Raspberry Pi anyone?

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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

Post by myglaren »

Pi Dive

Pics Austrian high-altitude geezer Felix Baumgartner had better watch his back, because there's a furry Brit contender for the world skydiving record preparing to leap into the void from a breathtaking 39,000m.

Tomorrow (Saturday), weather permitting, Raspberry Pi Mascot Babbage Bear will ascend to the stratosphere over the green fields of Blighty before making his jump into the history books.
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

Post by CitroJim »

Speaking of Babbage, there was a documentary on Radio 4 last week about his missus, Ada Lovelace.

The programming language Ada is named after her..
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

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We used Ada at uni (because it was free and the Uni were cheapskates)
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

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Ada Lovelace was Lord Byron's daughter and a rather remarkable woman.
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

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myglaren wrote:Ada Lovelace was Lord Byron's daughter and a rather remarkable woman.

Wasn't she ever :-D Imagine her in the 21st century and what she might have achieved :-D
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Post by addo »

Her daughter Linda had some remarkable talents, too. :wink:
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

Post by Wookey »

Please, please - anyone getting excited about rasberry Pi's, look at some of the alternatives. The concept behind the Pi (real computers you can mess with, and control stuff, just like the BBC micro) is great, but the actuality is most unfortunate: A proprietary videocore platform, with a 2MB bootloader (running a proprietary OS), which gives you access to the (obsolete) ARM v6 core in the corner of the board. There are so many other devices which don't have these issues, and thus don't have a great big lie about 'open platforms' at their core. Cubieboard is a very nice device for approximately the same money ($49) but about 3 times as much welly, for example. Beagleboard Black is another device with excellent IO options.
If you just want to use it as a media box then one of the rockchip devices is even cheaper than a Pi, ($22) but with 1GB RAM and enough welly to do HD video. Not much IO on those machines though.

If you want something that is entirely open hardware, then the EOMA68-PC from rhombus-tech is very nice (I've got one) but it's quite early days for that so some hacking still needed.

The Pi marketing has been astonishing, and has brought a whole load more people in the arm linux field, which is great - it's just such a pity their platform is so crummy and proprietary, whilst being sold on a story of openness. Still, it turns out that most people don't mind being lied to, so long as the stuff is cheap.
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

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Interesting....
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

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Wookey wrote:Please, please - anyone getting excited about rasberry Pi's, look at some of the alternatives. The concept behind the Pi (real computers you can mess with, and control stuff, just like the BBC micro) is great, but the actuality is most unfortunate: A proprietary videocore platform, with a 2MB bootloader (running a proprietary OS), which gives you access to the (obsolete) ARM v6 core in the corner of the board. There are so many other devices which don't have these issues, and thus don't have a great big lie about 'open platforms' at their core. Cubieboard is a very nice device for approximately the same money ($49) but about 3 times as much welly, for example. Beagleboard Black is another device with excellent IO options.
If you just want to use it as a media box then one of the rockchip devices is even cheaper than a Pi, ($22) but with 1GB RAM and enough welly to do HD video. Not much IO on those machines though.

If you want something that is entirely open hardware, then the EOMA68-PC from rhombus-tech is very nice (I've got one) but it's quite early days for that so some hacking still needed.

The Pi marketing has been astonishing, and has brought a whole load more people in the arm linux field, which is great - it's just such a pity their platform is so crummy and proprietary, whilst being sold on a story of openness. Still, it turns out that most people don't mind being lied to, so long as the stuff is cheap.
Rather disingenuous there. No one from the foundation, or any of the Pi communities I've been a member of have portrayed the Pi as anything other than a learning tool. Sometimes the topic of "What should the next version have" crops up and is normally shot down with the explanation that the Pi is not a production computer.
It's purpose is to provide an entry into programming, that it can be used as a media centre, or LAMP server, or bitcoin miner, or climate control computer for the home or a car is an incidental bonus. It was not designed with that in mind, and it certainly isn't marketed "on a story of openness"
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

Post by Xaccers »

Well with the house move going on and the inclemant weather, thoughts of using the Pi in Cassy have been put on the back burner.
It has however given me the chance to play aound with Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center (OpenELEC).
It's roots go back to the days of Microsoft's Xbox, where with a bit of tweaking it could be turned into a media player running XBMP.
This then evolved into Xbox Media Center (XBMC) which can be installed on old computers to turn them into media centers.
Some clever chap who was involved with it all developed a distro of linux specifically to run XMBC rather than any other gumph that gets installed with linux, and OpenELEC was born.

The hardest part was getting it installed, given that it's linux based so nothing is as simple as it should be ;)
The OpenELEC site talks about setting the Pi up with a USB drive as storage, but I don't need that as I'm just going to be streaming everything to the Pi from my PC or the net.
Eventually with enough bouncing around forums, I found a link to pre compiled images that could be written to the SD card using the same software the Pi uses for Raspian.
Connect it to the HDMI port, plug in the USB keyboard and touch pad, and the USB WIFI dongle and power on.
A few settings later and I'm trying to connect to the wifi at home, it can see it but won't connect.
Turns out unlike Raspian, the underlying linix is a bit flakey when it comes to wifi devices. You just have to keep trying and eventually it connected.
I set up the video, picture and music source as my PC upstairs and was able to stream a movie in beautiful clarity :)
When playing music there's a nice 3D like array of bar chart columns, and when viewing pictures as a slideshow it gently scans around the images before moving on to the next one.
It even comes with a weather module.
There's many add-ons too, such as 4OD, iPlayer, facebook, youtube, catchup-TV (which despite it's name only shows live TV) etc that I need to investigate further.
For Android and iOS there's an app to turn your phone into a remote.
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

Have you looked at Arduino? I only became aware of it over Christmas, and all I know is that it exists.
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

Post by Xaccers »

Hell Razor5543 wrote:Have you looked at Arduino? I only became aware of it over Christmas, and all I know is that it exists.
I've had a brief look, and they're more versatile controller cards than the Pi, but they don't look to me like a computer on a board.
Most of the projects I've seen with them are for controlling other electronics, and when combined with the Pi, they have the Pi sending a simple signal to the Arduino which then does all the hard funky work with the electronics connected.
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

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Here's a project for Jim and Steve, a PiPad 10" Linux tablet made of wood...

Image

http://makezine.com/2014/01/07/how-i-bu ... pi-tablet/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Raspberry Pi anyone?

Post by myglaren »

Reminds me of this:
Image

I don't like fondleslabs but it is certainly a nice project - you're the Pi man though Xac.
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