
Raspberry Pi computer in action - jestinepaul
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17190334
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TamDenholm
The raspberrypi has had so much press and its not even in the hands of the
public yet (although first 10k go out this week i think), while every article
is great for the project, i'm just disappointed i dont have one yet.

Anyway, onto my point, i hope that the stories continue after its penetrated
the hacker community and there is coverage of the million of cool applications
that the computer has been used for. So much of the mainstream press lose
interest after something is launched.

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antrod
Here is something I don't get: while this project is cool, if cost is the
goal, once you add monitor, mouse & keyboard, isn't anyone better off with a
combo of eBay laptop + Debian?

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jasonkeene
It is intended to be connected to a television set via Composite or HDMI. I'd
assume most families in the UK already have a television set so really the
only additional cost is the keyboard+mouse.

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slantyyz
The first thing that I ever thought when I saw the Raspberry Pi unit was how
it would make a great device for MAME on a TV.

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elviejo
Nice summary on the history of Raspberry Pi And loved the fact that they use
scratch to demo it :-)

Maybe this is closer to the OLPC original goal??

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illumen
The OLPC has a battery, case, power supply, storage, keyboard, track pad,
screen. It also releases source code to the OS binaries they ship. The
raspberrypi needs a £150 TV, plus lots of other accessories to do anything.

It's nice to see another player in the educational computer market though. I
don't think it's fair to compare to OLPC yet, because the raspberrypi has not
finished their educational version.

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jdietrich
I think that the Raspberry Pi is actually a perfect solution for developed
countries. The peripherals needed to make a Pi work can usually be scrounged
for free, or picked up very cheaply. 99.9% of UK households have a suitable
TV. The vast majority have at least one HDTV with HDMI inputs. Mice,
keyboards, wireless adapters and SD cards can be bought at computer fairs for
a couple of pounds each, or scavenged as hand-me-downs.

For the first eight years of my computing career, all my hardware came out of
skips (dumpsters) or was bought used at computer fairs and flea markets. IME
there's a vast glut of basic peripherals in most developed countries, simply
due to the turnover of computers in offices.

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elviejo
Exactly used TV markets are huge in africa and asia. So cheap that if they
break they just buy a new one. Like can be appreciated in this image:
<http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/524/456/106/106456524_529.jpg>

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swah
Having something this size for home automation would be a dream. I suppose you
can't to video processing and wifi with Arduino's, but with a full sized PC...
would be great.

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mirsadm
You can already buy ARM based dev kits from Nvidia, TI etc. They're much more
powerful and suited towards that sort of goal (and more expensive).

Edit: for eg <http://pandaboard.org/>

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swah
Those are very cool, but they are "development platforms". I don't want/can't
design and produce my own hardware.

I want to buy a little box (around 50-100 USD would be still good), attach an
USB camera, and with software make an interesting project.

In other words: Wifi and Linux (and its drivers) would make a great automation
platform (having to connect to AC being the only problem left).

For example, I could put one of those in front of my water meter
([http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01373/water-
mete...](http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01373/water-
meter_1373724c.jpg)), with a little bit of OpenCV software to parse the
numbers I could have real-time water usage monitoring.

(This just reminded me of Bunnie's Chumby:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumby>). If Chumby has died because cellphones
haven't left any market to it, it could easily be repurposed to compete with
Raspberry PI, it seems.

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joshu
I actually DO use an alix for home automation, btw. It runs plain unmolested
ubuntu.

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swah
Nice! I'll just leave some links in case anyone wants to see what its like:

[http://www.wifiproducts.com.au/wifi-mikrotik-
webstore/ALIX_C...](http://www.wifiproducts.com.au/wifi-mikrotik-
webstore/ALIX_Cases-list.aspx)

[http://www.wifiproducts.com.au/wifi-mikrotik-
webstore/ALIX_2...](http://www.wifiproducts.com.au/wifi-mikrotik-
webstore/ALIX_2D3_system_board__3_LAN___1_miniPCI___LX800___256_MB___USB-
details.aspx)

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joshu
these folks sell them for a fair bit less:
<http://myworld.ebay.com/pandorashope/?_trksid=p4340.l2559>

this is where i got mine, anwyay

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excuse-me
It's the enabling technology aspect. A small cheap machine with PC class
power, video, networking and Linux

Imagine if instead of spending $1Bn on an app to make photos worse - Facebook
had given away one of these to every household in America and bundled an app
that constantly streams your Facebook experience on your TV.

That would have wiped out the TV networks overnight.

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ktizo
The death of the current paradigm is in physical devices, haptics, ergonomics.
This is definitely an enabling technology for this.

