
RasberryPi review - nl
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/pcs/2012/04/16/raspberry-pi-review/1
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georgemcbay
I'm anxiously awaiting the time when I can buy a Pi without jumping though
hoops just to check one out. In the meantime, for those interested primarily
in the price of the product and the DIY-tinker factor but who haven't been
able to snag a Pi yet, you can currently pick up new (well, not new exactly,
but never used) Insignia Infocast 3.5" devices for about $25 from various
resellers (look on ebay, etc).

While these don't have that much long-term value serving their original
consumer-oriented role, they are pretty great embedded hacker boards for the
price. You don't get a 3D capable GPU and the processor isn't as fast as the
Pi's, but you do get a built-in LCD display w/ touchscreen, wifi,
accelerometer , FM radio receiver, etc.

(For those familiar with chumbies, the Insignia Infocast 3.5 is basically the
same thing as the chumby one and the chumby hacker board, but the price has
dropped even further than the price for remaining chumby ones because of the
stupid name and lack of nostalgia factor).

~~~
ekianjo
The chumby was, altogether, a disappointing device. While it was "hackable",
its capabilities were too limited and you could not boot the stuff to do
anything offline. I bought one out of hope that something interesting would
come out, but it was not really worth it, retrospectively.

~~~
georgemcbay
I worked for chumby industries as a developer and won't even disagree with you
about the device being a bit of a disappointment. I never quite bought into
the company's vision of "channels" of Flash apps (even though I wrote quite a
few of them!).

But I wouldn't say the capabilities of the device are limited in terms of
hackability. You can easily flash your own bootloader, your own kernel and
your own rootfs on to the device and do more or less whatever your heart
desires with it. For ~$25 for one of these you get something pretty close to
the imx233 developer board kits that Freescale sells for 400 bucks and up.

excuse-me does have a point, though, in that there is less likely to be
vibrant chumby hacking community moving forward, though on the flip side of
that there's tons of documentation already existing on how to set up a
toolchain, how to get your own openembedded OS build up on the device, etc,
whereas that sort of knowledge is going to take a while to build up for the
Pi, especially if it remains difficult to actually buy one.

~~~
ekianjo
Thanks for the post - Let me correct what I said earlier. I do not think the
chumby is limited in terms of hackability, however I expected more hacks to
come out from a fully opened hardware-software thingy like the chumby. I am
not exactly sure why it did not happen.

I totally agree with you on the Flash apps vision. This is such a shame that
was the main function of the chumby in the first place. I was expecting to
have both offline applications as well, and not flash based. Seems like that
was not made to be.

------
effigies
Once more, with feeling: pagination is an inappropriate paradigm for most web
content.

While I appreciate that they did not take advantage of the multiple page views
to just get more ad impressions, it's still a pain in the ass to view a single
item of content like that.

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nextparadigms
Hopefully they will move to the ARMv7 archicture with the next-generation
Raspeberry Pi chip. ARM11 which is based on the ARMv6 architecture is so old,
and many popular apps don't want to support it anymore.

Adobe didn't want to support it with Flash, Google won't support it with
Chrome for Android (even on ICS), Mozilla didn't want to support it initially,
but eventually changed their mind probably because they are desperate for
market share on Android. Canonical doesn't want to support it in Ubuntu as
well. So yeah, I'm hoping for a Cortex A7 or at least a Cortex A5 to replace
the ARM11 CPU in the 2.0 version.

~~~
icefox
And I want wifi, and a built in 8GB flash and at least 2GB of ram and make the
board smaller and cheaper (or even free) and include a touch screen and dual
ethernet and a camera, and firewire and thunderbolt and a floppy drive and a
battery and gps, and more blinky leds and an extra Alpha co-processor so I can
run my favorite version of WindowsNT and a scsi port so I can connect my
scanner. I am at least glad they left off the jazz drive, who needs that
anymore!

Seriously it is $35. Someone is going to take it give it a case and a SD card
that has 1 single application/purpose and do something amazing with it and
people will eat it up. This device isn't about what old thing you can run, but
about what crazy NEW things can be done.

It is insulting that you would even bring up Adobe in this as they have for
all intents and purposes killed flash and it will never appear on this device.

Start thinking about how to exploit what the device gives you. The feature of
this device is that it is dirt f*n cheap. A $3000 computer you want to keep
working for months/years, but at $25 who cares if it dies and you have to buy
another. Rather than sharing USB sticks you share your Pi. Put them in
colorful cases and kids will trade them at school. Mount them in locations
where water damage is very possible and just replace it when it dies. Give it
a big battery and _bury_ it in your yard. Drop it in the ocean and have it
transmit until it is crushed for amusement. Buy four of them and make some
sort of game. Etc

Edit how cheap can you get a screen for this?

~~~
GuiA
> Drop it in the ocean and have it transmit until it is crushed for amusement.

I now have a new hobby.

~~~
xd
You won't get very far on radio waves so you best look up torpedo wire or
something around the .1mm diameter range to tether to the pi to get a signal.

edit: farnell do 19300ft of 38awg .. that should do the trick.

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ars
Anyone know anything about what a "Display Serial Interconnect (DSI)" and an
"MIPI camera connector" is?

~~~
mbell
Both are standards for IC to IC interconnects. DSI is just what it sounds
like, a standard for connecting a display via a serial connection. The simpler
parallel connections you would see in other embedded products are too large to
use in a cell phone. "MIPI Camera Connector" probably means its using the CSI
standard, again a serial link for connecting a camera to the SoC. MIPI is
actually the standards body and is just a loose consortium of companies that
define inter-operable standards for use in cell phones: <http://www.mipi.org/>

------
unwind
While slightly more powerful (still, after all these years), the OpenPandora
(<http://openpandora.org/>) seems similiar enough that its OS should work on
the Pi.

The original specs for the OpenPandora also called for 256 MB of RAM, it has
only recently been upgraded to 512 MB, since sourcing the original chip turned
impossible.

I'm sure this has been tried already by the (rather active) OpenPandora
hackers, wasn't able to find anything quickly though.

~~~
rmoriz
440€? no way!

If you need performance and graphics:

    
    
       PandaBoard ES (182$, dual 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM, wifi)
    
       BeagleBoard-xM (140$, 1GHz, 512MB RAM)
    
    

If you need a small form factor ("Altoid"-size):

    
    
       BeagleBone (90$, 700Mhz, 256MB RAM)
    
    

All are able to run the latest official Ubuntu ARM release e.g.

~~~
unwind
Yeah ... It's expensive. I paid less, but on the other hand (which is a rather
painful hand, at this point) I also haven't actually received it yet, due to
various manufacturing problems that are now being straightened out by shifting
factories.

And also, of course the OpenPandora is more of a consumer electronics product
in a case, with custom controls optimized for gaming, it's not a bare circuit
board.

~~~
prezjordan
My friend ordered his nearly 2 years ago and has yet to receive it.

~~~
unwind
He was a bit late to join, then. :) In other words: my order predates his, by
quite the margin.

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mise
I'm trying to get my head around it. What type of simple use cases might such
a small computer help with?

~~~
pja
It has a pile of IO pins, plus HDMI and USB connectivity. You can use it to
make nearly anything programmable.

Make it into an intelligent garage door opener that opens the door when it
picks up your phone nearby.

Stuff it into a bear and make a talking toy for your children that responds to
being squeezed.

Use it to render attractive screensavers on your TV during a party without
having to drag your PC downstairs.

Put 20 of them in weatherproof boxes and build a cheap wireless mesh network
using usb network devices.

Be creative!

------
rmoriz
So that review says multiple times, that Debian is the OS of choice. I
remember reading that a Remix-version of Fedora is the "official" RaspberryPI-
Distribution.

Maybe that's the reason for some negative test results?

~~~
robinhouston
I think the article is accurate, and the recommended distribution is currently
Debian-based. Here’s the official Raspberry Pi downloads page:
<http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads>

“ __Fedora 14 Remix __

A little buggy, so for now we’re recommending beginners use Debian Squeeze.”

------
xelfer
Has anyone been able to purchase one yet? I've signed up to all those sites
saying they'll let me know when I can purchase one and haven't received any
emails back yet.

~~~
sbarre
I ordered mine in March sometime (I forget exactly when) from Element14 and my
"estimated delivery date" is August 2012.. :-)

~~~
thebigshane
You may or may not be following their blog, so just in case (from
<http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/913>)

    
    
       We’d like to apologise to all customers who placed 
       orders with Newark element14 and  have seen their 
       acknowledged delivery date suddenly change on our 
       website’s order backlog to August 2012.
       ...
       At present, as already communicated by Raspberry Pi,  
       all deliveries are  on hold awaiting the outcome of the 
       compliance testing currently taking place.
       ...
       Apologies again for any  confusion this action has 
       caused. We firmly believe delivery will be much sooner 
       than August.

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cylinder714
Please, someone change the name of this post to "Raspberry Pi review", as
"RasberryPi" ensures no one will find it when doing a proper search.

