

Raspberry Pi: An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte - ecounysis
http://www.raspberrypi.org/

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spatten
Just a suggestion for the website: the home page should probably be a nice
landing page explaining what the project is about, rather than your blog.

Link to your blog for sure, but the home page should explain quickly what the
project is and why I should care.

~~~
eric-hu
I wholeheartedly agree. Their page now is at least magnitudes more informative
than it was a few months ago--when I first saw a Raspberry Pi reference on HN.

I went to their page looking for an about link. I'm not sure if I found it or
not, but either way, I left not knowing what it was actually about.

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fennecfoxen
The big FAQ, for your convenience:

\--

When will the device be available to purchase?

We anticipate the device will be available to the general public later in 2011
– we were hoping to hit the end of November, but right now December’s looking
more likely.

~~~
jberryman
Also, they _hope_ to be selling the model A for $25 and the Model B for $35.

~~~
sireat
I really, really hope I am wrong, but the first few batches will be woefully
short of the actual demand.

Why?

No pre-orders to indicate real demand (Rasperry forums are more optimistic
than an Amway convention).

No clue on what financing they have in place to handle the manufacturing.

I have a hard time believing they will do a run of 10000(need to find someone
to front $200k+) boards, when the real demand is probably 100k+(at those
$25/$35 price points).

What will happen they will have 1000 boards for sale early January and they
will be gone in an instant (remember no pre-orders, means people will
overwhelm their servers in a huge rush). Then we will wait another 2-3 months
for a slightly bigger batch. Repeat until 2013.

Again, I hope I am wrong and hopefully someone at Broadcom who has experience
with supply-chain is backing them.

~~~
asb
While demand might be very high, the particular scenario you describe is not
going to happen. Eben addresses the funding issue in this interview:
<http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=281> The trustees will be putting up the money
for the initial run themselves. One of the trustees is Pete Lomas, managing
director of Norcott Technologies.

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SecurityMatters
There are doubts about how open this project will be. I share that concern.
But, I also give the guy credit for making the project at all. Maybe it will
be more closed than I would like. If the project is a success and produces a
lot of boards, then I expect real open source builds of software for it will
follow from someone. As a start, I can't think of anything I would prefer to
Linux and Python as a place to start. I sure want to buy a few of these boards
to experiment with.

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joshu
can we stop posting this until it actually ships?

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qxb
Previously on HN:
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=raspberry+p...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=raspberry+pi&sortby=points+desc)

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drdaeman
What's the point of discussing not-yet-released product (i.e. one can't buy
it) without proper schematics (or maybe I just didn't found one?) nearly
useless tiny PNG file with a PCB layout and no source code available?

Sure, tiny $25 board is cool. If it can be obtained. No point in discussing it
further before they either ship it or release DIY manuals.

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malbs
I'm hoping I just found the next base of a networked media player for home

~~~
guynamedloren
My thoughts exactly. Are you planning on blogging about your Raspberry Pi
media player adventures when these things are finally released? I'd definitely
be interested - huge potential here.

~~~
malbs
While it would require me setting up a blog, it would probably be worth it.

It could almost be a business venture, given the fact that an off the shelf
media product is upwards of $100 here in aus, if you could create a decent
linux media center experience for the device, and a nice case, you could flog
it for _waves hand about_ $80 per unit and be ahead (provided the mark-up took
into consideration all your costs).

Would fly in the face of the educational/not-for-profit Raspberry Inc though.

I'll find somewhere to write about it though.

~~~
someperson
It's not flying in the face of the idea of RaspPi, they are making a profit on
each unit sold so want as many people to buy one as possible. The educational
aspect of the foundation backed by the hacker community buying them up for
their own purposes.

The initial 10k batch may be another matter. They are looking at putting a per
buyer limit since demand will be so great.

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MostAwesomeDude
Still waiting for open-source code for the board. (Yes, including the 3D
accelerator.)

~~~
MrRadar
If you don't have a compiler or documentation for the proprietary instruction
set the GPU uses, what use is the source code to the binary blob that runs on
it?

~~~
srl
The fewer unknowns there are in a system, the more easily the rest can be
reverse engineered.

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1110101001
the idea of a credit card sized board, running open sourced code, to connect
with peripherals is fantastic. but this project is going to disappoint. the
guy works for broadcom which is how he got the smaller than minimum quantity
of chips, so don't expect it to be repeated by anyone else. it's aim claims to
be education, and people compare this to kit computers many years ago, but
this is a far cry from that. this guy wants to steer you to use GNU/Linux and
scripting languages like Python. no assembly programming. how can a kid learn
about hardware without learning assembly? so much for education.

~~~
mooism2
Learning about software is more important than learning about hardware.

I learned (Z80 then 8086) assembly as a kid, and now my mental model of how a
processor works is obsolete.

~~~
regularfry
You can make that argument both ways - if you'd learned Fortran-77 and nothing
newer, your knowledge would be obsolete as well.

Either way, you have the foundation, should you wish, to be able to bring it
up to date without _too_ much hassle.

I think you'd be surprised how simple an ARM actually is under the skin.
Admittedly, it's not Z80-simple, but it's far, far removed from the x86/AMD64
monstrosities.

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rythie
Real artists ship

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reustle
Shut up and take my money!

~~~
inconditus
Please don't do this, it offers nothing to the conversation.

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senthilnayagam
When i first heard about the Project i was impressed, good to know they won
some award, but it is boring after a while as nothing is being shipped even
after so many years, just hype, they should remove the 25$ tag till they ship
it

~~~
asb
The project only went 'public' a few months ago (I think
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9504208.s...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9504208.stm)
was the first coverage). The 2006 prototype is simply evidence of the massive
amount of commitment to the project shown by Eben and the trustees. It's far
from just being hype. Alpha boards are with developers (I'm lucky enough to
have one sitting on my desk) and they're hoping to start manufacture in the
next few weeks.

I understand your scepticism, but look at the people behind the project. It's
going to happen and it's going to be awesome. The launch this December is
mainly targeted at the hacker and 'maker' community, with aims to target the
educational market next year.

~~~
senthilnayagam
I am not the lucky one to have the development board on my desk , nor seen any
timeline or product roadmap. But would happy to see a commercial launch soon.

