[Closed] Raspberry Pi - any thoughts?

Get out and ride more - Honestly.

They do look a bit neat, also need the IO board to do some really fun stuff. I'll very tempted.

Thanks Janesy, I'm off to the shops in a minute, just need to find my trouser clips and tweed cap.

aP - Only joking. I’m stuck inside with a bad knee - These do look pretty good. I automatically thought it had something to do with Pi. That’s a whole other story not getting geeky.

Been following the news on them for a while, think I'll get the Model B when it's out and agree the IO (Gertboard) looks interesting too.

absolutely can't wait going to be amazing!

Ahh.......

....... takes me back to the excitement of waiting for my first BBC computer.

Brilliant idea.

Stupid question from a non-techy; what would/could you actually do with one?

Would make a great XBMC device by the look of it.

I'll probably get one to go with all the other microcontroller boards I have unfulfilled plans for 🙂

If it gets kids writing code/building stuff it'll be great. They need to link up with Lego for maximum take up IMHO though.

If it gets schools teaching code/building stuff that would also be great. My son tried to do the GCSE IT course but gave up in disgust with my support as learning typing skills with Excel and Access was not what he had had in mind.

Things like this are handy for building stuff that works just how you want it to work. It's a way of letting out your inner Wallace and Grommit and making crazy inventions to make your life easier / more fun or whatever.

Like my current microcontroller board projects are:

1) First synthesizer for my toddler daughter ([url= http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~jqm/?p=605 ]current progress here[/url]).

2) Replacement wireless thermostat for my central heating system. To have a nicer control method and longer radio range than the current device - possibly even to be controlled by a mobile phone app because that's the kind of sad nerd I am.

3) Dimming lamp for my daughter's room - with 'go to sleep'/'wake up' dimming that dims over a few minutes, and a way of turning it on that doesn't immediately go to full. Most of the dimming lamps I found either do stupid things like you touch it, it goes to full, then slowly dims, which is a nightmare for a baby room.

I'd quite like one of these to make a teeny tiny box that lets you use bbc iplayer / other internet streaming services / play video / on the TV.

Oh, and if you stuck this, a USB midi keyboard and a powered set of speakers into a box, you could make an extremely powerful and re-configurable synthesizer for not very much money. Which would be cool.

With the IO board, you can use it to control motors, lights, all manner of things, there must be a zillion things that you could do with that!

Thanks Joe. Clearly, things i could do with it = zero 😆

Sounds cool though.

My son tried to do the GCSE IT course but gave up in disgust with my support as learning typing skills with Excel and Access was not what he had had in mind.

Can't agree with this enough. I.T. is [i]not[/i] the ability to manipulate Word documents and organize e-mail.

[url= http://codeyear.com/ ]This looks like a fantastic initiative to get people coding[/url]

Thanks Joe. Clearly, things i could do with it = zero

The BBC iplayer box thing, I imagine will be a pretty easy thing to do even for a non-techy, once it is out. Given it already has network support, mouse / keyboard / gamepad support and TV output, it is such an obvious thing to do, that there will be a million how to guides on the internet in a few months.

Anyway, being a non-techy is just because you haven't bothered to learn yet.

If it gets schools teaching code/building stuff that would also be great. My son tried to do the GCSE IT course but gave up in disgust with my support as learning typing skills with Excel and Access was not what he had had in mind.

It's not schools that are the problem, it's the government. Loads of ICT teachers would love to teach computing and there's a big push to get it proper recognition.

Yep, I'll be getting one - will be interesting to get some flavour of linux running on it. Hopefully it'll fire up a whole bunch of modules in a similar way to Arduino...

Saw these and they blew my mind 😯
So many applications for these devices, home automation being the one I'm really interested in.

You could quite easily turn it into a carputer too! 😉

I also want one, but I know it will be yet another abandoned project. I do like the idea of a teeny tiny XBMC box.

What the heck is it and what can I do with it?

...being a non-techy is just because you haven't bothered to learn yet...

and i have a teeny tiny brain.

What the heck is it...?

a small, cheap, simple computer, designed to help kids learn how to write computer programs and stuff.

...and what can i do with it?

i have no idea, but i'm curious to see what the geeks get up to!

🙂

What the heck is it and what can I do with it?

I think the point is that you can do [i]anything[/i] with it, depending on your imagination, skill set and ability to learn.

Possible applications just off the top of my head:

Living room media centre
Web server
GPS data logger
Weather station
CCTV/security system

It's a very cheap lightweight computer, and you could plug any software/hardware into it, with a little fiddling.

I'm planning on using one to break the bank at Monte Carlo - luckily I have very large feet so it will easily fit into the heel of a cowboy boot. I'll be playing blackjack under the alias Dorset Slim sometime towards the end of summer.

It's not schools that are the problem, it's the government. Loads of ICT teachers would love to teach computing and there's a big push to get it proper recognition.

Clearly this forum is more influential than one might think

[url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/11/michael-gove-boring-it-lessons ]ICT curriculum scrapped[/url]

This looks like a fantastic initiative to get people coding

Am now playing with this, it's quite addictive, i was around when the ZX80 came out all my mates had them i never had any interest..

Clearly this forum is more influential than one might think.

miketually's clearly a nom de plume for michael gove 🙂

I was quite surprised to find the contents of the current course, sounded more like secretarial studies than anything else.

Great idea to get kids interested in computing.... But, all the work is going to India on a cost basis not a lack of UK talent.

I've had half an eye on the Pi for a while now. It'll be interesting to see how it stacks up against the firmly established Arduino.

I've had half an eye on the Pi for a while now. It'll be interesting to see how it stacks up against the firmly established Arduino.

Surely they're complementary - Arduino's more for hardware hacking, Pi's more for software? Looking at 16stonepig's list above:

Living room media centre - Pi
Web server - Pi
GPS data logger - Pi
Weather station - Pi + Arduino
CCTV/security system - Arduino

Or am I missing something?

There's no current minister that I'd like to give a slice of fist pie to more than Micheal Gove, but this revamp might well change my opinion of him.

There's no current minister that I'd like to give a slice of fist pie to more than Micheal Gove, but this revamp might well change my opinion of him.

Even dictators get the odd thing right.

miketually's clearly a nom de plume for michael gove

You have no idea how conflicted I am by today's announcement. I am having to agree with Michael Gove FFS!

I'll but buying a model B as soon as they are released, to add to all my other micro boards that sit about the place in varying states of completion. Pi has plenty of GPIO and the opportunity to expand the IO nicely - no reason why it couldn't replace the arduino, that I see on first glance.

Can't agree with this enough. I.T. is not the ability to manipulate Word documents and organize e-mail.

Actually I'd say IT (or IS as it was in my day) IS word/excel/access etc. The definition being:

Information technology (IT) is concerned with technology to treat information. The acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications are its main fields.

Computing/Programming is a different course (that doesn't exist as far as I know, at that level). Embedded processors and their coding doesn't happen in earnest until 1st year of a degree in engineering, sometimes later.

Computing/Programming is a different course (that doesn't exist as far as I know, at that level).

GCSE computing's starting to appear in some places.

What amazed me was that only 3 of the 28000 teachers who qualified last year had a computing-related degree. 3!

GCSE computing's starting to appear in some places.

That's really good news!

[i]Computing/Programming is a different course (that doesn't exist as far as I know, at that level). [/i]

My son's doing a Computer Science GCSE - focus for the first term has been on coding and a bit on the internal structure of computers and AND/NOR/ETC type stuff.

It is a brilliant idea, and I really hope they can find people to teach this stuff. I started school in the era of the BBC Micro and
10 print "hello world"
20 goto 10

and finished it in the depressing era of 'ICT' and 'Computer Literacy', I have various stupid 'computing' certificates for spending 10 minutes doing '2 hour' tasks in word because some idiot in the Dept. of Education or wherever set a target to get as many kids as possible 'IT Literate'. The depressing thing about those courses was that they were obviously written by people who didn't even understand the software very well themselves - the sort of people who thought a word processor was some kind of magic super modern piece of technology and that using it was a cross between rocket science and brain surgery, rather than the same old things we'd all been doing our class projects with for years.

If it is anything like the BBC B days, they'll probably end up having some vague set of software / stuff to play with, and a set of exercises to work on, but any interesting stuff will end up being the kid who actually gets it teaching the other kids things. Those of us who knew anything about it, knew so much more than the teachers. Perhaps to a certain extent that is how it should be if they're really using new technology, as inevitably the nerdy kids have more time to play with things than the teachers.

I've got an old "CherryPal" kicking around somewhere if anyone wants it?

You can't expect secondary school teachers to be up to scratch with the very latest hardware and software, even universities struggle to get staff who follow the latest trends and teach the latest stuff as there's so few people who can afford to time to learn all the new stuff AND do what they get paid for primarily. At degree level we're often approached by uprocessor companies asking us to help them disseminate their new hardware to students, which we do, but generally it takes a few years to identify how to fit it into teaching, where it's actually needed etc. You have to bear in mind that currently "average" students in an engineering degree will have very limited skills with embedded hardware even in their 2nd or 3rd year, because such skills come from real projects and their access to those is limited by other things such as knowledge in related fields. I was having this discussion earlier today as we have a 1st year course that operates with PIC micros programmed in basic (PICAXE's) - the students enter with zero programming skills and leave having set up and programmed a 40 pin PIC to do a fairly complex task in 8 weeks. There was some concern that we were not teaching C and the processors are horrifically slow as it's an interpreted language, but my argument is that this isn't helpful at this stage - the students have no C knowledge and teaching C should be done in a course specifically for that so as not to introduce poor habits. Instead, we use the course to teach the basics of IO, memory and variables, program flow and branching methods - fundamentals. The next year they get C tuition. And the processor speed rarely affects anything, but those things that it does affect it highlights the requirement for interrupts rather than polling, so promotes good practice.

Ho Hum.

coffeeking has a good point - I think schools shoudl be teaching principles and techniques as much as possible.

It's no good training 200,000 kids in how to program in VB if the world's moved on but if you teach them how to strat to structure code and to understand why they're doing stuff then that's good.

Don't forget, a GCSE is only about 60-80 hours actual teaching time - how much could you learn in a fortnight at work froma standing start?

Would make a great XBMC device by the look of it

Exactly what I was thinking. Signed up and ready to order

there's so few people who can afford to time to learn all the new stuff AND do what they get paid for primarily.

True in industry also - the marketing and Gartner work 10x quicker than the actual usage in most places.

I'll but buying a model B as soon as they are released, to add to all my other micro boards that sit about the place in varying states of completion. Pi has plenty of GPIO and the opportunity to expand the IO nicely - no reason why it couldn't replace the arduino, that I see on first glance.

It can do much of what an arduino does, but where it is likely to not replace it is quite simple projects that don't need the processing power. The big two reasons:

1)Battery life - running all the toys that it has on board is likely to mean a lot higher power consumption - they're talking about using a 700ma supply, whereas you can just about scrape running an arduino off a 50ma supply, less if you use a more bare-bones board without the serial converter.
2)Simplicity - the raspberry PI is a proper computer, running a whole operating system - this means things like real-time stuff are less exact because lots of different bits of code are running. Whereas the arduino just runs your code and not much else, which makes things very simple to conceptualise.
3)Fast boot up - the arduino boot up time is about 10ms, so you just turn the switch on and it is working. I doubt a linux based computer is going to be this quick?

I've done stuff with Gumstix, which are fancy teeny tiny linux boxes a bit like Raspberry PI (not as neat and way more expensive), and replacing them with arduino was a real breath of fresh air, no complicated setup of boot-loaders, and changing programs is much quicker. But I've also done stuff with arduino where we could really have done with video output and a faster processor. So they both have their place.

Tempted by one of these for a play, might make nice replacements for some wireless sensor stuff I do...save me from the horrors of TinyOS* if anyone's familiar!

*and intel x-scale processor manuals. *shudder*

@joemarshall I find the arduino something of a confusion though. It really is just a micro dev board (which are available) and some easy to access software. Programming a PIC in C is barely any more work, has the potential for even lower power use, smaller packaging etc while maintaining the RT capabilities. I have no more trouble teaching students how to use a PIC in C than I do teaching them to use an arduino, so I'm not really sure where it gains it's popularity.

Pi does seem, on the surface, to be more software based and does have the added complexities of running an OS, but I'm not sure that'll be a problem.

If you look at the bulk of the arduino uses, advanced users laugh at the fact that THAT is overkill for what it's used for - you could do the same task with analogue components or some basic discrete logic. I don't see many people using the Pi to do much more complex work, meaning it's super-overkill, but at least based around an OS people may have had some contact with.

Hard to decide. The market will answer I'm sure.

Quite excited by this...will be buying a couple to teach my kids stuff.

@joemarshall I find the arduino something of a confusion though. It really is just a micro dev board (which are available) and some easy to access software. Programming a PIC in C is barely any more work, has the potential for even lower power use, smaller packaging etc while maintaining the RT capabilities. I have no more trouble teaching students how to use a PIC in C than I do teaching them to use an arduino, so I'm not really sure where it gains it's popularity.

The big thing about the arduino is the community that they've built around it and the standardisation - the standard format, libraries for everything, a library of easy to attach hardware made by a multitude of people to do most things you want.

Yes it's possible to do similar things on the PIC, but first you have to choose your development board from all the 6 million that are available, (which are often more expensive than an arduino board), then say you want to interface with a GSM modem, you have to find a GSM modem chip, hope someone has built a breakout board for it, or design your own circuit board, work out how to connect the modem board to your PIC development board, work out how to talk to the modem over serial etc. To do the same on arduino, you buy an arduino, buy the GSM shield (from anyone who happens to make one), plug it on top, and use the standard library to talk to it.

The same is true with the software, you just install one program, and plug the arduino in, and as if by magic you have a full development system, complete with a bunch of libraries for useful things built in, and many more available.

Another bonus of the arduino development boards is that they are open source hardware - this is great if you're making anything real, because if you make something, then some point later, you decide you want to make another one, chances are someone will still be making the board, whereas with your PIC board, it is quite likely you'll end up having to buy something slightly different (at least I can't find the particular PIC dev board I've previously seen for sale anywhere now).

It also integrates very nicely into the eco-system of 'Processing' or Max/MSP on a computer + arduino for the hardware end of things, which arty types seem to like.

Oh and if you get stuck with something, there is a big community of people who will quite likely have done it on Arduino. So you can find example code / circuits etc. very easily.

You also don't have to solder to do most Arduino things - even quite advanced things like GSM modems, GPS connection etc. can be done without any soldering. That might not be an issue for an electronics type, but a lot of people are really quite scared of soldering.