
More Than Half a Million Raspberry Pis Sold - interconnector
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3011
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hosay123
Pricing for similar hardware has literally crashed in the time it's taken Pi
production levels to ramp up. There are now multiple ARM vendors with open
source BSPs supporting hardware that's much more powerful and with comparable
pricing. See for example <http://www.cnx-software.com/tag/amlogic/> and
<http://www.cnx-software.com/tag/freescale/> .

Unlike the Pi these offerings usually come with Bluetooth, WiFi, larger flash
and 1GB RAM in dual or quad core configurations, and pre-packaged in consumer
friendly boxes ready for hooking to a display, although access to auxiliary IO
buses may be more difficult. SATA (Mele A1000G), GigE (Wandboard) and mini PCI
designs (i.mx6 Sabre Lite) are even available.

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dfrey
What is an example of a better board that I can get shipped to my home for
under $50 USD?

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hosay123
If all you want is USB, there are (seemingly hundreds of) Allwinner sticks
available via Aliexpress, e.g. <http://goo.gl/th1bO> as low as $34, which is
supported via the linux-sunxi port. Boards generally cost more, I've less
information on that.

~~~
dfrey
A board like the Pi is defined by these attributes (order irrelevant):

Price

Performance

Exposed I/O

Device Size

Community Size

I don't know of any board that beats the Pi on more than 3 of these
attributes.

The allwinner sticks you mentioned are comparably priced, but have a smaller
development community and very limited I/O. If all you want is a little media
player, I think they are a good choice though.

~~~
koralatov
I'd disagree that the order of those is irrelevant. Far and away the two most
important ones are `Price' and `Community Size'. If it cost three times as
much, the RPi wouldn't have been such a hit; if the community of users was
tiny, it wouldn't matter how cheap it was because it wouldn't have critical
mass. The Raspberry Pi managed to get out cheap enough and with enough support
to make it a runaway success, which is why we now face a glut of similar
machines.

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russell_h
What is the best place to order one of these? I'd love to have one, but every
time I go to order one I'm put off by the suppliers websites.

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fsckin
I bought two Model B's from Newark[0] on Jan 2nd, shipped on the 4th, and
received on the 7th. Wickedly fast. I think they will be out of stock soon.

[0]
[http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?id=43W530...](http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?id=43W5302&Ntt=43W5302&);

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
I also got mine from Newark and it arrived even faster. They even phoned me to
follow up which I thought was a bit over the top for a $40 item (although I
think they were just checking to see whether I might be a potential volume
purchaser)

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davidcollantes
They could have sold many millions more, but finding them is difficult (if you
do not want to pay premium).

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sushantsharma
Sincere Question: Can someone please explain the significance?

Edit: Thanks for the responses. May be I should have explored the site more
instead of just reading the article. <http://www.raspberrypi.org/about>

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e1ven
One of the reasons the Raspberry Pi is really cool is it's helping to make it
easier for people to get into hardware hacking. It's fun, and it's cheap
enough you don't need to worry about break it.

While it's not quite as simple as a arduino, for those of us who like Linux
anyway, it makes it almost trivial to wire into all sorts of projects -
Wireless Helicopters, Door badges, tiny webservers, etc.

It's a great piece of kit, and a nice introduction into the embedded HW world.

~~~
blhack
No, it is not helping people get into hardware hacking. There is no more
"hardware hacking" going on here than there is on my macbook.

Arduino AVR is helping people get into hardware.

Raspberry pi is helping people build cheap netflix settop boxes.

edit: maybe I'm jaded. We've got about 4 totally idle raspis at our
hackerspace that have been donated by people who have no idea what to do with
them, but bought them anyway.

Yet, our stack of arduinos get use _constantly_.

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CamperBob2
_Raspberry pi is helping people build cheap netflix settop boxes._

That's hardware hacking.

In reality, those of us who don't bring a pickaxe and a carbide lamp to work
are just "systems integrators" anyway. Attitudes and titles don't pay the
bills.

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deelowe
Wha? There's a difference between SWE, EE/CE, and IT. The community around the
pi is more for the IT crowd. I see very few using the gpio pins for anything,
though that does seem to be getting marginally better.

Most of the value in the pi is the video decoder. So, that's the types of
projects it gets used for.

~~~
flurie
FWIW, I and many of my friends (who admittedly deal primarily with hardware)
find the gpio a big draw. The machine is cheaper and more useful than an
arduino after you've thrown in an ethernet shield. I got one to serve as a
doorbell router.

~~~
deelowe
Yeah. I'd like to get one for this reason too, but I'm also eyeing the new arm
devices that are starting to show up.

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numbsafari
If you are in the US, be sure to check out www.newark.com. I tried ordering
through Allied and it was a disaster. After 6 months of delays they eventually
screwed up my shipment and said I'd have to resubmit an order and wait in the
back of the line. I didn't realize newark.com (a subsidiary/partner of
element14) sold them in the US.

Avoid shopping at Amazon (it's a ripoff by someone who is hoarding units).

It'd be great if RPi could find a way to expand production. At the very least,
being more upfront about the delays in production and who will actually get
units, would be a big help.

~~~
freehunter
I waited nine months to get mine, and I ordered two days after they were
released. Now that I have the board, my attention has been drawn back to
Arduino in the meantime and my Pi is just a general purpose computer I put in
the garage to view project plans for woodworking or repairing my truck and
occasionally SSHing into to test the occasional code to make sure it's ARM
compatible. I still have the plans for all the Pi projects I was planning, but
interest has worn off and the parts have been repurposed for things where a
couple Arduino boards can do the same work one Pi was going to do.

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IgorPartola
TriLUG is having a meeting tomorrow night about Raspberry Pi's and you can
join via Google Hangout. This should give you a great overview of some of the
neat things you could do with one of these. Details here:
<http://www.trilug.org/2013-01-10/Raspberry_Pi>

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bobbles
Is it possible to run Plex on a Raspberry Pi to make any normal tv an awesome
plex machine? or is the overhead of cables and setup not worth the effort at
the moment?

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vanjac
I don't believe it's possible to run Plex Media Center on it yet, though there
are forum discussions on porting it to the Pi. But I do know that it can run
XBMC quite well and that is why I ordered mine a couple of days ago. I'm gonna
turn it into a sweet little XBMC machine which will be hidden behind the tv.
Just Google "Raspberry Pi XBMC", there are a lot of reviews and tutorials
showing how it's done.

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jcmoscon
What projects are you implementing with Raspberry Pis?

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linker3000
I'm just laying out the schematic for a GPIO board that includes a 4x20LCD
display interface, two mains relays, two opto-isolated mains power sensors, a
real time clock chip and interface to some one-wire temp sensors.

The Pi is going to be the master controller for my central heating system.
There will be a Web interface and I hope to implement something with a service
such as Google Latitude so I can have a 'back from holiday' mode where the
system knows when I'm, say, back within 25 miles of the house and fires up the
heating and water again.

That's my fun project for when I have some spare time.

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JabavuAdams
Can't wait for the camera module...

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IheartApplesDix
For those looking for complete control of their hardware platform, the
following link is a great place to start. Ever wonder how ARM Cortex chips
work at a lower level? Afaik, this is the only available open source
hypervisor.

[http://www.openvirtualization.org/open-source-arm-
trustzone....](http://www.openvirtualization.org/open-source-arm-
trustzone.html)

More information on the "opensource-ness" of Raspberry Pi:

[http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/all-
co...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/all-code-on-
raspberry-pis-arm-chip-now-open-source/)

