Raspberry Pi - A credit card sized, linux based mini-computer for $30

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.

A lot of talk about this on Radio 4 this morning and apparently a lot of interest in buying them, if the claim of the websites crashing under demand is true.

Was there another thread where we talked more about this though?

I too am intrigued and would like to pick one up.

Just started following them on twitter and it seems that the sales websites did indeed crash and that demand has been rather unexpectedly high!

i want one

it needs a nice box. i think they'll do well with the geeks in the initial stages but to get the general public interested will take a nice box.

actually, saw these yesterday. scant on details, and more expensive by a factor of about 8, but...
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/02/worlds-smallest-pc-ready-for-pre-order/

I think kids are going to have to "learn programming" just to get it working.

They'll need to find a box, sure, but also a power supply, a WiFi adapter, software for the WiFi, a bootable SD card..

Though if I was able to navigate cassette tape file storage and programs written in BASIC, the above shouldn't be too difficult for the wunderkidzen of today

The sales websites did crash... Was trying to buy one and couldn't order one at all.. :-(

Just like the Kraftwerk tickets...

it'll run fedora and 'useful' things (open office did i see? web browsers). and doesn't it get power from the hdmi port it connects to? the early ones certainly did. (oh, micro-usb or gpio header it says on wikipedia)

I've decided that I'm going to buy one once the initial website-crashing furore dies down. For <£30 it will be a fun little experiment/toy for myself.

Anyone have one of these yet?

i have one now! no idea what to do with it though. it booted last night so that's a start..

Can you run emulators on it? See if it will handle a NES game

I must have ordered mine 2 months ago, and I'm still waiting (which is fine). I'm also not sure what to do with it. I'll probably be boring and make a media center. I have an m-audio usb interface and a fairly sensitive condenser microphone. I'll probably set up something to scrobble vinyl, but that's not soooo cool since it can already be done with your phone. Or maybe I can do some EQ from my room's response. projects!

NES emulator also sounds tops, but would likely drive my housemates crazy.

It could also be fun to start a collaborative music related project with people here, though. I am open to doing some python coding, if a good idea comes around.

http://blog.makezine.com/2012/10/05/pure-data-running-on-the-raspberry-pi/

I have one of these but every time something starts using audio it gives an ear-destroying RRRRIP noise which is kind of putting me off actually doing anything sound-related with it

tbh I'm just using it to stream movies now because then I just get the horrible noise at the start of the film and then it's OK until it ends when there's another rip

(DC offset issues? iunno. it happens in any sound-generating app in raspbian and also xbmc)

damn.. i had kind of thought about turning it into some kind of cheapo version of sonos boxes

That still sounds possible. Just buy a cheap usb sound card with decent reviews. This sounds like a good project, actually. Sonos founder was in the graduate program I'm currently in.

I've seen some youtubes of people using theirs for audio stuff so you may be lucky, I guess it's just a hardware quirk of mine or I haven't got the drivers set up right or something (though I have seen other audio-related bug reports)

I got the sound working at all by doing this:
http://log.liminastudio.com/programming/running-puredata-on-the-raspberry-pi

I've just ordered one of these for my step-brother's christmas present. He's a 17 year old computer building and computer programming fanatic, so I hope that he's going to love it.

I ordered mine on 7/6, and I am still waiting. It's an awesome gift idea, but you may want to prepare for a delay.

Yeah, I'm certainly expecting a few weeks wait. I bought from RS for UK delivery and they currently claim a 4 week wait. Fingers crossed.

Ok. I was quoted 12 weeks, and they added a 9 week delay. So the US supplier is just much slower. There are some pretty neat cases available for cheap. You might want to give another relative looking for a gift idea a tip. Most computer building dudes I know like cases.

mine arrived yesterday :)

got mine the other day but sadly won't be able to mess with it for a week or two. maybe i will just duct tape it to my arduino and make a nice paperweight.

My order was dispatched today... so five weeks was accurate.

Found out that my step-brother already has one Raspberry Pi though, doh! Is there anything cool that having two might allow one to do, or is the present now a dud?

If he bought the Model A (without Ethernet) and you bought the Model B (with Ethernet) then not dud.

Or if both are Model B's, get some more and build a 'bramble' (a RaspPi cluster)

having 2 of these would be great imo!

I'm going to trust his ingenuity to make the most of it!

Only just discovered this. It sounds neat.

I program on my pc so I don't know whether they'll be any advantage of having this but the geek in me really really wants it.

You might also want to check out the Arduino Due, if you want more interfacing options that the Arduino Uno or Mega, and don't really need a board capable of running Linux.

damn.. i had kind of thought about turning it into some kind of cheapo version of sonos boxes

― ^ sarcasm (ken c), Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:40 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is surprisingly easy to do thanks to the people who wrote shairplay: http://lifehacker.com/5978594/turn-a-raspberry-pi-into-an-airplay-receiver-for-streaming-music-in-your-living-room

I get drops when using it with an ipad, though. It works great with an iphone, however.

can somebody who understands alsa please help me find out how one best comes to understand alsa?

what you need understanding w/r/t alsa?

ot, edium or ild?

It could just be that I don't use linux outside of the the pi. For example in the sentence "Using aplay -L you can get a List of existing PCM output devices. If you want the default to be, for example, a USB Device instead of the onboard sound, you can place a pcm.!default line in the .asoundrc." I understand what a bash command like aplay -l is doing. An .asoundrc file is also intuitive to me because I have bash experience. The 'plc.!default' idea is not intuitive. I don't know if it's intuitive to experienced linux users or just experienced alsa users. Should I be learning about Linux or specifically alsa to get some intuition for this stuff? Thanks.

i'm guessing but i think "pcm.!default" is just some parameter setting in alsa.

from http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Asoundrc

pcm.!default {
	type hw
	card 0
}

http://alsa.opensrc.org/.asoundrc

but yeah, shairplay works rad on this, but I would recommend running it as a daemon with the right priority. I believe this page has the right setup: http://lifehacker.com/5978594/turn-a-raspberry-pi-into-an-airplay-receiver-for-streaming-music-in-your-living-room

it's a little dated, I don't think you need to build shairplay from scratch anymore

right. I guess I would like to know what pcm even means, for instance. alsa .asoundrc references seem to be very "add this line to a file," which is a hard way for me to learn b/c I want to know what the line is and what 'PCM' stands for. In the end, I'd like to be able to write a driver for an old usb soundcard I own.

pcm is basically default digital audio. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-code_modulation

like 99% of what you send to a sound card these days is going to be pcm audio, unless you're sending it midi or something

or more succinctly, in 2013 "pcm output device" basically translates to "sound card"

ok, thanks. I think I was looking for something like these: http://www.volkerschatz.com/noise/alsa.html
http://www.sabi.co.uk/Notes/linuxSoundALSA.html

this is how we learn

not how to win

but who we are

playing video games with him reminds me there are ppl who do not glean the teleology of Things and live in a state of constant Being, Not Becoming

I mentioned this on the Sonos thread, but it's probably more relevant here. I finally finished my project of making a web-based mp3 player for the Raspberry Pi that I can control from my phone. It's pretty simple, but it seems surprisingly hard to find a product on the market that does this, and the price, even including the DAC card with RCA outputs that I can connect to my stereo, was very reasonable.

lol m bison

o. nate, what software did you go with?

It's all in python, using flask for the web interface and vlc for the mp3 playback.

there are ppl who do not glean the teleology of Things

video games have some of the most unambiguously teleological worlds our universe has to offer though, so keep him at it

in other news, given my squeezebox-based system can't be replaced if the hardware fails, I've been looking into the rasbpi + DAC solutions out there that can still use the logitech media server + have a phone interface available.

"piCorePlayer" is a great distro for making a Pi dedicated to LMS, client and/or server. I'm not running it at the moment since I have a Windows box up full-time.

I recently switched the Pi 2 I was using mainly for Kodi from OSMC to LibreELEC and surprisingly it makes a great LMS client (using Squeezelite in its "Multimedia-tools" addon). Whatever I was doing in OSMC, I had to "turn off" that Pi's music player in order to watch any videos without messed up sound. Now it all just works.

SD cards are finally available in big enough capacities (and at not insane prices) for me to have my entire FLAC library on them too, which means no need for a hard drive... it really is a magical time for home listening.

it's all low power stuff too. Time for someone to hollow out a walkman for a Pi case!

I already have a dedicated media server running Windows that works well for video stuff, but it's kind of irritating to use with LMS... no matter what I do, about 10% of the time it fails to wake up when I try and turn on a network music player and I have to remote into it and fiddle around. A Rasbpi/Linux/SD card server I would assume could be set up to not go to sleep (as you say, it's low-power enough to leave on all the time) and reliably serve music when asked by a network player.

When I used PiCorePlayer to serve with an external disk on my Pi 2 it was all good. I was surprised the Pi could handle the server. Using one of them sounds preferable to messing with wake-on-LAN or something? I haven't messed with that kind of thing.

the motherboard I use for my server supposedly has wake-on-LAN but damned if I have been able to get it to work consistently

https://www.newegg.com/p/1HD-005N-00041?item=9SIAHUB9513511

i mean this may (likely) be garbage but very tempting

a modern Nintendo wireless controller pro will serve for pretty much all those controllers, and the build quality will be way better... but I get the desire for classic controller shapes (especially that NES controller, as painful as they get after a few hours)

xp i bought from vilros and got 2 ps2-style controllers. they're not outstanding (some sticky buttons) but they were cheap ($10 each or so) and they're compatible with every system.

been using volumio on a pi zero as a music player. has been working nicely using an mpd client on my phone rather than the web interface (which fails to display the queue at times)

oh, their webpage says i can type 'volumio pull' to update. that seems easy enough.

2 hours later i'm watching a newly imaged disk fsck. been 30 minutes so far.

I use an 8bitdo sn30 Pro Plus controller for emulation on my pi. Works equally well for retro games and newer. It's essentially a modernized SNES controller with dual analog sticks in a dualshock-style arrangement. This is the only indie controller manufacturer that's putting out stuff with a build quality comparable to the major players.

https://www.8bitdo.com/sn30-pro-plus/

whoa

anybody used a converter for PS2 dual-shock controllers to usb? gotta be cheaper and less wasteful than buying a new controller, i figure

also, spectrum game emulation, what do i use for keys?

m bison did you already do this? retropie JUST released a new version with Pi 4 support w greatly improved n64 compatibility, worth the cost of a fan imo (you can get cheapish cases w/ a fan built in)

i did! and i got a case with a fan! and some of the n64 stuff works ok!

ALSO HI STEVIE

specifically: mario kart, sm64, tony hawk all work with some sound lag that minimally affects gameplay. mario tennis on the other hand was NAH.

stevie d! gad to see you're well!

HI HELLO!

I have a Pi 3 (I don't think it's even a 3+) and I'm considering upgrading to a 4 but I still have SO much to keep be busy with genesis/ps1/snes

my understanding is that while a lot of emulators you just configure them once and they're set, n64 requires a lot more hands on per-game tweaking to get it working the best

yeah im getting that impresh. right now my son and i are both deep diving into game boy advance stuff i never played (esp the pokemen)

oh shit! DEFINITELY play Mother 3 (you can find a translated ROM p easily), I also had a lot of fun w Mario vs Donkey Kong

hit me up via lixmail, i have a pretty complete r0m c0llection

unless you already have them all?

GBA was an amazing system

best Nintendo handheld until the Switch Lite

Switch Lite still too big tbh

we've been playing mother 3!

i get my ROMs from v1mm's, it's been v v reliable

was unfamiliar; thanks for that!

oh v1mm's is the best, that and the-eye are my go-tos

Raspberry Pi - A keyboard sized, personal computer for $70 "now thirty times as powerful as it was at launch"
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-400-the-70-desktop-pc/

pretty cool! although one of the advantages of the current rpi is that it's easy to hide inside of things if you don't want to show the computery parts.

but i'm sure there's a lot more going on with that update than the keyboard and it's physical size. which is why i say,

pretty cool!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CH6jn2WAH_i/?igshid=viivrs3vi8c0

An excellent Chonky case with a pi inside. Love dat keyboard too

The 400 is dplaying on my unfulfilled SAM Coupë / Jupiter Ace desires. Don't need but...

would be interesting to know how many hundreds of times more powerful they are than the spectrum i grew up with. and if the kids are similarly inspired or whether the complexity works against it.

inspired imo

some are, at least, imo

pi Jukebox decided to die yesterday, just stopped playing after a Dead Can Dance song. i was logged in at the time but i couldn't ls let alone shutdown nicely. pulled the plug but the sd card is now toast, laptop doesn't even see it.

still, something to do...

Pi 5 is the most capable yet, and the most expensive (and needs active cooling?). part of me thinks this is missing the point, but i guess you still have the zeros for the small stuff, even the picos. do i need a third? perhaps not.

(oh, places still have various model 3s and 4s in stock, more than enough choice)

It's weird but you can often find used computer kits that used rpi3 for the brains for cheaper than bare rpi3.

I guess less weird but still weird -- you can find full working laptops for even cheaper.

needing active cooling makes them pretty much useless

some of the new cases have fans built in (but will limit expandability, getting in the way of the pins)

the official word is "continual heavy usage" will cause thermal throttling and a fan will avoid that. also that the 5 is generally cooler than the 4 and faster even if throttling, so it's not as terrible as all that.