The Raspberry Pi Thread.

I have been following this project since it was an idea on a bit of paper, and now its mere months/days away from release i can feel my underpant elastic slowly tightening. First batch is due for a december release (being manufactured right now, nearly finished) but most of the first batch is reserved for developers and related professionals.


For those of you who dont know what a Raspberry Pi is, its an extremely small computer designed and built by a UK charity headed by David Braben, the guy most widely known for creating the game ELITE in the 1980's. It came about when Braben decided (correctly) that schools were essentially being cunty in regards to teaching kids "computing" when in actual fact they were only teaching them how to use MS Office, and there is no real programming or hardware cirriculum around anymore. The schools used the excuse of "BUT IM NOT PAYING £500 PER CHILD FOR A COMPUTER THAT HE/SHE WILL FUCK UP", so he turned around and built the Raspberry Pi, which will cost $25 and $35 each for models A and B respectively, and far less for schools.

The official dimensions place the PCB at the exact same size of a credit card, with the maximum height being little more than an ethernet port (or the dual USB, depending on which is bigger). The specs are as follows; -


MODEL A -

$25/£16 (official price)
700MHz ARM 11 CPU
Broadcom VideoCore IV,[20] OpenGL ES 2.0, 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode GPU
128MB SDRAM
1 USB 2.0 Port
HDMI 1.3a output (sound supported)
Composite Video Out
single 3.5MM jack audio output (no microphone)
SD Card slot for storage (must supply own SD card, obviously)
No ethernet capability
500mA/2.5W Power usage, powered by micro USB (a phone charger, or a cable from another USB 2.0 source).

MODEL B -

$35/£22
700MHz ARM 11 CPU
Broadcom VideoCore IV,[20] OpenGL ES 2.0, 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode GPU
256MB SDRAM
2 USB 2.0 Ports
HDMI 1.3a output (sound supported)
Composite Video Out
single 3.5MM jack audio output (no microphone)
SD Card slot for storage (must supply own SD card, obviously)
10/100 RJ45 Ethernet Port
700mA/3.5W Power usage, powered by micro USB (a phone charger, or a cable from another USB 2.0 source).


Now, those specs may not seem like much at first, but this thing is capable of 1080p video and has HDMI output, which, for £16/£22 is fucking amazing. As it is an ARM CPU, it will simply NOT run windows. it will not run windows 8 with its ARM compatibility, it will just only run current ARM based operating systems developed for it. There will be distros of Arch Linux/Debian/Fedora available from launch (one will be packaged on an SD card as an optional extra, unsure which). The whole point of this thing is that its cheap enough for anyone to just buy, fuck about with, and buy another when it breaks. Heres a compute kids, go show us what you can make it do, and make us fucking proud.

What would you do with your Raspberry Pi? some of the suggestions on the official forums are amazing, which include; -

Installing into a fightstick and having a portable MAME Arcade.
Installing into an old ZX Spectrum/Amiga/Commodore 64 Keyboardcase for hooking up to TVs via the composite
General brain for emulating old consoles/MAME/CPS systems.
Stupidly low power file/webservers
Dedicated webcam server for stupidly low cost security system/baby monitors.
Media Player for anywhere in the house (XBMC port is nearly finished)
combined with a 3" screen used for cars reversing camera to make the worlds most hilariously small laptop.
In car PC (or in EVERYTHING PC, as it will last about 3-4 hours on 4xAA batteries)
etc etc,

VIDEOS

RasPi running Quake 3 on standard GFX settings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_mDuJuvZjI

The Alpha board running 1080p video trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgR74Kp6Ws4

It should be noted that the Alpha boards currently in the wild are actually bigger than the main intended unit, as the alpha boards were sent out to early developers to give them the oppertunity to port their stuff over to ARM for release. These boards include a few debug headers that the RC boards will not, but you wont need them really, and if you do there will be guides on how to add them yourself.

EDIT: adding link to official page that i forgot to do before - http://www.raspberrypi.org/

hi res photo of alpha board - http://elinux.org/images/f/f0/Raspberry_Pi.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FooB

Stupidly low power file/webservers

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Cannot quote hard enough. Should have more than enough horsepower to fling files around my house without me getting bitched at for driving the bills up.

I'd love to see schools pick these up so they can run proper computing syllabuses. Having a disposable, discrete computing environment running linux is exactly what a new computing student needs and what most schools can't deliver.

There's a similar project running android called cotton candy just been announced for about 10x the cost, but with tremendously increased horsepower. Slightly different purpose, though.

If they can actually ship the B model for less than £35 I can see myself picking up a couple, there's a ton of uses for something like this. I just hope someone can come up with a bare-bones OS for it, Linux is too much of a pain if you need direct hardware access.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bombcrater

If they can actually ship the B model for less than £35 I can see myself picking up a couple, there's a ton of uses for something like this. I just hope someone can come up with a bare-bones OS for it, Linux is too much of a pain if you need direct hardware access.

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Those prices are finalised already. the model a IS $25 and the model B IS $35. confirmed by official sources multiple times. As for the OS, The spirit of the board is that its designed to be fucked about with, smashed, soldered to bits etc etc. As far as hardware access is concerned, anyone developing for the platform has this as one of their absolute priorities. Because its based on ARM, a lot of the software is going to be "Start from scratch" mode, seeing as most of the stuff developed for linux is x86, and the only thing we really have software wise that is ARM based is android. Supposedly Nokia has "dibs" on 400 of the first production boards to give away free to anyone who is considered a "registered" Qt developer, so they can begin with writing all the basic shit for it asap.

If you, or you know anyone that has developed using Qt (and has something to show for it), tell them to get on over to the nokia registration page and sign up for one of these fuckers.



EDIT: I should also mention, that there is a substantial following for these things to use simply as a low power desktop PC, but built in immense and partially ridiculous cases. Because the thing comes without a case, and is so small and cool-running, the case potential is off the scale. A lot of people seem to be toying with the idea of a perspex box filled with transparent potting, so it looks like a block of ice with a computer inside of it, which looks pretty fucking immense.

Aside from the ZX Spectrum ideas, apparently an Altoids box will fit these perfectly, as well as a general cigarette packet. Personally, im going to go dig out some of my old Lego and make a fucking spaceship or something to put it in while i decide the most hilarious and awesome possible case. My own personal idea was to use a mannequin head just so it looks fucking freaky having a head on your desk with loads of wires coming out of it, and into a working monitor.

fuck that. taping it to the back of my TV, wireless usb mouse/keyboard, ethernet it to the router, cheapest htpc ever developed.

I actually see no reason why this couldn't be built into a tv. I'd probably end up using an ethernet over powerline adapter to connect it to my router, an adapter set which actually cost twice as much as this will. So, so cheap.

This is going to be really interesting.

Any word on it handling basic internet as i would love just sticking one behind a monitor. 8-)

Might even incentivise me to learn Linux correctly. :oops: :o

it has been able to "handle basic internet" for quite some time. But if you want to SEE it use iceweasel, then...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9cmxoSmOxU

That is an alpha board running a basic desktop, however it has not been configured to use anything other than software rendering for the desktop, hence is basic slowness. It will handle basic wifi dongles out of the box

I'll be first in line to buy one of these. Would make a great little development system or robot/other stuff controller. The software that's spinning up for this is impressive, including a full official port of Qt. Would also probably run Android quite well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by FooB

it has been able to "handle basic internet" for quite some time. But if you want to SEE it use iceweasel, then...

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Thanking you Foob... can i stab the man who keeps saying Raspberry PEEE btw? :twisted:

I was excited about this until I learned they wouldn't be providing GPIO, due to the chipset they use (fark you Broadcom). that knocks it out of the running for a robotics platform. will just have to save for a Beaglebone.

/may still buy one.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-conten...-AB-Mono-1.png


i'm assuming the GPIO Headers are what you require? that is a final design btw.

that's new then. GPIO and JTAG were not in the last prototype I saw. I guess they listened to all the people griping about it.

didn't know they were splitting it into "A" and "B" boards either, so I guess I'm just uninformed.

makes sense though. good on them for sorting that out.

Did they say when they're gona start selling those? I think i read when somewhere but i can't remember.

They moved the launch date, now its end of 2011

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fffuuu

I was excited about this until I learned they wouldn't be providing GPIO, due to the chipset they use (fark you Broadcom). that knocks it out of the running for a robotics platform. will just have to save for a Beaglebone.

/may still buy one.

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Are 62 GPIOs enough for you?

(shameless corporate plug)

I want a few of these so badly. Don't even have a use for more than one at the moment, but I still want a couple of them just because.

i will be picking one for sure.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EntroX

i will be picking one for sure.

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same...gonna find something to do with it...

Let me just join in by saying WANT, WANT, WANT, FUCKING DO WANT.

The first one just to fuck around with, but I already have a dirt cheap 720 cam sat aside to tie to it and use as an aforementioned IP cam/cam server.

What really excites me is how low the power usage is, because I'm tempted to bash something together that would see it sitting outside as a wireless IR camera running on a battery with solar charge, pushing images wirelessly back into my house or when called on. Charge by solar during day, watch possums/fruit bats steal my oranges and shit on my pavement at night.

Didn't we have an R. Pi thread a while back? If I can find it I'll link it back.

EDIT: either it was on SHC or my forum foo is weak or I am in fact just plain fuck'en terrible (don't answer that).

I remember there was a thread before but it may have been SHC.

I'm very interested in one of these for messing with.

I wish they'd had stuff like this when I was at school. BBC Micro Model B was the epitome of personal computers when I was at school. Cut my teeth on BBC Basic and 6502 assembly.