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Raspberry Pi - $25-35 ARM Linux box w/HDMI

balamw

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
notjustjay said:
You may be right. But my application requires it to be completely turnkey. Do you know if the WDTV box can be configured to jump to slideshow immediately upon power on?
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Dunno. Maybe something even simpler, like this: http://www.satechi.net/index.php/new-products/satechi-cyclone-micro would work for your needs. Or something more hackable like the Patriot Box Office. http://www.patriotmemory.com/products/detailp.jsp?prodline=6&catid=69&prodgroupid=159&id=895

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LimeiBook86

LimeiBook86

macrumors G3
May 4, 2002
8,001
45
Go Vegan
I just got my own Raspberry Pi today, very excited! :D

I have some photos of mine here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53927661@N00/tags/raspberry/

I made a little cardboard case for it just to hold it in there. It's not beautiful but it's quite functional. I used the program "dd-gui.app" to copy the Linux image to my Raspberry Pi. I'm trying "ArmedSlack-13.37-23-05-2012.img" now... and I have a kernel I found too. Not quite sure exactly what will happen but... we'll see how it goes. :)
 
iJohnHenry

iJohnHenry

macrumors P6
Mar 22, 2008
16,530
30
On tenterhooks
OK, let me get this straight.

This product was developed for application in 3rd-World countries, so that they might have the benefit of Internet/computer when all they can afford is a TV.

If I am right about that, then why has it become a toy, for people in 1st-World countries to play with?

Does this demand not take away from the early application of this device where it was intended to go?
 
balamw

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
iJohnHenry said:
This product was developed for application in 3rd-World countries, so that they might have the benefit of Internet/computer when all they can afford is a TV.
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OLPC this ain't. http://www.raspberrypi.org/about

The idea behind a tiny and cheap computer for kids came in 2006, when Eben Upton and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, including Rob Mullins, Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft, became concerned about the year-on-year decline in the numbers and skills levels of the A Level students applying to read Computer Science in each academic year. From a situation in the 1990s where most of the kids applying were coming to interview as experienced hobbyist programmers, the landscape in the 2000s was very different; a typical applicant might only have done a little web design.
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It was meant to give first world kids better hands-on tinker skills by having more cheap computers in first world schools, such as many of us developed in the late 70s-mid 80s. The days when 8 bit computers with TV screens reigned supreme.

EDIT: It's meant to be along the lines of the good old ZX81/TS1000

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kolax

macrumors G3
Mar 20, 2007
9,181
115
Mine arrived today. I'm eager to get it up and running with minimal equipment, as I plan to remotely do stuff on it using SSH.

I was hoping to use it as a bit torrent server, though since the USB ports and Ethernet are on the same bus, there's issues with downloading data and writing to a hard drive.

Which is frustrating because the Pi also seems to have issues with large SD cards!
 
LimeiBook86

LimeiBook86

macrumors G3
May 4, 2002
8,001
45
Go Vegan
Apple4Ever&Ever said:
Can we put IOS 5 on it? other wise Iam not wasting my time with this.
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The point of this device is not to run iOS 5 or anything else besides Linux. So expecting it to do that is unreasonable. It's made to be a learning tool, a little hackable computer, or a server some some kind. At the very least it's something fun to tinker with.
 
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kolax

macrumors G3
Mar 20, 2007
9,181
115
Got mine up and running - using Arch Linux with CLI. Pretty fun to tinker with.

I'm having trouble resizing the partitions so it takes advantage of the full 8GB SD card I have - the image supplied is 2GB and so the Pi will only see 2GB. The instructions on their wiki don't work - fdisk doesn't let me do what the instructions imply. I'm logged in as root.
 
balamw

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
Kilamite said:
I'm having trouble resizing the partitions so it takes advantage of the full 8GB SD card I have - the image supplied is 2GB and so the Pi will only see 2GB.
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Finally got mine up and running using debian on a 4GB Transcend Class 10 SDHC card. So far I find it pretty peppy compared to what I was hearing from some reviews for a tiny < $100 computer.

I was able to take advantage of the full 4GB using the instructions from the site you had linked. Of course, since it's a Wiki, it could have been updated since you linked it. I used the instructions for doing it on the R-Pi, though I created a new swap partition as /dev/mmcblk0p3 before creating the larger /dev/mmcblk0p2 and it all worked well.

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kolax

macrumors G3
Mar 20, 2007
9,181
115
balamw said:
Finally got mine up and running using debian on a 4GB Transcend Class 10 SDHC card. So far I find it pretty peppy compared to what I was hearing from some reviews for a tiny < $100 computer.

I was able to take advantage of the full 4GB using the instructions from the site you had linked. Of course, since it's a Wiki, it could have been updated since you linked it. I used the instructions for doing it on the R-Pi, though I created a new swap partition as /dev/mmcblk0p3 before creating the larger /dev/mmcblk0p2 and it all worked well.

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Click to expand...

I just created a new partition, and put the /home directory on the new partition so any content I create gets saved there.

Working quite well, if you or anyone else is planning to use it as a torrent server, read this thread: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/v...sid=52bb49ca5477690cdbb92d7a6e9ac37b&start=50

I got mine setup using monit to check if the transmission-daemon is running every minute and if it isn't, restart it. For some reason the transmission-daemon crashes frequently during high speeds (even though the Pi shows no swap disk usage, lowish CPU and lowish memory).
 
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scottyjuk

macrumors newbie
Dec 21, 2010
5
0
Got mine last week

My Raspberry Pi arrived last week, and I have the default Debian image installed on it, and have to say that it's much better than I was ever expecting it to be.

I'm hoping to get my 15 yr old son started on doing some programming and a bit of electronics. My plan is to try some of the breadboard setups that people have been posting and teach him how to interact from code to say turn on LED's etc

Takes me back to school when we had a Physics project to build a circuit to control from an old AppleII

I'll post pics once I've decided on a project to follow and ordered the stuff off the web
 
juanm

juanm

macrumors 68000
May 1, 2006
1,624
3,053
Fury 161
scottyjuk said:
My Raspberry Pi arrived last week, and I have the default Debian image installed on it, and have to say that it's much better than I was ever expecting it to be.

I'm hoping to get my 15 yr old son started on doing some programming and a bit of electronics. My plan is to try some of the breadboard setups that people have been posting and teach him how to interact from code to say turn on LED's etc

Takes me back to school when we had a Physics project to build a circuit to control from an old AppleII

I'll post pics once I've decided on a project to follow and ordered the stuff off the web
Click to expand...

You might want to give Arduino a try too.
 
balamw

balamw

Moderator emeritus
Aug 16, 2005
19,366
979
New England
juanm said:
You might want to give Arduino a try too.
Click to expand...

Actually one thing I plan to do shortly is interface my Sparkfun ProtoSnap to the Pi. ;)

However, I think that the R-Pi does so much more than an Arduino that it is a better environment to learn on. Something about seeing your work "on the big screen" (TV) as we all did back in the 8 bit days is attractive.

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