Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
  • Do I want a Raspberry Pi?
  • dogbert
    Free Member

    What can you do with it? (or have I just answered my own question about wanting one?)

    I’m learning programming at the moment and no-where near a wizz kid. Done some Visual Basic in the past. I work in IT support and all the developer guys are going on about it.

    Got a birthday coming up and the wife hasn’t got a clue what to buy me

    molgrips
    Free Member

    You like the idea but you don’t really want one. You’ll get it, plug it in and go “wow!” then go “oh” as you realise it’s only of use to proper hardcode electronicky geeks for inclusion in some wider project.

    If you want to program it, you could do the same with linux on your laptop or anything else, afaik.

    If you want to program in general, there are much easier ways, depending on what you want to achieve.

    xiphon
    Free Member

    Have a read of this post from RPi forums :

    http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=7403&start=25

    ===============
    by Sloseph » Thu Jun 28, 2012 3:26 pm
    I’ve just ordered my Pi so thought I’d have a browse around the forums to see what people are doing

    When I saw this thread I though ill chime in

    I’ve ordered a Pi because after years of using other peoples badly made software and ranting about how I could do better I’m putting my money where my mouth is and giving it a go

    The reason Im going for the Pi over using one of my current systems are

    1. it’s a clean start

    I’ve messed about with my other machines so much that any guide I try and follow I have to find a work around for something in it

    2. It will give me focus

    When I turn it on it will be because I want to spend some time sat at home trying to learn, not just booting up the laptop and looking at cat videos on YouTube then thinking hey ill try a bit of programming for 5 minutes

    3. no one else is going to suffer while Im using it

    quite often when I want to mess about with one of my current machine that means my other half will lose access to that machine until Im done playing around which can be hours

    4. I can just walk away

    at the moment if Im trying to do something I either have to finish it properly or scrap it, the machine Im working on either has to be in the same state as I picked it up or better, I can’t just leave it not working. With the Pi I can try something and if I can’t get it working I can just leave it, have a break and try and get my head around it, if Im sleepy ill just leave it until tomorrow, again my other half isn’t going to get mad because she can’t use her laptop until Im done

    5. Size

    because of its size the possibilities are endless, one of the first things Im going to do is install XMBC and try and write some stuff for that, once I’ve done that I’ve got myself a nice cheap portable media player that I’ve made something work on, I can pop it round to a friends and say hey look at this

    6. Support

    if I do get stuck on something by the looks of it Im currently looking at a place to go with lots of helpful people ready to assist, try doing that on a windows forum

    Apologies for the world’s longest first post and more than likely the spelling and grammar mistake
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    molgrips
    Free Member

    Don’t quite understand that post. You can write your own software on anything, and surely in most cases on a full platform it’s considerably easier than on a Pi, especially if you want to write working user-friendly applications.

    You can also stop writing code half way through and continue to use the computer. Plenty of half-finished software on this one!

    Programming ‘on Windows’ doesn’t have to include messing about with Windows itself. Plenty of other options.

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    You like the idea but you don’t really want one. You’ll get it, plug it in and go “wow!” then go “oh” as you realise it’s only of use to proper hardcode electronicky geeks for inclusion in some wider project.

    that’s me, that is.

    I have a Raspberry Pi. Been switched on twice in the past two months.

    molgrips
    Free Member

    For those also curious, you can download VM images to create many Rasperry Pis inside your own computer.

    Basically no difference to messing around with the real thing.

    The main advantage of the hardware itself imo is that you can make devices out of it. Want say, a touchscreen monitor in your car displaying Google Maps with a live weather overview? This would be perfect.

    Milkie
    Free Member

    You can do what you want with a Ras.Pi! I’m looking at building a carputer, but the possibilities are endless! If you don’t know what you want to do with it, then you probably shouldn’t buy one just yet.

    As Molgrips has said, you can install a VM and get cracking on that. Which is probably the best thing to do, if you don’t know any of the languages.

    xiphon
    Free Member

    Part of the attraction of them, is for people who find it difficult to focus on something – i.e programming (or ‘coding’ if you’re cool).

    You can’t open up YouTube and watch cats dancing for example….

    Personally, I use ours for a media centre – testing out different platforms, to see which works best (RaspbMC, Raspian + XBMC, Openelec, etc).

    And a carputer is tempting – had one a few years ago, and it was ace (nLite XP, with Roadrunner + VAG-COM on it)

    molgrips
    Free Member

    My car has a touch screen console built in already. You can apparently unplug the monitor from the car and plug it into anything you want with S-video out, and you can apparently also get the touch screen to work. There’s a spare switch on the dash you can use to switch between the two.

    The possibilities are significant 🙂

    willard
    Full Member

    I have one and it is in use as a VPN endpoint and webserver on my home network. I will eventually get it working as a media streamer for my wife’s iPad too, but that’s for later when I have the storage sorted out for the media.

    What I really need to do is get the case built so that I can tidy up the cabling and power for it. That’s what’s annoying me right now…

    molgrips
    Free Member

    I have one and it is in use as a VPN endpoint

    That, sir, is a fine idea.

    willard
    Full Member

    It’s quiet. My wife didn’t like the last linux machine I used because it was too noisy.

    Women!

    coffeeking
    Free Member

    If you don’t know what you are going to do with it you probably don’t need it. You can do everything on it easier and faster with a normal PC. It has niche applications and it’s very cheap, that’s it’s “point” really.

    There’s a dozen small atom boards out there that’ll do all the same stuff and be fanless, 13W boards if you want a quiet PC for the living room. And be faster.

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