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Geek Culture / The Raspberry Pi Device

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zog
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Posted: 28th Nov 2011 22:36 Edited at: 29th Nov 2011 04:53
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There is serious momentum growing behind a new £25 computer the size of a credit card called a raspberrypi (corrected ) www.raspberrypi.org . This computer is shortly to be released. It is a linux box, but with some awsesome graphical capabilites for a computer that runs on 1 Watt of power. It has an arm processor. The idea behind the device is to teach school kids how to program. The government may be equipping a school near you with thousands of these computers. The device has a lot of backing from the British government and the BBC. I wonder if the App game kit will work on such a device ?
This could be a golden opportunity for the game creators community.

Also because this device draws so little current it is ideal for indy mobile application devices, and control systems.

You could buy ten of these for £250 quid and make a parallel computing system - 1 program running on each device. There may be an opportunity to develop a massively parallel OS for example.

You could also use these devices as super smart controllers for small robots.

Jack Taylor

Jack Taylor
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Neuro Fuzzy
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Posted: 28th Nov 2011 22:44 Edited at: 28th Nov 2011 22:50
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Ah, I thought that was weird. Not .com.
http://www.raspberrypi.org

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zog
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Posted: 29th Nov 2011 04:52
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yeah sorry about that

sorry the site has two web addresses

www.raspberrypi.org is the main site for the organisation

www.raspberrypi.com is the online shop which is just selling stickers at the moment

Jack Taylor
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Agent Dink
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Posted: 29th Nov 2011 05:33
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This is awesome. I want at least one. I picture this being spectacular for emulators and roms as well as was mentioned on the site, HD video... a $25 home theatre pc solution? Count me in!

http://lossofanonymity.wordpress.com
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ionstream
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Posted: 29th Nov 2011 06:01
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This looks pretty darned awesome and I would love to make and play games on it one day.

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Phaelax
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Posted: 29th Nov 2011 06:09
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I'm still trying to figure out the point of the device. It's got half the power of a standard cell phone. And considering it's nearly december (when they claim it'll be released), there's still no pictures of this device?

Quote: "here is no Ethernet on the Model A version (which we expect to be taken up mostly by the education market)"


Umm, what educational market doesn't have all their computers networked together through ethernet?

It should have bluetooth built in so I wouldn't need a usb hub to plug in input peripherals.

And while asking for WiDi is I'm sure out of the question, it would be sweet. Just stick it in your pocket connected to a battery, and start typing away at a keyboard and monitor with no apparent PC in sight. It'd be madness I tell ya!

"You're not going crazy. You're going sane in a crazy world!" ~Tick
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Oolite
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Posted: 29th Nov 2011 14:34
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Sounds tasty.
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MrValentine
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Posted: 29th Nov 2011 15:07 Edited at: 29th Nov 2011 18:47
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£25 not dollars

ModEdit: Please stay on topic

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bitJericho
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Posted: 29th Nov 2011 16:02
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They're looking to sell it for 25 USD


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MrValentine
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Posted: 29th Nov 2011 16:09
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Awkward...

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The Wilderbeast
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Posted: 29th Nov 2011 22:16
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It's released as two separate models, hence the two prices.

Quote: "I'm still trying to figure out the point of the device. It's got half the power of a standard cell phone. And considering it's nearly december (when they claim it'll be released), there's still no pictures of this device?"

It's for the educational market to encourage people to learn to program. For £20 - £30 you have a fully functioning computer which you can learn a variety of programming languages on.
Define standard cellphone. If we're going by smartphones then I would say it's on par with a low-mid range cellphone. Sure, it's got a last-gen ARMv6 chip (700MHz), but the GPU is pretty high-end (for a mobile solution) and can push Quake 3 at 1080p.


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the_winch
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Posted: 29th Nov 2011 23:39
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What kind of school wants to teach programming yet has no computers?

I'd be more interested in this if it didn't use an undocumented broadcom chip you can only buy in massive quantities.
In contrast to something like arduino where they used chips anybody can use with an open design and encouraged derivatives and even outright clones.

By way of demonstration, he emitted a batlike squeak that was indeed bothersome.
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The Wilderbeast
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Posted: 30th Nov 2011 02:16
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I think this is a hot topic for debate (with regards to the Broadcom chip). It's an OEM chip, so it makes sense they would use it as it brings the cost down. With regards to documentation (or rather lack of) it's a pitty, but they're working on it.

TBH, unless you're doing bare-metal programming then the lack of documentation isn't a biggy as you're doing most of your interfacing via Open GL or X.


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Neuro Fuzzy
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Posted: 30th Nov 2011 07:03
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I hope there's gonna be some good software for it. I might pick up a couple of these for tutoring people, but only if there's a nicer way to do stuff besides programming in C and accessing OpenGL directly. (C isn't so bad if there's good libraries for it I guess, but something like basic would be way better for use in schools)

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The Wilderbeast
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Posted: 30th Nov 2011 08:54 Edited at: 30th Nov 2011 09:04
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It's Linux, so I reckon you probably have the widest choice of languages there is.

Initial speculation is that the 'official' OS is going to be Debian ARM - in which case it should be a simple job of '# apt-get install [...]' as Debian has a huge repository for ARM.

Though there's a new distro built on MeeGo (on top of Debian I think?) which is heavily focused on QT. This might become the official distro, and that's alright because you've got things like QT Creator etc. which make development a lot easier.

I think Python is going to be the language of choice from the start, or possibly C++ with QT. But there's plenty of libraries for both. Don't forget you will need to make slight modifications to get things running on OpenGL ES2 (as opposed to plain old OpenGL). Having never done this before I can't give any pointers there.

There's also an initial limit of one device per customer for the first 10K units. Though there's a competition by Nokia at the moment where you could win one - they have 400 to give away and only ~250 have signed up.
http://wiki.qt-project.org/Qt_RaspberryPi/Device_program


Oh, and here's a picture of the 'Alpha' board - the Beta is a fair bit different due to the power jack which is now Micro USB (so it can be powered directly from a PC), and the placement of the IO ports + headers.


Board layout (final)P



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kaedroho
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Posted: 20th Feb 2012 13:17
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Just so no one forgets, the first 10k batch come of the line today.

They should be available on the Raspberry Pi store later this week!
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DevilLiger
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2012 22:37 Edited at: 23rd Feb 2012 22:39
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i wonder if it can support mame emulator without any slow down because i wanted to build an arcade cabinet. btw i will probably use linux on it to be able to have mame. yep...



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JRH
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2012 22:49
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I can't wait! I see myself owning a few of these... just to mess around with; building useless circuits, setting up a 'portable server', etc...

They're just damn cool.
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zog
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Posted: 29th Feb 2012 07:42 Edited at: 29th Feb 2012 07:46
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I just tried to buy a raspberry pi device at 6am on feb 29. On sale from farnell and RS at 6am this morniing GMT.

I had no luck though both RS and farnell sites are not responding probably due to, too much traffic.

I hope I manage to buy one soon. I have got a feeling that they will be sold out by the time I able to get online again.

Jack

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BiggAdd
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Posted: 29th Feb 2012 08:56
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According to RS, they don't start selling the device until the end of the week!

I want it! I want it now!!!
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Nickydude
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Posted: 29th Feb 2012 15:47
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Quote: "I want it! I want it now!!! "


"We want it now! We want it now!!!"

There, corrected that for you.

I reject your reality and substitute my own...
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