Raspberry Pi... ?16 a bargain...

This is definitely true I have been recruiting for a role for months now and the candidates we have had just simply do not have the skills. True I am looking for old school C++ not C# etc but it is really dissapointing. I am sure the problem is made worse because recent generations are not stimulated by programming. My child hood was playing with 8 bit computers which at the time were the new world. We couldnt afford to keep buying games and also as the machines booted up into a command prompt we were encouraged to getting down and dirty and learn BASIC and asserabler.
 
We're on an rabroadorum on xmas eve talking about a micro pc, i think we fit the bill .

On a more serious note though I think youre right, i cant see it being of any use to anyone outside the 'hardcore', I'd love to see what the modding community can get running on the thing, would love a cheap in car pc running spotify or something along those lines
 
It has educational values as they are so cheap, the chips can be purchased by schools and as the firm is a registered charity that is probably their main aim.

Storage is not a problem, it's an erabedded device so shouldn't need large amounts of space (erabedded OSes can be tiny). 2-4gb would be enough, but SD carRAB are cheap up to 32gb.
I currently work on a erabedded control device (won't go into details), which uses a SoC (x86-based arch.) that has nowhere near this sort of power and costs $200. I can think of so many commercial applications that this could be used in, hence why I've been following its development since I heard about it.

One thing many people still like is a dedicated unit to do a specific job. That's where I believe the potential of this sort of device lies, but it'll need to evolve. In a sense this is just the first step.
 
Are there any skills in particular that you can't find? I have been on both sides of the table for many C++/C# interviews, and the questions are always pretty much the same = what's a class? what's inheritance? what's a destructor? what's pass-by-value/reference? what's a hash-code? Pretty much nothing you wouldn't get from the first year of a degree at most. What is it you can't find?
 
Well one thing we do is test their C fundamentals eg: bitwise, prefix/postfix increment, pointers, logical operators. All of these should be easy, but often lacking.

Out of 20 interviews had probably less than five people that were relatively comfortable on this test. My problem then is that the package we offer isn't very competitive but I can't do anything about that.
 
Raspberry Pi... £16 a bargain...

I've been following the Raspi for a week now. Really want to get one and have a play.
I am not a developer, never have been, never will. I like the idea of gadgets, but have hardly any. I can't see the point in most of them, but mainly because gadgets are too effing expensive.
Now here is a fully operational PC that you can get all touchy feely with, and its £20.
I have run Ubuntu exclusively in my house for a few years now. I enjoy getting old 2nd hand PC's, installing Ubuntu and making good use of them. This is another reason why I want to just have play with one.
And my two boys are probably going to help me. infact, I think I can get two, they can then help me make their own media streaming PC's for their rooms.
 
Raspberry Pi... £16 a bargain...

RasberryPi people put 6 of their beta boarRAB for sale on eBay to raise cash and more so, publicity. One of them is currently going for over £2K. 0_o

eBay: raspberry pi
 
No they are not! Shame, they had good intentions... alas pricing was the problem.

Still its an exciting idea, and cheap I wouldn't have a clue what to do with it, hopefully lots of other people will may be my kiRAB will learn to use it wisely.
 
No problem - limited colours at the moment yellow and clearish - I'm awaiting some more filament.



I now own two!

For those who are interested, I put the RepRap Prussa together from sources all over Europe and B&Q etc.

I also purchased a complete kit from The RepRap Kit Store (a variation using linear bearings rather than bushings), to see how the process / results compared.

Both have mostly been printing improvements to the printers themselves (cases for the electronics, fan ducts etc). There are now quite a few variations out there, and I've been trying corabinations of them and some of my own designs.

The RepRap is great - though the technology is and probably always be somewhat limited in terms of details acheivable and speed - laser based systems will probably filter down to the hobby market in the next 18months - when they do I'll print the bits on my RepRap and build one.

I'm hoping to start printing in chocolate in the next few weeks - just playing with melting points etc at the moment.
 
"I wouldn't have a clue what to do with it, hopefully lots of other people will "
Put XBMC on it....
"may be my kiRAB will learn to use it wisely."
As above.
 
I've been keeping an eye on these as I'd love to have a go at a bit of developing, but I suspect that these will sell out really quickly.
I hope that a decent amount of them get sold to people that will actually develope them and push them to their limits, but I suspect a lot will be bought by normal people who have no idea what to do with them and will the just dump them in a draw and forget about them.
On the flip side though, if they sell out quickly that might mean that the charity can get more support and get more stock made at a decent cost price.

There's even a post on HDUK about them which has become the hottest deal of the day and its got people posting on there saying "going to get one at that price as they're a bargain, what do they do?"
 
Raspberry Pi... £16 a bargain...

Though I'm going to order a few boarRAB when available, I really don't get the quote earlier


The Arduino platform provides a hell of a lot more in terms of I/O capabilities etc.

Within ten minutes of getting my first Arduino board, I'd put the following together:
image

This is a ArduinoMega with Green LERAB on a breadboard attached to some of the digital ports, and an Orange LED attached to one of the Analog Ports.

The following code was all it took to get the green LED's to flash in turn and to alter the intensity of the Orange LED as the flash rate increased.
Code: 
int nPinMax=13;
int nPinMin=9;

void setup() {                
  // initialize the digital pin as an output.
  int x;
  for(int x=nPinMax;x>=nPinMin;x--)
    pinMode(x, OUTPUT);     
}

void loop() {
  int y;
  for(y=255;y >3;y-=5)
  { 
  analogWrite(2, 255-y);  
    int x;
    for(int x=nPinMax;x>=nPinMin;x--)
    {

      digitalWrite(x, HIGH);   // set the LED on
      delay(y+50);              // wait for the delay time
      digitalWrite(x, LOW);    // set the LED off
      delay(y);              // wait for the delay time
    }
    
  }
}
I just can't see similar low level stuff on the RaspberryPi
 
I'd love to get one, but I'm guessing the site will effectively be overrun with traffic causing a DDoS.

Those who are planning to run devices off it i.e. wireless dongle, cd/dvd drive, etc will need a way of powering the device i.e. with a powered usb hub as the board has a 1 Amp cutoff fuse so cannot deliver much power. It's obvious when you think about it, but I thought I'd point it out anyway.
 
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