I have received the Trust ClassicLine keyboard I ordered a couple of days ago, and that works OK with the RasPi, as does the mouse. My local Asda has £5 keyboards in stock that are supposed to work; I could have saved myself some money and got the thing working quicker if I'd known that.
Yes I noticed that too. The Australian newspaper breathlessly reports today:
COMPUTER distributor RS Components has released what it says is the world's cheapest computer -- a tiny credit card-sized machine costing $U25 and called the Raspberry Pi.
and when you go to RS it says
Register here to express an interest in Raspberry Pi .... Price $50.40
yeah and how come kindle is 99 in US and 159 here ? so today I bought a Kobo and its brill... for $83.
$25 is the price of the Model A, which isn't in production and hasn't aroused any interest, anyway. The Model B is $35 here in the UK, and I actually paid less than that because of the exchange rate. Delivery was free but I had to pay VAT, of course.
I am curious to see if they will really deliver to Taiwan. My PandaBoard order never came through - claimed I needed to prove that I had a valid business or something. That was from Digikey.
I looked at the Farnell registration and they seem to want to qualify that you are working in the industry.
RS Solutions also wanted a company name (I gave them the usual - Herzog Co.).
Besides, I'd have nothing to gripe about if I got one right away. These days I am trying to figure out the GPIO. The Propeller seems to offer a more flexible and useful interface -- Both are 3.3v logic. There is the one +5V pin that is the exception.
Loopy,
Is all this RS and Farnell wanting to only deliver to a business real so. Because if so it's totally nuts given that the entire reason for the Raspies existance is to get ultra cheap computers into the hands of young ones. Perhaps you would like to bring this to the attention of the Raspberry PI foundation. I at least would be very interested to know what they feel about that.
Perhaps. Given Ebens original desire to get more computer savy applicants to Cambridge and that they are quite happy to accept applications from around the world it makes no sense.
I have no idea if Farnell and RS Solutions are restricted in the same way as US distributors Digikey and Mouser are, but a couple of things happened earlier this year.
1. I didn't get the PandaBoard I tried to order via Digikey after waiting quite a bit of time and they said that I hadn't provided them with a bonafide busiess address and so on in Taiwan. They had asked a lot of questions about my occupation, title, and intended use.
2. Someone in Canada was on the Forums complaining that by ordering through Mouser they were sent a rather official and lengthy inquire about some Propeller items they were ordering.
It seemed at the time that major American electronics distributors had suddenly been forced to comply with some rather arduous documentation to ship more sophisticated items outside the USA.
It could be that Farnell and RS Solutions are merely 'data mining' for future reference and not qualifying shipments. I've been a bit mental of late. So this may all be nothing.
Still, I did see that Farnell was covering merely the U.K. (maybe the EU too) and that RS Solutions was distributing to the rest of the world. This was claimed when I registered. That makes sense because RS Solutions might have the shipping infrastructure to handle the far and away, while Farnell may not. And of course, there is the ever present question of being VAT exempt.
I got a hankering today to see what was going on in the world of Raspberry Pi. Cutting to the chase, my efforts to track down centers of activity were largely fruitless. Perhaps RasPi is quietly doing wonderful things in the education system, but as far as hobbyists and hackers go, I was pretty much underwhelmed.
It is possible that vast throngs of users are too busy using the stuff to stop and chat about it. I just don't know. What is the word from the street? I though perhaps someone here might know. Leon, how are your investigations going? Any chance of using the RasPi as an embedded controller? Are we still waiting for cases and chassis?
I got a hankering today to see what was going on in the world of Raspberry Pi. Cutting to the chase, my efforts to track down centers of activity were largely fruitless. Perhaps RasPi is quietly doing wonderful things in the education system, but as far as hobbyists and hackers go, I was pretty much underwhelmed.
It is possible that vast throngs of users are too busy using the stuff to stop and chat about it. I just don't know. What is the word from the street? I though perhaps someone here might know. Leon, how are your investigations going? Any chance of using the RasPi as an embedded controller? Are we still waiting for cases and chassis?
Remember, school just started, and the kids have other classes too.
Maybe you missed the bit where RPi works from the CEC link signals from the TV so it can be controlled by the remote? So an RPi on the TV can be a whole media center? (as in no more half @$$ed blue ray consoles) Or the camera coming out later this year, so openCV can make our bots vision equipped for under $100? I guess a paradigm shift in consumer robotics can be underwhelming on these forums, since "impossible" is an invitation here, rather than a limit.
We're still on track to use RPi as headless embedded workstation, and multi-props as embedded controller.
I say paradigm shift in consumer robotics is 18 months out. I base this on the props ability to interface to anything, and the RPi's availability of cheap OS services.
Apparently the Pi will not make it into schools in large numbers until next year, but some units are out there.
I have two R-Pi's now; one for playing around with, and the other one is working away 24/7 uploading to the web some timing data acquired by a Prop. If you're really curious, here's a raw sample: http://bealecorner.org/incoming/raw/pi2.txt Not a terribly glamorous application, but it was easy, and cost-effective. :-)
...my efforts to track down centers of activity were largely fruitless...
I presume you checked out the Rasperry Pi forums: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/
Seems to be quite active enough. Even the Raspberrypi.org front page has a lot of stories coming.
One centre of Raspberry Pi activity is right here:) What with getting propgcc, the new spin compiler and SimpleIDE built for ARM and running on the Pi. And getting the Prop loader to use the Pi's on board UART. Not to mention there are already two or three of us cooking up Propeller add on boards for the Pi.
Perhaps RasPi is quietly doing wonderful things in the education system,
Not yet so much. The current run of Pi boards was supposed to be a limited initial release for developers, sort of beta. It was not intended to go into schools until there was an enclosure for it and any problems sorted out.
Somehow this has mushroomed and they will have shipped a million boards by Christmas. They no longer intend to design or build a case because there are already hundreds out there. See the forum.
It is possible that vast throngs of users are too busy using the stuff to stop and chat about it
Perhaps, but the forum is pretty active.
What is the word from the street?
From my end of the street I would say it's amazing.
They have a put together in a short time an entire new architecture for Debian that uses the floating point hardware on the Pi properly (Normal ARM Debian does not)
First thing I wanted was a working Free Pascal compiler, floating point related bugs in that went all the way to the FPC developers and were fixed in short order.
I wanted a recent version of node.js so as to make easy connections from Prop serial to WEB pages. Sure enough it has been sorted.
The Nokia guys have been working on version 5 of Qt for the Pi. Oracle has taken Java on the Pi seriously.
I have Simple IDE and Propeller dev tools running on the Pi.
Any chance of using the RasPi as an embedded controller?
With 17 GPIO pins, a UART, SPI and other interfaces why not? Up to some definition of real-time. You embedded system then has a real file system and networking and video if need be.
For more time critical stuff and more IO I want to ad a Pi form factor board carrying a Propeller. It could also provide a VGA text terminal for the Pi (The Pi does not do VGA)
I thought I'd look around the Raspberry Pi scene as well.
YouTube returns over 3000 hits for the search "Raspberry Pi", the first 20 on pages of results are all definitely on topic, gave up looking after that.
Google returns 7000000 hits for "Raspberry Pi" by contrast less that 500000 for Parallax Propeller and even less if you put quotes around that.
So, I don't know about "centres of activity" but there seems to be an awful lot going on spread around out there.
I just hope we can jump on board with a Prop add on board design for the Pi. With soon one million Pi out there that's a lot of potential customers for Parallax. And I believe the educational goals of Raspi and Parallax are complementary and in alignment. Good for everyone.
I just ordered one yesterday and it'll be shipping to my doorstep tomorrow, I hope.
Can't wait to play with it, especially the I/O ports! I get so uber-excited on the external ports, I read the community magazines on the interfacing technique before the thing reaches my home.
In my area there are stocks in Singapore's Element14 so it's quite easy to buy it.
Thanks for the informative responses! I'm slow to reply simply because of the workload at the moment.
Google returns 7000000 hits for "Raspberry Pi" by contrast less that 500000 for Parallax Propeller and even less if you put quotes around that.
Not sure what the origins of such a remark are, but I hope my questions didn't put anyone on the defensive. I suppose I'm as aware as anyone of the tremendous publicity success the RasPi has been.
I've been out of the loop for a while. Knowing the ingenuity of the human mind, I couldn't help but fantasize about all the great things that were surely taking place. When I actually visited raspberrypi.org, though, there were two individuals logged in at the moment, and the most elaborate project I saw was where someone had fashioned a laptop with the RP at its heart. This surprised me, so I figured that either the activity was occurring elsewhere or else there wasn't a lot.
As for 'hits,' it seemed that most of them dealt with supply and delivery issues. There was a noticeable dearth of substantive hits. I still figure that a lot of activity must be going on, at least in software, and that we'll see more as time passes.
I've got a lot of specific comments to make, but no time at the moment to make them. I'm very pleased to hear that the RP is serviceable as an embedded controller, and interested in the project of JBeale. Embedded control is certainly the application that would cause me to buy one at the moment. Must-have apps might fuel further purchases and more elaborate installments.
One centre of Raspberry Pi activity is right here:) What with getting propgcc, the new spin compiler and SimpleIDE built for ARM and running on the Pi. And getting the Prop loader to use the Pi's on board UART. Not to mention there are already two or three of us cooking up Propeller add on boards for the Pi.
Exactly. When it comes to the type of RasP projects that would interest me, I found more of them here than anywhere else.
They have a put together in a short time an entire new architecture for Debian that uses the floating point hardware on the Pi properly (Normal ARM Debian does not)
First thing I wanted was a working Free Pascal compiler, floating point related bugs in that went all the way to the FPC developers and were fixed in short order.
I wanted a recent version of node.js so as to make easy connections from Prop serial to WEB pages. Sure enough it has been sorted.
Where does one keep tabs on this sort of thing? Is it on raspberrypi.org? Because of the glut of old and irrelevant info on the internet, it is difficult to find the good stuff. Maybe it comes down to using the right search terms, starting with -backordered, -delivery, -Farnell, and -announced.
Shipping from Terasic used to be expensive, but they are now available from RS, Farnell and Digi-Key with free shipping here in the UK.
I have an older Cyclone II board with a 50 MHz clock and I've used the PLL on that to multiply it up to 200 MHz. I haven't tried it yet with the DE0--Nano.
Comments
I can now explore the system properly.
Looking forward to your discoveries. If this is a useful Python environment, it just may take us all by surprise and go viral.
It also has gcc, which I am more interested in.
yeah and how come kindle is 99 in US and 159 here ? so today I bought a Kobo and its brill... for $83.
http://downloads.element14.com/raspberryPi1.html?isRedirect=true&ICID=raspberrypigroup_Europe
It looks like they are ramping up to full-scale production.
I looked at the Farnell registration and they seem to want to qualify that you are working in the industry.
RS Solutions also wanted a company name (I gave them the usual - Herzog Co.).
Besides, I'd have nothing to gripe about if I got one right away. These days I am trying to figure out the GPIO. The Propeller seems to offer a more flexible and useful interface -- Both are 3.3v logic. There is the one +5V pin that is the exception.
Is all this RS and Farnell wanting to only deliver to a business real so. Because if so it's totally nuts given that the entire reason for the Raspies existance is to get ultra cheap computers into the hands of young ones. Perhaps you would like to bring this to the attention of the Raspberry PI foundation. I at least would be very interested to know what they feel about that.
1. I didn't get the PandaBoard I tried to order via Digikey after waiting quite a bit of time and they said that I hadn't provided them with a bonafide busiess address and so on in Taiwan. They had asked a lot of questions about my occupation, title, and intended use.
2. Someone in Canada was on the Forums complaining that by ordering through Mouser they were sent a rather official and lengthy inquire about some Propeller items they were ordering.
It seemed at the time that major American electronics distributors had suddenly been forced to comply with some rather arduous documentation to ship more sophisticated items outside the USA.
It could be that Farnell and RS Solutions are merely 'data mining' for future reference and not qualifying shipments. I've been a bit mental of late. So this may all be nothing.
Still, I did see that Farnell was covering merely the U.K. (maybe the EU too) and that RS Solutions was distributing to the rest of the world. This was claimed when I registered. That makes sense because RS Solutions might have the shipping infrastructure to handle the far and away, while Farnell may not. And of course, there is the ever present question of being VAT exempt.
It is possible that vast throngs of users are too busy using the stuff to stop and chat about it. I just don't know. What is the word from the street? I though perhaps someone here might know. Leon, how are your investigations going? Any chance of using the RasPi as an embedded controller? Are we still waiting for cases and chassis?
I am currently more interested in my new Terasic DE0-Nano FPGA system.
Remember, school just started, and the kids have other classes too.
Maybe you missed the bit where RPi works from the CEC link signals from the TV so it can be controlled by the remote? So an RPi on the TV can be a whole media center? (as in no more half @$$ed blue ray consoles) Or the camera coming out later this year, so openCV can make our bots vision equipped for under $100? I guess a paradigm shift in consumer robotics can be underwhelming on these forums, since "impossible" is an invitation here, rather than a limit.
We're still on track to use RPi as headless embedded workstation, and multi-props as embedded controller.
I say paradigm shift in consumer robotics is 18 months out. I base this on the props ability to interface to anything, and the RPi's availability of cheap OS services.
Opinions in support? to the contrary?
I have two R-Pi's now; one for playing around with, and the other one is working away 24/7 uploading to the web some timing data acquired by a Prop. If you're really curious, here's a raw sample: http://bealecorner.org/incoming/raw/pi2.txt Not a terribly glamorous application, but it was easy, and cost-effective. :-)
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/
Seems to be quite active enough. Even the Raspberrypi.org front page has a lot of stories coming.
One centre of Raspberry Pi activity is right here:) What with getting propgcc, the new spin compiler and SimpleIDE built for ARM and running on the Pi. And getting the Prop loader to use the Pi's on board UART. Not to mention there are already two or three of us cooking up Propeller add on boards for the Pi. Not yet so much. The current run of Pi boards was supposed to be a limited initial release for developers, sort of beta. It was not intended to go into schools until there was an enclosure for it and any problems sorted out.
Somehow this has mushroomed and they will have shipped a million boards by Christmas. They no longer intend to design or build a case because there are already hundreds out there. See the forum. Perhaps, but the forum is pretty active. From my end of the street I would say it's amazing.
They have a put together in a short time an entire new architecture for Debian that uses the floating point hardware on the Pi properly (Normal ARM Debian does not)
First thing I wanted was a working Free Pascal compiler, floating point related bugs in that went all the way to the FPC developers and were fixed in short order.
I wanted a recent version of node.js so as to make easy connections from Prop serial to WEB pages. Sure enough it has been sorted.
The Nokia guys have been working on version 5 of Qt for the Pi. Oracle has taken Java on the Pi seriously.
I have Simple IDE and Propeller dev tools running on the Pi. With 17 GPIO pins, a UART, SPI and other interfaces why not? Up to some definition of real-time. You embedded system then has a real file system and networking and video if need be.
For more time critical stuff and more IO I want to ad a Pi form factor board carrying a Propeller. It could also provide a VGA text terminal for the Pi (The Pi does not do VGA) No: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=58
YouTube returns over 3000 hits for the search "Raspberry Pi", the first 20 on pages of results are all definitely on topic, gave up looking after that.
Google returns 7000000 hits for "Raspberry Pi" by contrast less that 500000 for Parallax Propeller and even less if you put quotes around that.
So, I don't know about "centres of activity" but there seems to be an awful lot going on spread around out there.
I just hope we can jump on board with a Prop add on board design for the Pi. With soon one million Pi out there that's a lot of potential customers for Parallax. And I believe the educational goals of Raspi and Parallax are complementary and in alignment. Good for everyone.
Can't wait to play with it, especially the I/O ports! I get so uber-excited on the external ports, I read the community magazines on the interfacing technique before the thing reaches my home.
In my area there are stocks in Singapore's Element14 so it's quite easy to buy it.
Not sure what the origins of such a remark are, but I hope my questions didn't put anyone on the defensive. I suppose I'm as aware as anyone of the tremendous publicity success the RasPi has been.
I've been out of the loop for a while. Knowing the ingenuity of the human mind, I couldn't help but fantasize about all the great things that were surely taking place. When I actually visited raspberrypi.org, though, there were two individuals logged in at the moment, and the most elaborate project I saw was where someone had fashioned a laptop with the RP at its heart. This surprised me, so I figured that either the activity was occurring elsewhere or else there wasn't a lot.
As for 'hits,' it seemed that most of them dealt with supply and delivery issues. There was a noticeable dearth of substantive hits. I still figure that a lot of activity must be going on, at least in software, and that we'll see more as time passes.
I've got a lot of specific comments to make, but no time at the moment to make them. I'm very pleased to hear that the RP is serviceable as an embedded controller, and interested in the project of JBeale. Embedded control is certainly the application that would cause me to buy one at the moment. Must-have apps might fuel further purchases and more elaborate installments.
Exactly. When it comes to the type of RasP projects that would interest me, I found more of them here than anywhere else.
Where does one keep tabs on this sort of thing? Is it on raspberrypi.org? Because of the glut of old and irrelevant info on the internet, it is difficult to find the good stuff. Maybe it comes down to using the right search terms, starting with -backordered, -delivery, -Farnell, and -announced.
That is a brilliant product! The size...the stackable peripherals...the looks...the price.
As for the performance, the spec sheet indicates a 50 MHz clock, but I can only imagine that is frequency-multiplied internally.
So this way you don't have to wait for your dream uC, you can make it yourself!
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?No=593
Shipping from Terasic used to be expensive, but they are now available from RS, Farnell and Digi-Key with free shipping here in the UK.
I have an older Cyclone II board with a 50 MHz clock and I've used the PLL on that to multiply it up to 200 MHz. I haven't tried it yet with the DE0--Nano.