Raspberry Pi

[ShaolinFlame]

The Raspberry Pi is a cheap single board computer manufactured for educational purposes [http://www.raspberrypi.org/]. I'm thinking of ordering one myself but I wanted to check if anyone here has any experience.

So, any CPers getting down on the Pi?

If so, some followup:

Where did you procure it?
How long did it take to arrive?
Are there any important accessories I should think about? Are the micro USB cord and memory included?

So far the only distributor I've found in North America is an American Company called Allied Electronics [http://www.alliedelec.com/lp/120626raso/]. It appears that the wait is several months at this point, and I've read it can be even longer. I wouldn't mind picking one up somewhere else for $10 or $20 more if it meant quicker delivery.

Thoughts?

[cKy]

Besides the initial problems with the new boards when they moved the plant to China (a bunch of dying/overheating boards) this will be my next purchase. A co-worker got the model A ones and loved it. Newark is a Canadian place that ships as well - and get stock frequently.

Be sure to check out some of the awesome cases you can make for them!

http://canada.newark.com/jsp/bespoke...40880372|plid|

[Rathji]

What are you guys planning on using the Pi for?

The geek in me has some ideas but I haven't put a lot of thought or planning into it since I really don't have time right now.

[Wormius]

The best place to look for ideas is on MAKE.

Personally, I haven't bought into this movement, or the Arduino movements, but that might be because I am a hardware engineer, and would rather design and build my own platform. I guess these appeal to the non-electronics guys who just want to program.

People programming embedded devices though need to learn memory management skills. On embedded systems memory is not infinite.

I have also never programmed for a Linux environment, so that's kind of a problem for me.

My son's school is starting a Raspberry Pi club though, so maybe I should try to figure out if there is something really great about it that I am missing.

What does turn my crank though is this TI watch dev kit:

https://estore.ti.com/MSP-WDS430BT20...lay-P2447.aspx

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Wormius

Personally, I haven't bought into this movement, or the Arduino movements, but that might be because I am a hardware engineer, and would rather design and build my own platform. I guess these appeal to the non-electronics guys who just want to program.

I don't entirely understand the appeal either - you're beholden to the hardware something fierce, and if your goal is to learn programming, since it's Linux based you might as well learn on something more powerful and comfortable.

Flip side, of course, is that anything that gets people digging into C code or asm and learning more about low-level coding/cpu architecture is still a good thing, no matter how they go about it.

[FanIn80]

I'm confused... I always assumed Raspberry Pi was just another flavour of Linux. Is it actually just the name of a computer running Linux?

Edit: Just read through the site a bit and figured it out. Seems pretty cool, actually. Suddenly all those magazine covers I've seen about using Raspberry Pi as a web server (etc etc) are actually impressive!

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

I'm confused... I always assumed Raspberry Pi was just another flavour of Linux. Is it actually just the name of a computer running Linux?

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

Lots of Kickstarter projects surrounding it, too.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...term=raspberry

I can see people using it to stream video to their TV, since there will be many tiny enclosures created for it.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

I can see people using it to stream video to their TV, since there will be many tiny enclosures created for it.

Yeah, I'm now thinking of using one as a dedicated Plex box.

[The Yen Man]

Yup, my brother bought a couple and is playing around to see if he can get it to be a nifty media streaming device. Once he gets that running, I'm going to order 3 of these and connect each of my tvs with it.

[Rathji]

Plex or XMBC were 2 options that I was thinking of as obvious fun projects to do with it, but I am concerned about performance issues.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Yup, my brother bought a couple and is playing around to see if he can get it to be a nifty media streaming device. Once he gets that running, I'm going to order 3 of these and connect each of my tvs with it.

[sa226]

There is a bit of discussion about it on the XBMC forums

[MickMcGeough]

Bump.

Just got the new one delivered. The Pi 2 has a quad core and 1GB of RAM (marketing as 6x the speed of the Pi B+).

Biggest challenge will probably just finding time to do something useful with it.

Any CPers using Raspberry Pis for something cool?

[Bobblehead]

I'm using one for a Plex front end.

The 2 is supposed to be much better, and handle retro gaming much better too, so I'm thinking I will get a new one for that. Then I am considering re-purposing my current one into a perhaps a VPN server, or some appliance use like that.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

I'm using one for a Plex front end.

The 2 is supposed to be much better, and handle retro gaming much better too, so I'm thinking I will get a new one for that. Then I am considering re-purposing my current one into a perhaps a VPN server, or some appliance use like that.

Rasplex?

Have you tried AirPlay on it? If so, how is it?

[Resolute 14]

I use mine as an emulator for old video games - google RetroPie.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

Rasplex?

Have you tried AirPlay on it? If so, how is it?

Yeah, Rasplex.

No, I don't use airplay.

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

I use mine as an emulator for old video games - google RetroPie.

I've heard many reports that the games RetroPi wasn't quite able to run smoothly are now running much better with the additional horesepower.


Just don't use flash photography to take a picture of the pi while it is running.

[MickMcGeough]

####. I just read a few articles on some pretty sophisticated wireless home automation systems built with Raspberry Pi.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Uber...-w-Arduino-Pi/

There goes all of my free time...

[Hugh Jahrmes]

Must..resist..

Rasplex sounds sweeeet