Next you'll say you don't have a valet!

      --
      Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
    12. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by dmoen · · Score: 1

      Here in Canada, "bespoke" is used by businesses to mean custom designed solutions and products. That's how I know the word. This is is the first I heard that the word is only used in Britain.

      www.bespokedesign.ca
      bespokesuits.ca
      www.bespokedecor.ca

      --
      I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
    13. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Used regularly in my life as : and I'm a middle-class American.
      This basically just means the OP is uneducated, and unwilling to learn when it comes to the use of English language.

    14. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's stale English, the fad word of the last several years. "Custom" got replaced by "bespoke" since it's snootier.

      At least "evocative" has had it's day, and gone away as a journalistic frill. So has "awesome", from an earlier wave. I can't wait for the demise of "jaw-dropping" and it's variants -- "I had to pick my jaw up off the floor." Really, if what you're reporting on is so impressive, why don't you tell us about *it*, instead of your jaw?

    15. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      So, a suit place uses "bespoke" in their name because they want to invoke the aura of the fabrics they import from the UK ... not really ...

      It is NOT used in Canadian literature, not in any newspaper or magazine or book I've ever seen. I've never heard anyone use it in conversation. Or on Canadian TV or radio. The only place I've encountered it is the BOfH, a UK entity. Definitely not North American. Only poseurs, as well as Brits and Indians looking for coding contracts on software bidding sites use "bespoke", and leave the North American readers struggling to figure out what they mean by the context.

      It's "The One Easy Trick" to spot that the person advertising their coding services is probably in India :-)

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    16. Re: "English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's variants what?

    17. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is just plain English.

      bespoke (adj.)
      "custom or custom-made, made to order," of goods, as distinguished from ready-made, 1755

    18. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      I hear indians (who speak something closer to british english)

      My bloody arse they do, mate.

      Some of them *write* better than you, though. Uppercase for names of countries & their derivatives.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    19. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Ever consider that it's not a word you hear a lot due to not being exposed to it? That doesn't mean it's in common use. Someone why buys cheap shit from China may never hear it, yet someone who buys every suit with a custom fit and is on first name basis with their tailor probably uses it daily.

      Don't confuse "dated and old fashioned" with "rare outside my circle of influence."

    20. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      So, a suit place uses "bespoke" in their name because they want to invoke the aura of the fabrics they import from the UK ... not really ...

      No a suit place uses bespoke in their name because "customised" ahem sorry ... "customized" just sounds like a Chinese vendor offering you a suit with a choice of 3 different coloured pocket handkerchiefs. The word you'll find is commonly used by every high-end bespoke product provider, not only tailors.

      I'm going to assume you don't own a made-to-order suit? (And I'm not talking about buying one off the shelf and then having a tailor making adjustments).

    21. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I own a bespoke BMW. I use the word when ever the subject arises as did the dealership and, as I recall, the paperwork. I could have gone to see it built (finished, really) but I declined.

    22. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I say it and I'm Canadian. I'm have dual-citizenship and don't spend much time in Canada so I'm probably not really a good metric.

    23. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by lhowaf · · Score: 1

      Because education is required to hear the word, "bespoke."

    24. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      I have a friend who is triple-citizenship (France, Canada, United States) - his English is a bit tortured, and I have to correct his French on occasion. And he was born in France. There are plenty of Canadians who can't get by in either of the two official languages, so citizenship is a poor metric, same as the USA.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    25. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      First, why in the world would *I* own a suit? Seriously?

      Second, nobody in Canada asks for a developer to write "bespoke software" - not once in the last 30 years have I had a customer or co-worker use the term.

      Custom software, custom hardware, custom cars, custom itineraries, custom furniture, custom-built homes, bridges, subway cars, meal and exercise plans, in-ground swimming pools, golf courses, landscaping, skyscrapers, parks, public-commissioned artworks, etc. Not "bespoke." "Bespoke" sounds like an Indian vendor copying a blurb off a UK vendor to try to look higher-class, which doesn't work in an egalitarian society (US or Canada) where the Constitution makes everyone equal.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    26. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's used all the time in the UK... usually in relation to tailoring. A bespoke suit.. one that's custom made for you.

      Wall, here in the Freedoms-loving USA. We gets all our suits from Wal-Mart off the rack. Made one-size-fits-all for us and a million other loyal 'muricans by Chinese Communists!

    27. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by RabidReindeer · · Score: 2

      In the US, the words "custom" or "tailor-made" tend to be used instead.

      Then again, you can't get those good Lower Prices Everyday[TM] if you actually get something customized to fit your own personal needs and preferences.

    28. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Second, nobody in Canada asks for a developer to write "bespoke software" - not once in the last 30 years have I had a customer or co-worker use the term.

      Thankyou you proved my point perfectly. You (and I, and everyone else) have a bubble of influence, a reality that is defined by who you are, what you do and who you do it with. In your reality "bespoke" is some weird pretentious upper class UK vendor marketing speak. For other's it's common language.

      But hey today you learn't something and I got a real laugh. Like a really good laugh. Your joke about the constitution making everyone equal, that was great. I'm going to use that at the next open mic night at the comedy club, pure gold.

    29. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      No, because I also pointed out that it has never been used on any local or national TV or local or national print media that I've seen (and I've seen a lot of that), nor on anything from the US. YOU are the one living in a bubble - or in India or the UK. As I pointed out, North Americans do not advertise offering to make "bespoke software" on coding sites on the cheap.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    30. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Claiming that someone is living in a bubble while the other's are not shows another bubble you're in. The bubble of ignorance.

      Now let me guess your national TV and local media are targeted at you, since you are the one reading them, and you don't read any fashion magazines, or architecture magazines, investment magazines, or news papers targeted at the kind of people who can not only afford a bespoke suit but actually prefer wearing one.

      But hey you only know what you know right? We all live in bubbles.

    31. Re:"English, motherf..., do you speak it?" by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      Claiming that someone is living in a bubble while the other's are not shows another bubble you're in. The bubble of ignorance.

      Now let me guess your national TV and local media are targeted at you, since you are the one reading them, and you don't read any fashion magazines, or architecture magazines, investment magazines, or news papers targeted at the kind of people who can not only afford a bespoke suit but actually prefer wearing one.

      But hey you only know what you know right? We all live in bubbles.

      Of course the national media is targeted to Canadians. The vast majority of Canadians. And they have never used "bespoked", not in their programming, not in their ads. But the American media next door is targeted to Americans and they don't use it either.

      And of course I wouldn't read fashion magazines targeted at selling me a suit. This is the second time you bring that up, and it shows you are working off of wrong assumptions that are actually insulting. I don't give a damn if it's custom fitted - why would any woman want a suit except maybe for Halloween? Even the butch lesbians I know don't. If it's something I really need to dress up for, a skirt or dress works just fine.

      Additionally, the fact that you place more importance on appearance (custom-made suits, etc) than on performance shows just how shallow you are. Every time I've been interviewed on TV, I just wear whatever I'm wearing - it's the content that counts, because content is still king. It also makes sure that the focus is what I want to talk about, because it's not "all about me."

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  2. Can I have teh first post? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please?

    1. Re:Can I have teh first post? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No.

  3. Finally! by GeekWithAKnife · · Score: 1


    News for nerds, stuff that matters!

    Still waiting on eSATA with gigabit ethernet...*sigh*

    --
    A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
    1. Re: Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Or how about plain old sata and more than one nic? A networking asic add on would be nice too

    2. Re:Finally! by jareth-0205 · · Score: 1

      Still waiting on eSATA with gigabit ethernet...*sigh*

      Have you used one? There isn't really enough CPU power to handle 100base, let alone 1000...

      And if you want eSATA - I think actually what you're looking for is a completely different device!

    3. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Then buy beaglebone or another. Why you guys that really dont do shit with anything pine for things that are completely useless on the Pi, I'll never understand.

      I'll give you 100 gigiabit ethernet, it's still not going to give you anything as it's still a USB ethernet interface. Do you know nothing at all about the mobile phone chipsets this stuff is built upon?

    4. Re:Finally! by washu_k · · Score: 4, Informative
      The RPi is slow, but not that slow. The issue with using the full 100 mbit is the shitty NIC on the shitty USB bus. I've used 100base-T at full speed on far slower machines than an RPi, but they had proper NICs.

      The RPi 2 would have a good chance of handling gigabit if it had a proper NIC.

    5. Re:Finally! by jareth-0205 · · Score: 1

      Ah, fair enough. Still, nearly always when someone points out the (many) shortcomings of the RPi they seem to be pointing out that it's not a full machine. Which it's not. It's built to a price.

      Everybody want a different thing added, and if they got their way it wouldn't be a small cheap device anymore.

    6. Re: Finally! by jareth-0205 · · Score: 1

      Or how about plain old sata and more than one nic? A networking asic add on would be nice too

      I'd like a pony, too.

    7. Re: Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This only really matters if it runs Windows 10.

    8. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then buy beaglebone or another. Why you guys that really dont do shit with anything pine for things that are completely useless on the Pi, I'll never understand.

      I'll give you 100 gigiabit ethernet, it's still not going to give you anything as it's still a USB ethernet interface. Do you know nothing at all about the mobile phone chipsets this stuff is built upon?

      Going for gigabit would actually be wise, even on a USB 2.0 interface. Jumbo packets reduce CPU load and can certainly increase efficiency for bulk transfers. Wouldn't surprise me if that increased throughput substantially, even over USB 2.0.

    9. Re: Finally! by spire3661 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Buy an Intel NUC if you want that. The latest 14nm NUCs are $140 on amazon right now. I have one setup using just bare OpenElec running 2 GB of Ram for $160 total. To get an RPi to that point i would need the PI, a NICE case, a power supply, SD card, IR receiver, Bluetooth and Wifi modules. Best case scenario for the PI is $30+15+7+10+8+10+10=$90 for a vastly inferior machine. Dont get me wrong i LOVE the PI 2 i have. I have 3 of them with the official Pi touchscreens, i jsut understand its limitations. They are for making terminals, not servers (for the record i ran a static website with a year uptime on an Pi no problem), For $70 more a NUC makes a VASTLY better choice.

      --
      Good-bye
    10. Re:Finally! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      But does the SoC actually have any busses other than USB to hang a 'proper NIC' from? Messing around with a goofy USB NIC would not have been the cheapest option if the SoC had an integrated NIC(or even a MAC that just needed an external PHY); but I don't think that that one does; nor does it implement a PCIe controller, so that's off the table.

    11. Re:Finally! by threephaseboy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Indeed, it does not seem to have anything of the sort.
      I'm guessing the target devices (smartphones, etc) wouldn't need anything resembling high speed networking.
      For what it's worth, the Banana Pro (half the cores, higher clock, same A7) has a gigabit NIC, and I've gotten >500Mbps with it.

      --
      .
    12. Re:Finally! by JazzLad · · Score: 1

      Sounds like you want the new Orange Pi (not the $15 one - I bought that one & like it, but those two features take the board all the way up to $40-50 :)).

      --
      "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
    13. Re:Finally! by GeekWithAKnife · · Score: 1


      I hear some devices have CPU off-loading...and hardware decoding and well...trust me gigabit is very plausible.

      I do however actually use a different device for that. I just want things that have not been created yet.

      --
      A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
    14. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yay! An AllWinner CPU! Because I really want to buy products from a blatantly GPL-violating company. Go with something else like the boards from Hardkernel, which use Samsung and Amlogic CPUs. Even their cheap Odroid-C1 has a gigabit NIC.

    15. Re:Finally! by gweihir · · Score: 0

      Get a converter from SATA and a Banana-Pi. The Raspberry Pi is designed by incompetents with huge egos and is basically the worst choice on the market.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    16. Re:Finally! by threephaseboy · · Score: 1

      Completely agree, in terms of firmware support, this board has been a nightmare, and I won't be buying anything with AllWinner again.

      Odroid-C1

      Looks good, wish it had SATA or USB3 though. The XU4 looks nice also, but seems expensive and not shipping yet.

      --
      .
    17. Re:Finally! by khellendros1984 · · Score: 2

      With iperf testing, someone in that SE question reported about 94.4Mbit through the onboard LAN interface, under half of that for 802.11n over USB (44.5Mbit), and about 222Mbit over a USB3 gigabit ethernet interface. That roughly matches information that I've read in the past.

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    18. Re:Finally! by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      The SoC used doesn't support either interface, so it would have to be a USB 2.0 connection. Like the 10/100 Ethernet port already is.
      MY old cubietruck board isn't too bad, it's a dual core A7 with gigabit and sata. Although the ethernet maxes out around 470mbit due to the SoC's internal bus limitations.

    19. Re: Finally! by erapert · · Score: 2

      First, the RPi2 is lower power compared even to a very new NUC. The entire RPi2 uses at maximum 420mA * 5V = 2.1W. The NUC uses between 6W and 30W.

      Second, according to the summary it should be possible to add a couple of cheap chips to the RPi2 and have Gb Ethernet + SATA for a very modest increase in price. WiFi, Bluetooth, IR, etc. are totally unnecessary if all you want is a NAS or a small/cheap server. It'd be more like $60 for the mutant RPi2 vs $140 for the NUC you mentioned.

      Clearly a NUC will curb-stomp an RPi2's performance. But there's definitely a "knee" to the curve between performance and price. If a mutant RPi2 can deliver the essential features at a very very low price... well, that's what the RPi is all about.

    20. Re:Finally! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      If I remember the history right, (aside from the fact that the project lead works for Broadcomm, so they were the obvious first-choice as cooperative corporate partner), the original rPi mostly predated(at least during design, not necessarily by the time it started shipping in volume) the really intense knife-fighting that has broken out on ARM application processor pricing. They were available, but with tray prices approaching the target retail price of the rPi; so the rPi ended up being built around what is basically a set-top-box SoC(at least one of the Roku devices uses the same chip).

      It will be interesting to see how(or if), they adapt in subsequent models. It's not as though Broadcomm has never implemented a NIC before; but the fact that the bottom appears to be falling out of the low end application processor market probably doesn't make entering it a very attractive proposal. Will team rPi eventually go elsewhere, to whichever of the cheapie Android-focused players is most helpful? Stay the course as the best-known option; and if they end up undercut by somebody else; be pleased that they set out to make computers cheap and accessible and did so successfully enough that they don't even need to nudge the process anymore?

      I assume that, if only for the sake of their employees and general sense-of-identification-and-ownership-of-your-project, they aren't looking to rush to the exit; but the stated mission of the project was about making low-cost computers for education broadly accessible, so they don't necessarily have to remain in the market indefinitely so long as other outfits are meeting their objectives for them.

    21. Re:Finally! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      The usefulness of this obviously varies markedly depending on how much GPIO you need, whether 'headless' is a virtue or something you were going to buy a monitor to solve, and so forth; but if you are looking for a Samsung Exynos on the cheap; the Chromebooks that they released based on their Exynos CPUs show up used or refurb for a pittance from time to time. HP also built one model around the chip.

      I picked one up(model xe303c12, specifically) a while back to play with Debian-on-not-x86 with; and it has USB3. Definitely not a little dev board tucked in there, the motherboard, unsurprisingly, looks like it was pulled from a tablet design, because it probably was; but the Exynos-based units are now the older models(Intel apparently made some...very...aggressive offers on high-end Atom/low-end-Core parts); so you might find either a used/refurb that is quite competitive with an Odroid + peripherals, or a broken screen/other damage-as-a-laptop that is just plain competitive with anything else that has an Exynos in it. Coreboot and Chromium.org have info on doing the warranty voiding.

    22. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So incompetent they sold 6.5M devices and are still making them at the max. capacity of the factory. Useless. Really useless. All that money from the sales going in to teacher training. Useless. All that money spent on supporting OSS. Waste of time.

      Buy a Banana-Pi - GPL violations, badly designed chip, profits to China, no input to education, terrible support. You know it makes sense.

      Pi might not be the best option for a lot of people, but try and keep your personal issues out of the posts.

  4. !education by lkcl · · Score: -1, Troll

    i note that this post has been tagged "education". can someone please explain how it is "education" that teachers - and students - must *pay* to have boards *designed for them*, using a processor which you *still* cannot view videos without paying for proprietary CODECs [1] and you *still* cannot boot it without a proprietary bootloader.

    i remain deeply unimpressed that people have had the wool pulled over their eyes by the "low, low price" of $25.

    [1] don't tell me that it's patented. enshrined into patent law is the right for inventors to create an implementation of absolutely any patent, as a means to *EDUCATE* themselves about making further improvements to the original work.

    1. Re:!education by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Informative

      You can view videos just fine on it without paying to for a codec. now if you are trying to view an Archaic out of date and not even used anymore video Mpeg2 or VC1 using the hardware acceleration? then you pay. mplayer and VLC plays every single video format under the sun on it just fine.

      Come on back when you actually know something about the Raspberry Pi and stop making things up to sound like you know what you are talking about.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:!education by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Huh? What? Cannot play videos? Damn. I missed that memo. I've been using Raspberry Pis as an in-car DVR for my kids for a few years now. Never had a problem. Straight from MythTV recorded mpeg4 onto a USB stick to playing on Raspberry PI. Just plug in the USB stick and give the kids a wireless mouse.

      Proprietary bootloader? RaspBMC was so easy to set up, I'm afraid I never really noticed.

    3. Re:!education by heypete · · Score: 1

      Huh? What? Cannot play videos? Damn. I missed that memo. I've been using Raspberry Pis as an in-car DVR for my kids for a few years now. Never had a problem. Straight from MythTV recorded mpeg4 onto a USB stick to playing on Raspberry PI. Just plug in the USB stick and give the kids a wireless mouse.

      Proprietary bootloader? RaspBMC was so easy to set up, I'm afraid I never really noticed.

      As someone with a toddler and a bunch of Pi2s, that sounds like a really nifty thing to do. Do you have any information about how you built it, what components are used, etc.?

    4. Re:!education by ERJ · · Score: 1

      Considering pretty much all OTA TV in the US is MPEG2 Transport Streams, saying that MPEG2 is not used anymore is a bit of an overstep. Anyone wanting to build out a PVR using a backend that captures without realtime transcoding needs to have the MPEG2 codec bundle.

      All that being said, a couple bucks extra for that optional functionality is hardly an issue.

    5. Re:!education by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can view videos just fine on it without paying to for a codec. now if you are trying to view an Archaic out of date and not even used anymore video Mpeg2 or VC1 using the hardware acceleration? then you pay. mplayer and VLC plays every single video format under the sun on it just fine.

      Come on back when you actually know something about the Raspberry Pi and stop making things up to sound like you know what you are talking about.

      Seconded, I set up OSMC on my Raspberry Pi 2 and had the dead pool trailer playing on it the day it came out. Video plays really good on it and I was getting internet over wireless.. it works better wired.. it gets about 90 mbps or so. If you put a usb 3 ethernet dongle on the usb you can get just over 200 mbps. having usb 3 and gigabit ethernet would be totally doable in my view.

    6. Re:!education by Feral+Nerd · · Score: 1

      You can view videos just fine on it without paying to for a codec. now if you are trying to view an Archaic out of date and not even used anymore video Mpeg2 or VC1 using the hardware acceleration? then you pay. mplayer and VLC plays every single video format under the sun on it just fine.

      Come on back when you actually know something about the Raspberry Pi and stop making things up to sound like you know what you are talking about.

      Seconded, I set up OSMC on my Raspberry Pi 2 and had the dead pool trailer playing on it the day it came out. Video plays really good on it and I was getting internet over wireless.. it works better wired.. it gets about 90 mbps or so. If you put a usb 3 ethernet dongle on the usb you can get just over 200 mbps. having usb 3 and gigabit ethernet would be totally doable in my view.

      I cobbled together a security camera that can stream 720p MJPEG at c.a. 25-30 fps from a Raspberry PI over a distance of just under a kilometer to a PC with the help of a high powered USB WiFi dongle and a 12 db antenna. I was pretty happy with this since MJPEG is not exactly a good example of an efficient method for streaming video and the whole thing runs for 5 hours on a tablet battery in the event of power cuts. The video stream stutters once in a while at extreme distances but I put that down to crappy software and poor buffering rather than the hardware being overstressed.

    7. Re:!education by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You also seem to have zero clue, the Mpeg2 license is for DECODE not ENCODE. and the Pi decodes it just fine without it.

    8. Re:!education by Lumpy · · Score: 2

      The Pi plays an HD 1080i Mpeg2 stream just fine using a software decoder. And anyone using a mythTV backend is transcoding anyways to keep space consumed down.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    9. Re:!education by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I'm going to guess and say that anybody building a PVR rather than just a media streaming box is going to want something with a bit more .... harddisk, speed and ram than a credit card sized toy box. Mind you software decoding works fine on the Rpi2 with ffmpeg by all accounts.

    10. Re:!education by KGIII · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I've taken on (adopted, really), quite some time ago, funding the local elementary school's entire in-class IT education. They only have 56 students. For instance, I've bought the whole school laptops and, this year, I bought them all iPads plus a half-dozen extras for eventual mishaps. The solitary IT staff and teachers really appreciate it but not nearly as much as the kids do. The bake me cookies, have visited my house for nature walks, invite me to plays, make me crafts, send me Christmas cards, and I usually even get a box of "I love you" Valentine's Day cards. It is awesome but their acting and 'music' leave a lot to be desired.

      I say that because I want to ask this: You seem knowledgeable. These are K-6 students. The project type that I'm thinking of could be a long-term thing where the students would just keep the device. Financing is trivial, not even remotely an issue. What sort of projects could the kids, reasonably, do with these devices that they could us, say, throughout the year and then keep the device at the end of the year or, perhaps, half year? What kind of support would be offered (if needed, if any)? And would it make the solitary, just one, IT staff pull his hair out or otherwise hate me? Would they be used? Would it be beneficial at their level?

      I specifically target the younger kid's education because they're local, they are fewer, and my actions can be more meaningful. The older kids get bused off to a larger school and I'm not fond of the administration there.

      Thoughts? No? Just a passing idea but I suspect this would be something I'd need to prep ahead of time to make sure they're ready for incoming students next year as well as making sure that the teachers were familiar with them enough to actually give instruction. They could even make multiple devices or even make stuff that stayed in the school. Perhaps some sort of timer to control the sprinkler's for their little veggie garden? But I'm thinking things to take home. This number might mean that the students could use, damage, and simply keep the devices. It needn't be a single year that does the projects, either. This sort of stash will last them quite a while, I'd suspect.

      It's kind of off-topic but I don't know if it's worthy of an Ask Slashdot and I don't generally submit anything for I am a lazy git and almost a passive consumer these days.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    11. Re:!education by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      You are free to implement your own codecs. That's your right under patent law. Nobody is stopping you from doing so.

      What's not allowed, is selling your implementation without permission, which is why you're actually complaining about.

  5. $9 NTC C.H.I.P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Don't forget the imminent $9 C.H.I.P computer, which has 4GB flash storage, pre-installed O/S, wifi and bluetooth built in for the price. Crazy cheap.

  6. Element14 doing sme slashvertising by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 0

    Their element14 custom pi web site needs to move to the 21st century - it's absolute crap on mobile, and the majority of people on the web use mobile devices.

    Q. What's the difference between an "Official" customized Raspberry Pi and any other customized Raspberry Pi?
    A1. Price.
    A2. Who gives a damn.
    A3. An "Official T-Shirt"?

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    1. Re:Element14 doing sme slashvertising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No

    2. Re:Element14 doing sme slashvertising by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      Q. What's the difference between an "Official" customized Raspberry Pi and any other customized Raspberry Pi?

      It seems the difference is that they have the design files and the authorisation to do customisation at the pre-manufacturing level. Anyone else who wants to customise has to work with the completed boards.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    3. Re:Element14 doing sme slashvertising by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Their element14 custom pi web site needs to move to the 21st century - it's absolute crap on mobile, and the majority of people on the web use mobile devices.

      I can guarantee you the majority of people using element14's website do so with the biggest monitor they can afford and do so while having multiple products open in multiple tabs while comparing multiple datasheets and a CAD program in the background.

      This is a classic example of a well function website that definitely does NOT need a mobile friendly page.

    4. Re:Element14 doing sme slashvertising by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      So some engineer sends a link to their boss to show them what they are proposing and ask for a P.O., and the boss clicks on a mobile tablet/smartphone - approval denied because it looks like a cheap scam site on mobile devices.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    5. Re:Element14 doing sme slashvertising by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Yeah right, because an engineer's boss who approves purchase orders has never heard of the distribution arm of a multi national electronics company with $2bn+ in revenues, and bases their entire world view on a link from an iPad.

      Or down here on planet earth (which is what we call this place, welcome by the way) you get told to do something and given a budget, procurement provides you a common vendor list and you just go for it. Any interaction is done by procurement who unlikely use a website anyway favouring pre-filled BOM tables they send off after being generated directly from the CAD software. Or you're a small office and your boss isn't an MBA who has a nose bleed trying to understand what a resistor is, and he'll have heard of Farnell / Element14. But hey they only make $2bn in revenue so maybe they need your design input.

      Last time I saw someone update their website (who had an almost clone of what element14 has now) they faced incredible customer backlash and it took them several years to recover. Heck I know people who went back to using their paper catalogues as a result.

      Don't mess with something functional in the name of some Web 3.0 or 4.0 or whatever we call the mobile crazed shit. If you're buying large bulk electronics orders or doing electronic component research on an iPad / iPhone you have bigger problems than the website interface being presented to you.

    6. Re:Element14 doing sme slashvertising by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      Go look at the mobile site. There's no excuse having something THAT bad, and that non-functional. What are you going to do in a meeting - decamp everyone to their various cubbies to look at the site when they need to check something that comes up in the meeting?

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    7. Re:Element14 doing sme slashvertising by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Meeting? You mean you have meetings with tablets? Are you working for some hip start-up? How quickly can your mobile phone access large files on your corporate network or display complicated car drawings, documents, etc?

      What happens in meetings is that whoever is presenting opens the website. In a browser. On their laptop. If no one is presenting chances are half the people in the meeting have theirs with them. In the worst case scenario at least the scribe will.

      I get the feeling the places you've worked are very different from the ones I have.

    8. Re:Element14 doing sme slashvertising by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      The places I worked for, I never bothered going to the meetings because they were boring wastes of time. Never missed anything either,but I *did* drive the bosses nuts. One-on-one conversations, making coffee in the morning and going around and talking to the other devs individually, got more done. The bosses couldn't say much because (1) I was the go-to person for all the programmers when they had problems, (2) I was the top dev, (3) I produced results, and (4) we eventually just stopped having meetings as everyone saw them for what they are - distractions, time wasters, bull sessions, and pissing contests.

      Remember, the more people in a meeting, the less that gets done and the lower the collective intelligence of the group. No exceptions.

      Unfortunately, most people don't have the courage to tell the boss "I'm going to the washroom." "When will you be back?" "5 minutes after this meeting ends."

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  7. Low Price by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's hard to justify a Raspberry Pi when a new smartphone only costs $9.00.
    For example a $9.00 LG Optimus comes with
    1.2 GHz Dual Core CPU & Android 4.4, KitKat
    Microphone & Speaker & Audio port
    3 MP Camera
    1700 mah Battery & Charger & USB Cable
    3.5" Touch Screen Display
    3G/Wi-Fi Connectivity & Bluetooth® 4.0
    GPS, 4GB SD card
    ====AND FREE APPS for====
    Voice Recorder, Video Recorder, MP3 Player, Internet Radio
    Alarm Clock, WiFi Webcam, FTP Server
    and thousands more.
    AND if you want to learn programming, download the free MIT App Inventor
    Raspberry Pi was useful in its time, but these days it can't come close to a smartphone.
    Have a nice day

    1. Re:Low Price by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes because an orange and a banana are the same things. Everyone should use and orange because bananas are so yesterday.

    2. Re:Low Price by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Just to be clear -
      A $9.00 smartphone can do all of this (and a lot more) without any contract.
      However, if you need to monitor a remote location, the "triple minutes"
      pay-as-you-go option is sweet.

      If you are working on a project with lots of I/O, then a Pi makes sense.
      BUT - if you are simply trying to do something that already exists as
      a free app on the Google Play Store, save your money,
      Most importantly, if you have not experimented with a cheap smartphone,
      try it now. Some are better than others, so read the specs.
      At $9.00 you don;t have much to lose.

    3. Re:Low Price by tomhath · · Score: 1

      Most importantly, if you have not experimented with a cheap smartphone, try it now

      But don't put your invention in a metal box and bring it to school.

    4. Re:Low Price by khellendros1984 · · Score: 1

      And where exactly does one go to buy a $9 smartphone? Aside from that, how can I get AppInventor to do a real language, and not the block-based visual programming that it seems to support? How about self-hosted development? AIDE at least supports self-hosted Java and C++ dev, which are more generally useful...but pretending that using any of these on a phone will be nice is a bad joke.

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    5. Re:Low Price by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      The $9 cell phone is probably subsidised, because people who buy cellphones usually use them on a cellular network.

      You forgot to add: No access to any GPIO, locked bootloader, SIM locked to a particular carrier

      I can't find your $9 one, but the $15 one from Verizon is locked to only work with Verizon.

  8. GPUs are a problem for ARM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    A lot of these small systems (such as the Orange PI, according to the summary's link) have ARM's Mali, or Imagination Technologies's PowerVR, both of which have closed-source, proprietary drivers. This really makes utilizing these devices difficult, because it makes it difficult to upgrade your kernel/userspace (Xorg, etc.).

    Intel has finally got its act together with regard to low-power, performant systems, and Intel's devices (including its GPUs) are completely open source, with drivers developed by Intel proper, no less. Intel's NUC and other such devices are going to eat the lunch of these Pis, knock-off or not. especially now that even Microsoft is trying to make Windows 10 work on such constrained devices.

    Good riddance, proprietary hardware!

    1. Re:GPUs are a problem for ARM by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The cheapest NUC I can find on Amazon is around $139. The cheapest Pi I can find is $19.99 for an A, $32 for a B, and $39 for a Pi 2. At 3-7 times the cost, I don't think they are exactly competitors across the board. There is surely overlap, but that doesn't mean they will "eat the lunch" of the Pi in a space in which it does not have an offering.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    2. Re:GPUs are a problem for ARM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A lot of these small systems (such as the Orange PI, according to the summary's link) have ARM's Mali, or Imagination Technologies's PowerVR, both of which have closed-source, proprietary drivers. This really makes utilizing these devices difficult, because it makes it difficult to upgrade your kernel/userspace (Xorg, etc.).

      Intel has finally got its act together with regard to low-power, performant systems, and Intel's devices (including its GPUs) are completely open source, with drivers developed by Intel proper, no less. Intel's NUC and other such devices are going to eat the lunch of these Pis, knock-off or not. especially now that even Microsoft is trying to make Windows 10 work on such constrained devices.

      Good riddance, proprietary hardware!

      Only partly right on the windows 10 part.. it is a read between the lines thing.. the windows 10 version that is compatible to the pi is windows 10 IOT, which just opens up the vb.net and C#.net languages on the pi.. it is not like you could run microsoft office on this version of windows 10. I think they should have chosen a different name to avoid the confusion but this isa Microsoft we are talking about. They are quickly going the way of AOL..

    3. Re:GPUs are a problem for ARM by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      It also doesn't help that Intel's actual attempt in the rPi range(the "Edison" boards based on 'quark' cores) omit video entirely and have deeply, deeply, limited GPIO. It's actually pretty weird: in their attempt to stay relevant in phones and tablets, Intel has actually built the most FOSS-friendly SoC GPUs around; but their entries in the cheapie SBC arena seem hell-bent on dragging defeat from the jaws of victory.

    4. Re:GPUs are a problem for ARM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They are quickly going the way of AOL..

      topkek

  9. Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I do not think it is worth licensing fees. There are a lot of Pi clones, and some are faster while being at the same price point and for factor.

    1. Re:Meh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They definitely have my interest, we're buying Pis and knocking off the USB connectors and replacing them with header pins for internal sensor gear that we're repackaging into a small container to resell. Thing is, right now we're moving dozens of the things (they are pretty specialized), we'd probably never be able to sell 5000.

  10. Data, motherf..., do you speak it? by EnglishTim · · Score: 1

    There's a bunch of speculation going on in this thread based on personal anecdote... let's have a look at some data shall we?

    Let's compare the ngrams of the words 'bespoke' 'customized' and 'customised' between the USA and UK:

    USA: http://tinyurl.com/usabespoke
    UK: http://tinyurl.com/ukbespoke

    You can see that in both cases bespoke had its primetime in the first half of the nineteenth century, falling off and hitting its nadir at around 1980, with a resurgence in usage since then.

    However, it's also clear that the usage of 'bespoke' is more common in British English than it is in American English, although not by a huge margin - current usage (in books) is about 70% more common in British English than it is in American English.

    Obviously the huge cavéat here is that these ngrams describe how language is written in books, rather than how it is spoken.