

Viewpoints: What will you do with your Pi? - ale55andro
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17245294

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meow
I suppose pi could eat into some of the arduino projects currently being done.
Though arduino is much simpler to interface with various sensors - thanks to
shields, once a few 'shields' for pi show up, the lure of powerful hardware
and full blown OS will move many to pi.

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digitalsushi
I agree; however a particularly alluring component to an arduino is driving it
with a 9V battery and throwing it up into the false ceiling and letting it do
its thing. (Or whatever your use case may be.)

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xxdiamondxx
I think I saw somewhere on the Raspberry Pi forums that it would run fine on 4
AA batteries.

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digitalsushi
If I could make one weatherproof, it would be neat to use one outside in my
back yard to take some weather information from the internet over wifi and
then control some relays that turn some water spigots and save a ton of water
for my garden.

In my head whenever I think about a 60 year old version of me in the year
2040, I've sort of burned out on writing code but still bust some out whenever
I can use it to save water. And the kids will think I am lame for writing code
that saves a few gallons, but we'll be right on the brink of that starting to
matter a lot.

Also it would be cool to use the same machinery to drive those little windows
and fans to make a greenhouse stay perfectly the same temperature during the
day.

This is probably total overkill for one of these devices. But I could code the
perl up in an hour or less and it would just work, and having something exist
and just work is so much more satisfying than "this thing I keep saying I will
do some year".

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digitalsushi
Another more romantic, less useful idea is that a raspberry pi mounted outside
sampling the sky quality and scraping a few astronomical forecasts could come
up with a composite of "this really is a night you should go outside for an
hour before bed" - it would send a txt message to me at a certain time (or
even be allowed to wake me up! [for a meteor shower or solar flare report). It
seems I can write code and work on house chores 7 days a week and never
remember nary a bit of it, but if I spend just an hour gazing at
constellations and trying to figure it all out on my own, I remember that
slice for a good long while and I dont feel like I missed out on something as
much; this would be like a watchdog timer for my distracted life.

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forkrulassail
XBMC + Projector for entertainment. Custom car radio, and once I get my hands
on a third one, hopefully some computer vision toy building.

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patrickk
I think using XBMC will be huge. Cheap, low power, and simply point it at a
computer/external HDD with a media collection to play all available media.

Also, using it as a gaming machine (see the Quake III video on Raspberry Pi's
site) and game emulators for older console games.

I would love to see different sensors being attached for cheap, open-source
home automation projects (home heating, turning off lights when no-one is
present, monitoring home energy consumption, talking to mobile devices etc.)

Edit: Project Ideas from Raspberry Pi's forum:

[http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum/projects-and-
collaboration-...](http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum/projects-and-
collaboration-general/the-projects-list-look-here-for-some-ideas)

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derekp7
Stand alone network backup device. I plan on hooking a low power external USB
drive, and using something like rsync over the network so that backups are
isolated from the computer I'm backing up. There's already several techniques
documented for using rsync combined with "cp -al" to create
daily/weekly/monthly snapshots using incremental space; combine this with an
appropriate "command=" parameter in ssh's authorized_keys file, and you can
have a backup that can run automatically, and that can't be destroyed by
malware on the host you are backing up.

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digitalsushi
I no longer allow myself to use backup solutions I invent. And that's just a
calling to my own confidence in my code, but I have lost data that I liked
because I did a home brew backup. It's all that logic that makes sure it's
still working correctly over time. There are so many devices available for
very low cost that provide this exact solution. For me, it's one of those
things where it's dangerous to enjoy inventing because I am not a master tool
maker.

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BruceZ
Reprap controller with touch interface for 3D printing.

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joezydeco
Hope you're thinking of a self-contained LCD/touchscreen off the shelf.

I've been trying to ascertain how to hook up a small LCD and capacitive
controller over the LVDS/DSI port and I'm not getting a lot of information.
Asking on the forum isn't getting much data.

Is there SPI or I2C on the flex connector? Nobody knows. How about power for
the LCD backlight? Oh, the 5V rail is limited to 1 amp. How about the DSI
driver? Broadcom won't talk.

You start pressing for details about this and then the stance swivels to "Hey!
This is an educational computer! You shouldn't be working on wacky
applications like this!" I don't see a lot of people proposing educational
applications for the Rpi so far. Just people that want a cheaper Pandaboard.

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freehunter
From what I understand, the idea is that the first few batches will go to
hackers so they (we) can get to work stress-testing and creating with these.
After we're done, they'll sell the next batch to the education market
hopefully with the new tools/accessories that the hacker community had come up
with.

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joezydeco
Can't create much when we can't see schematics and ascertain if the I/O ports
carry what we need. And if there was a deficiency, they've publicly said they
won't respin boards.

Not a very encouraging situation.

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freehunter
They do plan (and will have) IO extensions ala Arduino. I can't remember what
they call the daughterboard they're releasing.

Mainly what they want is software and cases. It's meant to teach kids computer
programming and software basics outside of the Windows and OSX "don't worry
about it" mindset they're currently growing up in. Robotics and extraneous
hardware design is outside of their current scope.

~~~
joezydeco
If you're thinking of the "gertboard" that was announced, that's a breakout
board that is connected to the Rpi over a SPI line. So it's not turning GPIO
lines off the processor into usable connections, it's just an I/O extender.
You could be using that exact same board with an Arduino today and bit-bang
your SPI commands.

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uberalex
I'm really keen to get at least one for using as XBMC. but I still have no
idea when I might get to even order one.

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unicron
Tempted to stick it inside my BBC master case and run BeebEm on it :)

