Raspberry Pi

[Mayhem]

I was helping out with some filming today, and one of things being demonstrated at the school was the Pi, so I finally had a chance to get one in my hands and check it over. Colour me quietly impressed. Can't imagine I'll have the need for one per se, but it's good to see a reasonably powerful piece of kit in such a small space, with plenty of options to expand.

[tufty]

please tell me I don't want this (mainly the lapdock, but Pi too if you want)

You don't want the lapdock because you have no need for it.

You don't want the Pi because :

- it is slow, at the moment. That will change, but the current situation is alpha quality software on beta quality hardware
- it's very finnicky about power supplies. It needs something that pushes out a properly regulated 5v @ > 1A before you get anything like stable behaviour - apart from a few very expensive brand-name wallwarts (Apple, for example), the vast majority of mobile phone chargers don't fit the bill unless they are massively overspecced amperage-wise. Unless you have a brand-name, 2A charger lying about, expect to have to buy a couple of chargers before you find one that provides stable behaviour.
- it may well not like either your keyboard, your mouse, or both. The USB ports are supposed to be capable of sourcing 140mA (more than enough for most simple USB devices), but have in practice been shown to fail to source more than 25mA at an acceptable voltage level due to voltage drop over the polyfuses. The net result is that you will most likely end up shopping around for keyboards.
- If you plug in a USB device that tries to pull too much juice, you may irrevocably fuck the polyfuse on that port, rendering the port entirely non-functional even for low-power devices. Of course, you don't actually know how much is "too much" in most cases, or, indeed, how much juice a given device might want. "but nobody is that stupid" you say, until you realise that you could trigger this by accidentally knocking out the power on hub connected which nas a few devices connected.
- It's finnicky about hubs. For anything over the nominal "140mA" figure, or more than 2 devices, you're going to need a powered hub. It doesn't like hubs that leak power back over the 5V line, though. Which means you're possibly going to have to modify the cable from Pi to hub, "cutting the red wire". However, some hubs won't start up without the red wire connected to 5V, which means you may need to modify the hub itself.
- It's finnicky about what SD cards it will accept. Class 10 is almost certainly out. You may find yourself hunting around for particular brands of SD card.
- Getting properly sized video output is a pain in the ass.
- It's revision 1.

I've been quite generous above, I feel. There are what appear to be significant flaws in the design of the Pi with regards to powering and USB power, and the foundation are saying nothing (in all honesty, that's probably down to legal advice). At least a part of these problems were flagged up as being potential gamestoppers at the point where it was announced the Pi was going from 6->18V input with regulation onboard to 5v micro-USB and rely on the PSU to provide regulated power.

The Via APC looks like a much better bet, although it's so much vapour at the moment. At $49 *with* PSU, 512MB of memory instead of 256, 4 USB ports, separate ethernet & USB, sound in. Obviously, you'd have to wait for someone to port Linux to it (or put up with $%^&ing Android)

Simon

[MattyP]

It's £25 ... A little over half the price of a new release console game.

Got mine last week and its a really nice bit of kit. Most mobile chargers should work fine with it just check the output amperage is above 1000mA and it should be fine. For reference using a Nokia micro USB charger with mine and not had any issues at all.

USB kb and mouse both have been fine too (apple kb and Microsoft wireless mouse).

Seriously have no complaints at the price TBH.

[Firefox]

I actually ordered a charger with my Pi since RS were asking a very non-RS-like fiver for it and I only have one micro USB charger at the minute (which has to charge my phone).

I realise there are going to be things that are less than ideal about the first wave of Pi's (Pies?), but I'm just interested to get in there and find out what they can do. Things like the GP2X that I've bought over the years have been as rough as a badger's arse technically but I've still had a ton of fun playing with them and learnt a lot in the process.

[Cloudane]

No complaints for me either. As long as you take the effort to learn what it needs and not just plug things in randomly expecting it to be an appliance (and it's an educational / tinkering / programming device, so you should) it works just fine

[tufty]

USB kb and mouse both have been fine too (apple kb and Microsoft wireless mouse).

Which model of Apple keyboard? There have been a lot of complaints about keyboards with inbuilt hubs not working, particularly Apple ones. Which is a bit surprising - although mine all claim to pull a maximum of 100mA, they apparently only /actually/ pull around 25mA which shouldn't cause problems. I can see it being a problem if you try and use the hub, of course.

Maybe some polyfuses cause more voltage drop than others, maybe it's all power supply related. Who knows?

[MattyP]

USB kb and mouse both have been fine too (apple kb and Microsoft wireless mouse).

Which model of Apple keyboard? There have been a lot of complaints about keyboards with inbuilt hubs not working, particularly Apple ones. Which is a bit surprising - although mine all claim to pull a maximum of 100mA, they apparently only /actually/ pull around 25mA which shouldn't cause problems. I can see it being a problem if you try and use the hub, of course.

Maybe some polyfuses cause more voltage drop than others, maybe it's all power supply related. Who knows?

Using the flat aluminium type however not using the built in hub on it.

Guessing the best approach would be to use the two USB ports on the Pi for Kb/mouse and then if you need any more ports use a USB hub that is powered - especially if the devices you intend to connect draw a bit of current (external HDDs etc).

Think people just need to accept that it's a low cost device and you have to monitor the quality of the things you connect to it appropriately. The power on the device will be only as good as the thing you are using to supply it TBH. Cheap phone chargers will be just that. Probably fine for charging a phone. I'm guessing if you use a branded one - at least you know it conforms to some sort of internal testing by the company and as such hits a standard. Ie: Says 1000mA output it will deliver or exceed that. With an el-cheapo e-bay job you have no guarentees to what standard it has been tested - sure it may say 1000mA but it may never have been tested rigourously to that standard. This is why you'll always pay a slight premium for a branded product because you can be assured to has been tested thoroughly. Although saying that there are pleny of good unbranded ones out there (and fake branded ones too). It's a minefield....

[adam]

ebay psu's seem dodgy to be honest, branded or not, lots of counterfeits on there

[MattyP]

ebay psu's seem dodgy to be honest, branded or not, lots of counterfeits on there

Agree.... I was lucky I had an Nokia charger I got with my old phone knocking about. Nokia kit seems to be of good build quality in general over my years of experience with them...

Anyway well worth the £25 (plus bits) if you want a linux box to mess about with. It'll provide many more hours entertainment over a game for less money... if you are a "teccy" person... also means you can tinker with linux without messing about setting up a whole PC - with all that unnessary fan noise etc. Also it's suprising what you can do with a 700Mhz processor and 256MB RAM in Linux...

However value is perceptional thing...

[toxibunny]

Got my order code from RS a couple of days ago, but am unsure whether to go for it or not... Back when I ordered, I had an old PC that I couldn't manage to get PyOpenGL working on, and a credit card that still had credit. Nowadays, I've got a new laptop I'm enjoying programming on, and the CC is at it's limit. I'm also turned-off by the technical hitches...


Fuck it. Anyone want my code?

[Misfit]

Got my order code from RS a couple of days ago, but am unsure whether to go for it or not... Back when I ordered, I had an old PC that I couldn't manage to get PyOpenGL working on, and a credit card that still had credit. Nowadays, I've got a new laptop I'm enjoying programming on, and the CC is at it's limit. I'm also turned-off by the technical hitches...

Fuck it. Anyone want my code?

Get it and put it on eBay? Will still probably make a few quid and help ease the CC limit...

[toxibunny]

Got my order code from RS a couple of days ago, but am unsure whether to go for it or not... Back when I ordered, I had an old PC that I couldn't manage to get PyOpenGL working on, and a credit card that still had credit. Nowadays, I've got a new laptop I'm enjoying programming on, and the CC is at it's limit. I'm also turned-off by the technical hitches...

Fuck it. Anyone want my code?

Get it and put it on eBay? Will still probably make a few quid and help ease the CC limit...

Nah. Ebay price is only about 40 quid now, apart from a few people trying their luck with a too-high 'buy it now' price...

lol, I could always sell the code...

[Baggypants]

Got my order code from RS a couple of days ago, but am unsure whether to go for it or not... Back when I ordered, I had an old PC that I couldn't manage to get PyOpenGL working on, and a credit card that still had credit. Nowadays, I've got a new laptop I'm enjoying programming on, and the CC is at it's limit. I'm also turned-off by the technical hitches...


Fuck it. Anyone want my code?

Ohh Me! memememe Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!

[Misfit]

Ohh Me! memememe Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!

Are you sure?!

[toxibunny]

The deed is done.