PDA

View Full Version : Not a slice, I want the whole Raspberry Pi ...



Bucky Ball
July 9th, 2012, 07:31 AM
I'm excited and have been predicting something like this since a few years ago when I first learnt of ARM processors. Never predicted they'd be quite so inexpensive, though:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

Feel free to add your thoughts/experiences about/with this device ... ;)

Paqman
July 9th, 2012, 07:35 AM
The Debian version works fine, and you've got access to nearly identical repos through it. I'm sure a proper Ubuntu version will be along shortly.

Bucky Ball
July 9th, 2012, 07:40 AM
I just tried to order one here in Australia and can do but not in stock; expected in 72 days! I'll keep trying and email a query ...

hakermania
July 9th, 2012, 07:56 AM
Hah, a relative of mine ordered 2 the 2nd day of official production day (I don't know how this is called in English) and he received them at the end of June.

Anyway, this little thing is awesome, we put XBMC into it and we were watching 1080p youtube videos with ease :D

In everything that has to do with video it goes very well, but, with Debian installed (with lxde desktop) it lags a lot, something like running it through a USB !

spynappels
July 9th, 2012, 09:24 AM
Got mine, and it rocks! I have 2 SD cards, one with Debian and one with a build of OpenELEC (XBMC) I cross compiled on it. AS a media player it is outstanding, I've been using it to play HD Iplayer content and it plays it beautifully.

Once they become more readily available, I will get several more for experimenting with home automation and for my boys to learn Linux on.

Grenage
July 9th, 2012, 10:22 AM
Anyway, this little thing is awesome, we put XBMC into it and we were watching 1080p youtube videos with ease :D

Yup, it's a damn fine bit of kit, but most people getting one for XBMC alone should be very wary; performance won't be great for general use.

spynappels
July 9th, 2012, 11:17 AM
Yup, it's a damn fine bit of kit, but most people getting one for XBMC alone should be very wary; performance won't be great for general use.

True, even with the custom build of OpenELEC, the menus are a little slow, but the coolness factor blows the downsides out of the water for me...

Even Debian with LXDE isn't quick, but for basic browsing and text editing (not using OpenOffice of course) I was quite impressed with what it could do, without the GUI it really zips along quite well given it's specs.

Grenage
July 9th, 2012, 11:26 AM
True, even with the custom build of OpenELEC, the menus are a little slow, but the coolness factor blows the downsides out of the water for me...

Even Debian with LXDE isn't quick, but for basic browsing and text editing (not using OpenOffice of course) I was quite impressed with what it could do, without the GUI it really zips along quite well given it's specs.

It is indeed absolutely cool; I'm thinking of using one for some basic automation, it's ideal due to its power requirements.

Bucky Ball
July 9th, 2012, 02:54 PM
Pity about the sluggish OS, but that will come. Sounds fantastic as a media player, though, so just what I'm after. I'll take one with twice the specs, thanks. Same size, of course, but this will definitely do for now. ;)

Are people outside Australia able to obtain these or are they out of stock internationally? What is slightly unclear to me, and forgive me if seems like a dumb question, but where does the 5v power come from? Could you power one in the field with a battery? (Although a 5v battery might not be obtainable.) Can it be hooked up to a breadboard like, say, an Arduino board?

spynappels
July 9th, 2012, 03:04 PM
Hey Bucky,

I had to wait about 2 months for mine....

You can power it from any 5v source, it has a micro-usb connector so a phone charger powers it. However, you can also use battery power to power it, I guess 4 AA batteries should do it.

spjackson
July 9th, 2012, 05:12 PM
Are people outside Australia able to obtain these or are they out of stock internationally? What is slightly unclear to me, and forgive me if seems like a dumb question, but where does the 5v power come from? Could you power one in the field with a battery? (Although a 5v battery might not be obtainable.) Can it be hooked up to a breadboard like, say, an Arduino board?
The people behind the Raspberry Pi are based in Cambridge, UK. Supplies worldwide are limited at present.

Plenty of people are doing projects that involve connecting the Pi's GPIO pins to a breadboard, e.g. http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1488

It's also possible to connect to an Aduino via USB.

fatality_uk
July 9th, 2012, 07:04 PM
I was lucky (for lucky read 5am start on the launch day) to get one in one of the early batches. It's a great, very capable PC.

One thing to remember. This is being sold as a development board. Don't expect to run flash (AT ALL) & processor intensive apps will be bumping the CPU at 100% for a good deal of the time.

The RPI forums were a wash with people who bought one and then seemed to be complaining that they couldn't run 15 apps while processing a 3 hour dvd to a mpg file!

As for Ubuntu, it won't find it's way onto RPI Mk1. Mark Shuttleworth has said that the next version Canonical will make efforts to have an Arm release for it.

CharlesA
July 9th, 2012, 07:54 PM
I got thrown into the Queue and finally got to order mine near the end of June and expected dispatch would be in 12 weeks.

I can't wait.

fatality_uk
July 9th, 2012, 08:37 PM
Just a note for those wanting a media centre

Raspbmc - http://www.raspbmc.com/ is lighter than XBMC and has an "easier" gui installer. The XMBC remote for Android also works well.

JRV
July 9th, 2012, 08:43 PM
I ordered mine on 3/31/12 it is scheduled to arrive 7/11/12, two days from now. I can hardly wait.

Balthazar54
July 9th, 2012, 08:55 PM
I read about this at Cnet and got on a waiting list at Allied Electronics & RS Components through the raspberrypi.org web site for the B unit(with Ethernet). After about 3 weeks, they took my order, saying that it will be 'dispatched' within 12 weeks.

I added a 4GB SD card with the OS pre-installed, both because I'm lazy and that I'll want to play with it before I have to figure out how to make my own.

Total cost including shipping to US was US$59.21.

They were out of stock on the clear cases, and the faq says it won't quite fit in an Altoid tin, might be fun to see what it will fit in.

Now waiting for it sucks. [-(

t0p
July 9th, 2012, 09:45 PM
I want to get one, and see what I can make it do that the creators didn't think of. No doubt I'll break a few along the way, but at those price marks, who cares? A PI with USB wifi, stuck in a cigarette pack or the like, just lying around where a wireless computer shouldn't be left lying around... oh, what couldn't you do with such a tool...?

CharlesA
July 9th, 2012, 09:59 PM
I want to get one, and see what I can make it do that the creators didn't think of. No doubt I'll break a few along the way, but at those price marks, who cares? A PI with USB wifi, stuck in a cigarette pack or the like, just lying around where a wireless computer shouldn't be left lying around... oh, what couldn't you do with such a tool...?

I'm thinking of setting mine up as a spare AP, so I don't have to drag out my ancient router. ;)

fatality_uk
July 9th, 2012, 10:20 PM
I am working on a couple of RPI projects right now!
One with a homebaked GPIO board for connecting to a outside device (Yes a lawnmower. I loath cutting the grass)

Two is (AND THIS IS MY IDEA SO ANYONE WHO NICKS IT I WANT CREDIT IF YOU GET THERE FIRST) to link my RPI to an XBOX Kinect. The software I am currently writing but essentially all the people who live in my house will be "mapped" and have an array of images to compare against.

Now while the RPI and Kinect are on and someone enters the room, it will check the images maps to see if there is a match and then "enable" one of the pre-defined profiles such as XMBC set to view YouTube or switch on the TV to a particular station. Early days yet the core code for mapping seems to be going well.

And the obvious extension to that is an intelligent home security system. Using a GPIO to wireless receiver and scanning on 433 MHz or 868MHz, it should be possible using the wireless key to "link" to this and in the event of an "unknown" in the home, either fire up a webcam to record video/photos and upload using SFTP in the RPI to a remote host and then to also use email/sms to alert and finally TTS to "possibly" make a recorded call to emergency services. (Would they respond? Unknown at this time)

Bucky Ball
July 10th, 2012, 04:52 AM
Okay. Done a bit more research. It can run from a micro USB power supply, something I'd never heard of. Live and learn.

Next question to all: When viewing Youtube vids, etc, I am presuming you are booted into the OS and using Firefox (or other browser) to do this? So you could view any vid site? Is it capable of simple things like email?

I'm going to order one tonight when I get some cash, screw the wait! (How many more sleeps???). ;)

Hey, and great to read all the feedback, cheers. Now I'm salivating. Sounds like it does pretty much what I expected and, oddly, that happens to be exactly what I am after for the first time ever.

fatality_uk
July 10th, 2012, 07:58 AM
Okay. Done a bit more research. It can run from a micro USB power supply, something I'd never heard of. Live and learn.

Next question to all: When viewing Youtube vids, etc, I am presuming you are booted into the OS and using Firefox (or other browser) to do this? So you could view any vid site? Is it capable of simple things like email?

I'm going to order one tonight when I get some cash, screw the wait! (How many more sleeps???). ;)

Hey, and great to read all the feedback, cheers. Now I'm salivating. Sounds like it does pretty much what I expected and, oddly, that happens to be exactly what I am after for the first time ever.

Quick reminder folks. Your RPI WONT, REPEAT WONT play flash videos through a browser. Not to say it will never happen but it wont out the box. In fact I think Liz, Eben and the RPI team have said they aren't actively looking into it as the PI has very little memory, Flash would chew it up before it began.

You can install something like XMBC for RPI and then install the YouTube add in. This works a treat and can play YT videos at 1080p without skipping a beat. Interface is a bit clunky for casual YT surfing through

pe7er
July 19th, 2012, 02:35 AM
Raspbmc - http://www.raspbmc.com/ is lighter than XBMC and has an "easier" gui installer. The XMBC remote for Android also works well.
Thanks for sharing!
I installed OpenELEC (it wasn't available for the RP, so I compiled it from source. Took 6 hours... and I found a binary somewhere later :P).
OpenELEC looks nice, but I have some problems with .mov & .iso files (haven't really dig into that yet).

The XBMC Remote works well indeed, but it drains the battery of my Android as it needs wifi...

Balthazar54
July 19th, 2012, 06:37 PM
When I ordered one, they did not have any of the clear cases in stock, and the other ones did not interest me.

Then today, cnet had a diy article on carving out a book and turning it into a cell phone charging station, and the rusty old wheels started to turn.

Turning an old paperback, or better yet a small hard cover book about the size of a paperback book, into a Raspberry Pi case might be a fun project for those times I'm sitting around bored.

Let's see, glue the page edges together with some paste and a brush should make that fairly fast. Use a box cutter to hollow it out and cut some holes for ports will take quite a bit longer.

Building a harness to bring more than one or two sides of the card's ports to the book edges might be overkill, but then I get pretty bored sometimes.

I don't know yet what the cooling requirements are, if any.

And the book would have to have the right title.

I wish my order would get here! About 10 weeks left on the up to 12 weeks delivery time left...

bmeakings
July 19th, 2012, 11:48 PM
I ordered mine on the 6th of June, along with a case, power lead and an 8GB SD Card with Debian pre-loaded. The total came up to around £50. I'm still eagerly waiting.

I don't have any grand plans for it, just to replace my print/web server - an old desktop PC with a Pentium 4. I managed to get its power consumption down to about 60W idle by using a mobile P4 chip at 1.6 GHz and installing a single 512MB stick of RAM. With the RbPi the power draw should be negligable.

Balthazar54
September 9th, 2012, 12:53 AM
Ordered a 2nd one from Newark, it got here this week after about a one month delay. Got a message from the English company I first ordered from, and who already charged my card, that it could be up to another 12 weeks for that one.

Now I have a system I can totally thrash around it, and just have to flash the sd card if I mess it up too much. And it runs faster off the sd than I would have thought.

CharlesA
September 9th, 2012, 03:23 PM
It looks like I have another month to wait for this stupid thing (plus shipping time). I just canceled my order from RS and will deal without.

The "thrill" of messing with a new low power PC has worn off and I doubt I'd even have time to mess with it. The unexpected delays put me off even more.

Maybe I will get one when the demand levels out or something.

Cheesemill
September 10th, 2012, 10:11 AM
It looks like I have another month to wait for this stupid thing (plus shipping time). I just canceled my order from RS and will deal without.

The "thrill" of messing with a new low power PC has worn off and I doubt I'd even have time to mess with it. The unexpected delays put me off even more.

Maybe I will get one when the demand levels out or something.
If you order from Farnell you should recieve your Pi in about 3 days, I ordered my 2nd Pi on the 4th Sep and it arrived on the 7th.

CharlesA
September 10th, 2012, 03:28 PM
If you order from Farnell you should recieve your Pi in about 3 days, I ordered my 2nd Pi on the 4th Sep and it arrived on the 7th.
Wow. They must have added more shops since visited the Raspberry Pi site.

Thanks.

Bucky Ball
September 19th, 2012, 02:53 PM
Thought I'd throw some Lego in the pie and stir the pot:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/university-builds-cheap-supercomputer-with-raspberry-pi-and-legos/?comments=1#comments-bar

Cheesemill
October 15th, 2012, 05:26 PM
A quick update, the Raspberry Pi has now been upgraded to 512MB RAM for the same price. It just keeps getting better and better.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2180

CPC have them in stock for next day delivery if you're in the UK.

mamamia88
October 15th, 2012, 07:00 PM
Damn this thing looks tempting but looks like they are way backordered. Do they charge you until it ships? Also how does this handle mkv on vlc? Right now using my ps3 and using autsmuxer to convert and then copying to my external harddrive. Would this work better? Also worth holding out for more ram? Or will something like crunchbang work fine on the old one?

KBD47
October 15th, 2012, 08:19 PM
These look awesome. Just curious what are the main uses you've found for them?

cariboo
October 16th, 2012, 02:34 AM
These look awesome. Just curious what are the main uses you've found for them?

How about free beer and pi?

http://brewpi.com/

CharlesA
October 16th, 2012, 02:42 AM
How about free beer and pi?

http://brewpi.com/
That is awesome.

Bucky Ball
October 16th, 2012, 06:45 AM
How about free beer and pi?

http://brewpi.com/

Now ya talkin'! I have an old Arduino board I haven't used for an age ...

I notice the Model B with 512 RAM is now being shipped. I'm thinking I could slap a USB hard drive into one, install a minimal of Ubuntu with xfce4, add some required media software/apps and leave it permanently plugged into the TV. ;)

Cheesemill
October 16th, 2012, 10:05 AM
Now ya talkin'! I have an old Arduino board I haven't used for an age ...

I notice the Model B with 512 RAM is now being shipped. I'm thinking I could slap a USB hard drive into one, install a minimal of Ubuntu with xfce4, add some required media software/apps and leave it permanently plugged into the TV. ;)
You could if they actually ran Ubuntu, but they don't. Canonical dropped support for the version of the ARM processor used in the Pi several years ago.
There are several other distros available though, the 'official' one being Rasbian which is a straight Debian port specifically optimised for the Pi (basically ARMv7 with Hard Float extensions). For other available distros check the forums (http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=18), there are some really interesting ones being worked on (RiscOS springs to mind).

I have a couple set up as media streamers running OpenELEC (http://openelec.tv/) (an XBMC distro). They are powered from the USB port on the TV they are connected to, and because the Pi supports CEC then I can use the standard TV remote to control the menus on the Pi (signals are sent from the TV via the HDMI bus).

I have another couple that I am using to learn about the hardware interface aspect of the Pi, I'm trying to set one up as a home automation controller and another for environmental control.

mamamia88
October 16th, 2012, 04:59 PM
What is the wait time on these anyway?

Bucky Ball
October 17th, 2012, 02:44 AM
I can get one in a couple of days here in Australia, but they are not the B, they have 256 RAM. They are also $55 which is strange considering the value of the $AU ...

mamamia88
October 17th, 2012, 03:50 AM
I can get one in a couple of days here in Australia, but they are not the B, they have 256 RAM. They are also $55 which is strange considering the value of the $AU ...

ah cool. seem sold out for shipping to the us. just curious if i ordered one how long it would take to show up. maybe i'll wait until the supply is more steady

Cheesemill
October 17th, 2012, 08:18 AM
I can get one in a couple of days here in Australia, but they are not the B, they have 256 RAM. They are also $55 which is strange considering the value of the $AU ...
All of the Pi's so far are model B's. They haven't started producing the model A's yet.
Also any orders made as of now will be the new 512MB version of the model B as all of the 256MB versions have already been shipped.

Jester23
October 22nd, 2012, 01:45 PM
So now with the Model B, 512MB Revision 2.0, Is XBMC running any faster? I just ordered one and hope this will be able to pull my MKV H264 files from my server with ease. I'm tired of using my PS3 with Plex because it's trash... No FF or Rew or Pause without crashing....PITA!

kenpachiZaraki
November 1st, 2012, 05:04 PM
I added a 4GB SD card with the OS pre-installed, both because I'm lazy and that I'll want to play with it before I have to figure out how to make my own.

[-(

So interested in making my own OS.

Where do I start?!?

Does anyone have any links to some awesome article that I can read
(howTo make OS for 'Raspberry Pi'). ?!?

Cheesemill
November 1st, 2012, 05:38 PM
The University of Cambridge has produced a free online course on OS development for the Raspberry Pi.

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/freshers/raspberrypi/tutorials/os/