Raspberry Pi's $35 Linux PC

[40hz]

[Continuing the aside}

Blimey I had completely forgotten about Modular! A blast from the past - and yes it was a great Pascal-like language.

I do remember having fun with Forth - though it seems less like high level programming and more like a cross between a Mensa logic puzzle and assembly language!

-Carol Haynes (June 21, 2012, 11:57 AM)

Sorta. They did call it a mid-level language. And with good reason. FORTH's methodology is weird by today's standards. But for real-time controllers and things that interfaced with the real world you couldn't beat it. Especially with the limitations and clock speeds of the 8 and 16-bit hardware you had to work with back then. It screamed on a Zilog Z-80 chip. I used to run it (FigFORTH) on my C64. It was a lot easier than writing 6510 assembly via HesMon. You could program some pretty cool things for the SID music chip that way.

FORTH still has its supporters. And it's still used to this day. Last I heard there was a version of it you could run on an Arduino. My understanding is it's not a difficult environment to port. The core kernal is tiny. Most of FORTH is written in FORTH. And if something you wanted wasn't a part of the language, you could always add it yourself fairly easily. Much easier than trying to master an "everything plus the kitchen sink" framework like Net or Mono. Sleeker and much easier to understand too. That's one major reason FORTH became so popular for a while. You could engineer your own private FORTH-based language if you wanted to. ( Same went for Modula now that I think about it.)

[Carol Haynes]

If you want to play with Forth a good place to start is: http://www.thefreeco...ompilers/forth.shtml

[4wd]

....
Quite a range out there. The $19 board freaks me out. But, there are lots of options.

-Renegade (June 20, 2012, 02:47 PM)

You've also got the Android 4.0 based MK802, (Engadget link), for $78, (DX link).

[Target]

at the risk of going off on a tangent (HA!) these little boards have caught my attention of late, and I would like to learn a bit more but I don't know where to start

Can anyone recommend some good introductory resources - web based stuff is good, but good books would suit me better

EDIT: I'm guessing as total noob that arduino is probably a good pick, but I'm open to advice from all you experts...

[40hz]

^Which board you should pick will depend on what you want to accomplish.

The Arundino is probably best suited for gadget and controller type projects. There's a huge hobbyist community in love with the thing. And for good reason. It's probably the best documented of all the tiny PCs because of that interest. A quick check of Amazon will point you to several books that are available for it. Make magazine does quite a few Arundino based projects, and there's lots more on the web.

If you're looking more for a small form factor general purpose PC, something like the PandaBoard is a better choice in that it can run most flavors of Windows or Linux. So anything that applies to those operating systems will apply to the board as well.

The RasberryPi is very much like the PandaBoard except it's more stripped down and less ready to go straight out of the box. However, that makes sense as it was designed to be a learning/experimenter's board. And now that it's shipping, a very active community seems to be developing around it. If they can get the manufacturing backlog straightened out I think it will eventually become as popular as the Arundino. From what I can see there's only one real book available for it called Beginning Rasberry Pi. It's only available as a Kindle edition (hmm...is this the shape of things to come?), but I suspect there will be other titles out shortly.

So...what's best?

Depends on what you want to do.

[Renegade]

I forget where I was reading, but you can run Mono on a Raspberry Pi and program in C# if you like! I forget the distro though... Meh... The wait is long enough so no rush~!

EDIT:

Found it:

http://www.raspberry....php?f=34&t=6720

[wraith808]

Cool.. thanks for the link!

[Target]

^Which board you should pick will depend on what you want to accomplish.

-40hz (June 26, 2012, 05:20 AM)

I was leaning toward the arduino for this very reason (I have a small robotics project in mind).  I've done a bit of research, and as you say there are any number of resources available, but as this is potentially a very complex subject I guess I was looking for a recommendation of a good entry point.  I've read some of the make stuff and it's not really what I was looking for (it was more 'insert tab a into slot b' type of stuff).

[4wd]

I was leaning toward the arduino for this very reason (I have a small robotics project in mind).  I've done a bit of research, and as you say there are any number of resources available, but as this is potentially a very complex subject I guess I was looking for a recommendation of a good entry point.

-Target (June 26, 2012, 06:39 PM)

You could connect multiple Arduino together using it's I2C bus, ethernet or GPIO.  Using the Arduino Nano you could possibly break down a complex project into a set of discrete modules.

Arduino I2C interconnection

[Rover]

   I have a Raspberry Pi B Linux Computer in my possession.

 

Master of Similes was not given without thought.

[sword]

Some 'mini' and Single Board Computers (SBC) listed by amount of RAM. Some combine other products like power supplies/bricks. 'ARMini includes 'Beagleboard'. Specifications and prices may not be the latest.

256 MB: Raspberry Pi, $35.00; OLPC XO,   188.00
512 MB: Goosberry, 48.00; Android 4.0, 70.00; TonidoPlug, 99.00; EVI 'Yzi", 203.00; InkMedia, 300.00; ARMini, 718.00
1 GB: CuBox, 132.00; Pandaboard, 174.00; PCM-3363, 350.00; Trim-Slice, 410.00; AMD LiveBox Mini PC $?    
2 GB: COMe-mCT10 mini, 185.00; MB-73240, 340.00; Iguana, 680.00; Intel D945GCLP, $?; Zotac ZBOX nano XS, $?
4 GB: J & W MINIX, 189.00; Zotac mobo, 239.00; ARTiGO A1150, 250.00; Logic Supply LGX AG150, 435.00; LinuxmintBox, 476.00.    
8 GB: VIA VE-900, 89.00; EPIA-M910, 300.00; conga-TS67, 500.00; LinuxmintBox, 549.00.
MB?:
Rhombus Tech Allwinner, 100.00 to 41.00?; PogoPlug, 120.00;Conga-TCA, 200.00; Shuttle,    210.00+; PXM-C388-S, 499.00; conga-TS67, 500.00; Altair ALT1600, 795.00
other: HP SBC625; Mini-IYX;  Commodore Mini-ITX; 'embedded boards'.

[Renegade]

  I have a Raspberry Pi B Linux Computer in my possession.

 

Master of Similes was not given without thought.

-Rover (June 27, 2012, 10:34 PM)

Congrats~!

Still waiting here... Sometime in August I should get them... Ordered 2 as shipping was almost $15, so figured I might as well get free shipping and buy 2.

But I am pretty excited to get them! I've already got some plans in the works for it, and am currently going through some of the learning curve for some new programming techniques and whatnot that I'll be using once I get them in August. Crossing fingers and hoping that this all works out...



So, anyone care to disclose what they're planning for their Raspberry Pis?

[y0himba]

We waited 4 months.  Ordered my Raspberry Pi in March, got it two weeks ago. Works great.  I am using an old Motorola phone charger to power it, HDMI to our 60' LCD TV, Fedora remix on it.  Will get around to putting XBMC on it sometime this weekend I hope. I ordered it for my 14 year old, he is in charge of it.

We cannot get wireless to work on it.  Tried several adapters.  I just ran another 20 ft. Cat6a to it. It is also finicky about USB keyboards with USB hubs built in.  Tried Razer and Kensington keyboards, it will not recognize them. throws an error about not being able to reset USB port 6 or 8.

Other than that, browsing the web on it is ridiculous fun.

[ebs]

I've got mine running XBMC (OpenELEC version http://openelec.tv/news) and it's great!
It plays videos and FLAC files from my network, and works fine with the Lenovo HTPC Keyboard Remote (wireless trackball and keyboard).
I also got this laser cut case: http://builttospecstore.storenvy.com/products/404262-raspberry-pi-enclosure-kit, which gives it a finished look.

For my basic HTPC needs, it's perfect - tiny, dead silent, and it runs from a cellphone charger.

[y0himba]

Which distro of OpenELEC did you put on it? I cannot figure out which one to download.

[ebs]

I got a compiled image from this site: http://sparky0815.de/openelec-download-images-fat-files/

He has images for different sizes of SD cards. I used Win32 Disk Imager https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer to write the image to the SD card.

[y0himba]

Thanks!  Writing to the SD now.  

Working.  A couple of questions though:

I would like to change the weather temp to Fahrenheit from Celsius, cannot find anywhere to do that.

I would like to add my SMB root folder, and have it scan all subfolders for music, video and photos... D:\music\albums\a\artist folder\songs (example)

I cannot figure out where to set the time, it is incorrect.

You have no idea how much your help is appreciated!

[ebs]

To change between Celsius and Fahrenheit go to  Settings -> Appearance -> International  and select your location under "Region".

Not at all obvious, is it? I think this one sets the correct time zone as well.

I added my NAS SMB folder by adding a location like this: "smb://192.168.2.21/music". This lets me browse all my music in the alphabetical subdirectories.
Something similar should probably work for you, but you may want to create a public shared folder on your PC if you can't get it to work directly.
Obviously, you should also change the IP address to match your PC. I tried to use the name "NAS", which is how every other device sees it,
but I couldn't get that to work, so I just used the IP address.

[Carol Haynes]

I couldn't find anywhere on mine to change the time - plug in an ethernet cable and it grabs the time from the internet.

[ebs]

Right - but you have to set your location/time zone as I described above.

[y0himba]

Oh I can get to my music without any problems, I am trying to get a shuffle all function that will shuffle all 6000 songs.  Any ideas?  I just want to pick one, hit shuffle, and read my book.  

I can pick a single album or folder and shuffle the songs in it, but not all 6000+ songs under all subfolders...

[ebs]

I'm afraid I can't help with the shuffle question.

Now, if you'd like to send me all 6000 songs, I could do some research... 

[Arizona Hot]

Raspberry Pi in space: Putting the Linux PC into orbit is an article that I think belongs in this discussion.

[Renegade]

WOOHOO~! A Raspberry Pi came in the mail today! -- Ordered 2, but got 1 shipped. I guess the other will come later.

Unfortunately, I'm swamped with work and can't even look at it for now. 

But at least it is here now, so I can fiddle with it when I do have time next week or so.

[4wd]

Well, mine arrived a couple of days after Renegades, running Raspbian so I get the benefit of hardware floating-point rather than the software version in the default RPi Debian distro.

Already compiled Quake3 on it and had a play, now it's off to get the LAMPi going so I can repurpose the XP web server to something else.

For anyone who wants a case, the Punnet may fit your needs