Raspberry Pi

[Firefox]

Yeah... getting really quite pissed off with the Pi now. Even with the latest "Raspbian" distro running on it, the hardware compatibility is shocking. That's the second USB hub I've bought for the thing, and neither has worked properly with it.

I can use it in my office plugged into the LAN, but without wifi it's sod-all use plugged into the living room telly - after you've plugged in a keyboard and a mouse (once you've found some of those that work), that's all of your USB ports gone.

I'll probably plug a USB drive into it and use it as a headless always-on download server, and leave it at that for now.

[Cloudane]

I'm noticing that. They created a thing for Linux then.... didn't bother with any hardware that is particularly open. Bit of a fail that way.

[tufty]

It's not /entirely/ their fault. The designware provided otg driver is the buggiet piece of crap it's ever been my displeasure to use - it's using 20% of cpu on the pi, and even with that, it manages to fuck the entire usb and ip stack up on a regular basis. It's also totally undocumented, there is no publically available datasheet for the controller, and the code is utterly impenetrable.

Using the designware ip was arguably an error, but it isn't something you could predict - it is relatively small, and has linux drivers - unfortunately it's also shit.

[Firefox]

Ah, right, I didn't know that. That explains a lot.

I don't want to seem to winge too much - it's still a great piece of kit for the price. It's just that it seems to me that the original concept was that the kiddies would get one and then scrounge up random peripherals from where-ever they could. That's not really possible with the current state of USB support on the Pi.

On a more positive note, Raspian is a big improvement over earlier versions of Debian for the Pi - there's now a text-based menu system that allows you to set up all kinds of common configuration options in a nice, friendly way when you first boot it up.

[Colonius]

The USB elephant is covered in depth in this thread

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... &start=200

I think the foundation is having to walk a tricky line. They know it still needs work to be the robust thing for schools and that work is happening but they still want to keep the media profile high. I'm glad I'm not in their shoes.

I'm enjoying mine, it's forcing me to learn something of Debian and unix-like OSes in general. While my work is 99% Windows I occasionally have to use a Solaris box and just being a little more comfortable about the shell and directory layout has helped me. I could have done this with any old Linux box but some how I've felt more motivated to do this win the Pi.

[toxibunny]

Mine'll get here next week. I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do with it now...

[Cloudane]

Xbmc is one nice application - however on my TV I do have some resolution scaling/over scan issues.

Posted from a smartphone - please excuse any autocorrect or grammatical oddities.

[toxibunny]

I've got a few accessories that seem to be following a theme.

case:


power supply:


one of these:


and one of these:


edit: and one of these(ish):

[Firefox]

The USB elephant is covered in depth in this thread

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... &start=200

Oh dear! That's looking like it's a problem with the macrocell they've used for the USB host controller on the Broadcom SoC that powers the Pi, not just the USB OTG driver!

I don't buy the theory that its ARM Linux's interrupt latency that's the problem: Chumbys, for example, have a slower ARM core in the Freescale SoC in them and have always worked perfectly with a surprisingly wide range of oddball USB peripherals (I've used USB<->RS232 adaptors and Playstation DualShock adaptors with mine with no problems, as well as the more usual stuff like keyboards and flash drives).

Thanks for the link, Colonius. That was illuminating reading.

[Cloudane]

Xbmc is one nice application - however on my TV I do have some resolution scaling/over scan issues.

Aaaand fixed. I'd been round and round the menus on the TV looking for the "overscan off" option and convinced myself it wasn't there. Well it is, and with overscan off, Raspbmc is perfect!

The interface is rather slow, but no matter. It plays videos perfectly... 1080p mp4s? Flawless, as far as my eyes can tell anyway!

This £22ish device is now infinitely more useful than my £99 AppleTV.

[adam]

tempted to suggest connecting over ssh for controlling xbmc if thats possible, if it's the keyboard and mouse drivers that are buggy, depends if you have a laptop or similar around when watching tv

[Colonius]

There is a good iOS remote control client for xbmc if you have such a device - works pretty well.

[Darkflame]

Neat Pi Project:
http://hackaday.com/2012/08/14/light-pa ... the-raspi/

[zip accident]

Firefox O/S?

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Firefo ... 16883.html

[Darkflame]

a) More choice is always great.
b) -sigh- at another tech writer showing Android ignorance.