Rasberry Pi Everywhere!

[threegee]

http://rastrack.co.uk/ If that's anything like accurate - wow!

Was going to get one or two last year but I settled for an Olimex board, as those have a completely open design. Anyone in Bedders playing with a RP?

And... for those who haven't got a clue what this is all about: http://www.raspberrypi.org/

[Brett]

I've got one but I haven't had the chance to have a play with it yet.

I was just going to try Raspbmc for the time being as I haven't really got the time to mess around with it.

Should allow me to stream HD media over the LAN in the house.

[Malcolm Robinson]

Will you two stop talking Swahili!

[Gary Partis]

Was going to buy one - but was put off by it's closed architecture :-(

[Brett]

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1901

[threegee]

I just love the completely out-of-the-blue "Maybe because I am Jewish"! You won't do exactly what I want so you must be an anti-semite seems to work on lots of politicos. Haven't heard much from Cherie Blair since her little critique of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians have we?

Some guy extracted a sample of one of our budget products once. I think we did get a half-baked magazine review out of it, but we were later ashamed we fell for the pitch! I'm surprised Eben didn't explain what a non-profit foundation means in real English, a concept obviously completely lost on "Steve"!

[Brett]

I just love the completely out-of-the-blue "Maybe because I am Jewish"! You won't do exactly what I want so you must be an anti-semite seems to work on lots of politicos. Haven't heard much from Cherie Blair since her little critique of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians have we?

Some guy extracted a sample of one of our budget products once. I think we did get a half-baked magazine review out of it, but we were later ashamed we fell for the pitch! I'm surprised Eben didn't explain what a non-profit foundation means in real English, a concept obviously completely lost on "Steve"!

The lengths some people will go to is unreal.

[threegee]

Was going to buy one - but was put off by it's closed architecture :-(

It had to come, an open RasPi! http://cubieboard.org/

It's based on an Allwinner A10 as now used in 1001 cheap tablets, and Cubieboard are already producing a dual-core A20 version.

I will probably order one, but I've already had a pcDuino (also A10 based) on the way directly from China for well over a month. Will likely report on that soon.

[Brett]

Apparently the Ouya is getting raving reviews for a gaming platform but can be sideloaded to run XBMC for a media centre application.

Also http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/xbmc-os-on-stealth-nighthawk-f-117a-tvdongle/

From one of the creators of RaspBMC I do believe.

[threegee]

pcDuino update: Not the fastest computer in the world, but I'm still very impressed. A few silly design decisions like fitting the microSD socket on the underside of the PCB, meaning I've had to remove one of the redundant mounting pillars on the case just to be able to swap the card without unscrewing the PCB from the case every time. But the software support is impressive, even though there are bugs in the Bluetooth preventing recognised devices to pair properly. This has prevented connecting a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse so far.

The stock Ubuntu image comes with XBMC as a load option, and I've had that spooling movies from the local NAS at reasonable res, though it has problems with real HD stuff. Got it running a minimal webserver in minutes (lighttp). Full ARM GCC++ on-board is very impressive, and they've provided access to quite a lot of the I/O pins and on-chip peripherals through the file system. I'm not bothered by the Arduino "compatibility", so that's a bit of a waste, and it pushes things in a direction I don't want to go. But I suppose for someone with minimal hardware experience (and whose sole experience comes through Arduino modules) it could be a big plus. My main beef with this is that they've only pinned-out a sub-set of the A10 I/O to the Arduino connectors.

I very quickly filled the balance of the 2GB of on-board flash, resulting in an O/S that wouldn't boot. Perhaps I shouldn't have downloaded a full length movie to it before running the Synaptic package manager to add to the storage bottleneck? Solved by preparing a Ubuntu (lubuntu) microSD and booting from that, then cleaning the on-board flash. The O/S from the on-line image is more complete, and there seems to be little overhead from running out of the microSD. I haven't created a dual boot Linux/Android system just yet, but I will when more cheap microSD cards arrive.

Anyway this has fired me up with enthusiasm for tiny Linux SBCs, and I've just ordered an A20 Cubie Board with case and all leads for a tad under £50 including shipping. There'll surely be hours of endless fun connecting things to the pcDuino before the Cubie arrives from China, and some of the "projects" may get published.

I'd say to anyone thinking about a RasPi: look further afield, there's now far better out there; better faster chips, open architecture, and more memory, for the same sort of money. Just seen a RasPi and case offered for slightly more than I paid for the pcDuino and case, which is silly.