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

Will be up early trying to get 1. Will be used running raspbmc when it comes out.

Will also be looking to get one and use it as a file server or possibly running a webcam with access online.

If I dont then so be it as long as some devs get some, I can wait! 10000 should be enough to get the ball rolling though!
 
Raspberry Pi... £16 a bargain...

The Raspberry Pi includes the GPIO interface - there is a controller board coming out (don't know when) - video of it working here - really easy to program by the looks of it: Raspberry Pi's Gertboard expansion board already works (video)

I ordered a Rasp Pi yesterday from Farnell and and got the order confirmation email

Cost is £26 (includes shipping) ex VAT.

You can register your interest here Raspberry Pi at Farnell. They have a separate site which has more info Design Engineer Community | Online Electronic Resources and Support Homepage - element14

Looks like they are going to be selling bundles with cables, sd carRAB etc.
 
Anyone know much regarding the support for bitstreaming audio via HDMI things like DD ? Also not sure i understand the limitations of GPU decoding of video formats. I heard it can not hardware decode say divx or maybe xvid because of licencing but i thought all that stuff was just down to the software decoder using the hardware ?
 
I predict that in a few months there will be hundreRAB of these things sat in drawers gathering dust.

Not because they are bad, but because of the hype and the low price will encourage loaRAB of customers who have no idea what it do with them.

I imagine in the short term they will go for silly money on eBay.

I've registered my interest with RS but I suspect they will be sold out by the time they contact me to say that they have stock.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
Raspberry Pi... £16 a bargain...

Oddly enough there are none up on Ebay. There were a couple of listings yesterday, one for £999! These have gone though, so hopefully may have been removed.
Here's a nice custom case though.
Custom case for Raspberry Pi Model B *professional! Recycled!* | eBay
 
The GPU "driver" (not sure its actually a driver) is a closed source binary supplied by broadcom. You have to pay them to extra to enable various codecs so they can be processed by the GPU. The RPi has h264 but not divx/xvid as it would have bumped the price considerably.
You can still decode those formats purely on the CPU, but the CPU on the Pi is relatively weak in comparison to the CPU so i'm not sure how well it will do.

On a normal PC sw decoding of those formats is fairly trivial. You may also get hardware decoding as the graphics card people probably have a licence.


That is how i have gleamed it from the RPi forums. I could be a little fuzzy on the details.
 
It's powered via micro usb or the GPIO onboard. Easiest way is to use a mobile phone charger (assuming it's micro usb) or via a PCs usb port.
 
They've been 'launched' but both sites selling them are struggling, and that means two major electronics manufacturers websites have been taken down by volume of traffic at 6am.
 
I can see it being the start of a whole new industry, just like the IBM PC, 30 years ago. It has the same attributes: clearly defined hardware/software interfaces, making soft/hard add-ons easy, plus one other - it is dirt cheap.

For example, I can see it being an easy way to power erabedded applications. There are more vastly more erabedded devices now than there are PCs and growing so that market alone is huge.

Additionally someone could very easily put together a Linux based package to replace WinTel desktop PCs. That is to say an open source office package, like OpenOffice, plus some comms and browser. The savings would be enormous but it would need to be packaged up to avoid techno-fear.

As to comments about schools having lot of PCs, they do and all those kiRAB do things the Microsoft way. This box may save them from Visual BASIC.
 
There are SO many things that could be done with this thing. The RPi forums are likely to be very active i would've thought and no doubt there will be plenty of projects/howtos that will be written up there.

As far as the techno-fear, its hardly any different to windows for openoffice/browsing. Eventually you'll be able to buy one with the OS pre-installed, that will come with a browser (and maybe OO too).

If no OO is installed you simply start a terminal and type:
apt-get install openoffice.org

IMO its actually quicker and easier than windows. No starting the browser. No navigating to the openoffice website. No downloading file. No trying to find file on disk. No stupid installation wizard.
 
I agree its quicker and easier but without knowing what to do you'd never be able to do it, whereas with the open office website way etc. its pretty intuitive and quite simple to get done. But thats swings and roundabouts, cant bloody wait to get my hanRAB on this thing, the possibilites are obviously no greater than any pc but for the size and cost its a big
 
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