Raspberry pi looks like a pretty good contendor against arduino

[johnboxall]

Some info here:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/raspberry-pi-looks-like-a-pretty-good-contendor-against-arduino/

That is the start of this thread

[Kremmen]

Raspberry Pi - it would be great to hear what you think of it, including

- board layout
- price
- components, manufacturing, how price is so low
- what would make different
- are you in the slightest interested by it
- opinion opinion opinion :-)

Just 5 minutes ago Farnell informed me they would now take my order - so i placed it. Price is right, the rest remains to be seen. My interest is mainly to use it as a realtime computing engine for CNC applications, path control for coordinated motion and suchlike. But it all depends. Linux would be the preferable OS but whether RTAI or any other realtime kernel can run in Raspberry will be found out only after i have it. If not then maybe a lower level kernel like the FreeRTOS could be doable. That one of course has zip device support so forget video and other civilized things unless i find a way to run that under Linux. But yes, it is interesting and possibly even useful. The investment to find out is negligible so what is there to lose?

[AntiProtonBoy]

What's the availability like? Still have to wait for ages?

[GrumpyDave]

What's the availability like? Still have to wait for ages?

Pretty much, I registered my interest to buy with RS on the release day at approx 10am and have not been able to place an order yet..

I  received an email on the 8th saying they are still producing thousands of PI's for people in order of registration and there will be a mail next week, no dates were specified..

I have no Idea how Farnell (element14) are doing as I did not register with them.

[Kremmen]

What's the availability like? Still have to wait for ages?

Farnell wrote about July/August for the order i placed yesterday. No firm commitment though.

[joelby]

I actually registered with both, because both were having problems and I thought I'd hedge my bets. element14 (Australia) rang up yesterday to say mine would be shipped on either the 25th or 28th (I don't remember which). RS continue to send me update emails, but nothing to give an indication of when they'll be available.

[jucole]

Hungry for hardware? and you're still waiting for the Raspberry Pi you ordered? well it seems there are other options on the menu now!

Raspberry Pi faces challenge from Android-based rivals Via Technologies' APC micro-PC Powered by a WonderMedia ARM processor, the APC offers an alternative to the Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi computer faces fresh competition from two Asian micro-PC rivals. Taiwan's Via Technologies has announced plans to sell the APC. Like the Pi it comes with its motherboard exposed and is designed to be connected to a TV or monitor. It follows the MK802 - an enclosed PC-on-a-stick from China's Rikomagic - which went on sale last week.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18163419

[T4P]

Oh Via ? Alright all that's important to me is if it has a SATA/m-SATA connector if it doesn't then zilch for me
Looks like all of them don't so they lost my father's purchase 

[Jimmy]

I have had my r-pi for about a month now

The layout is a little hap hazad with connectors on all 4 sides of the board some hang over the side alot. Parts of the board get quite warm but mos vregs do. It didn't like the first 3 sd cards that I had here so I had to go buy one that was in their hardware list. I haven't had a problem with it yet and for the $38 I paid for it it is awesom

now looking at the http://apc.io/about/ Via Technologies' APC micro-PC  it looks good however it dosent have and gpio like the pi but it is not marketed for the hackers like the pi is. The Pi does 1080p so the media player crowd will stick to the pi. The Via board has mounting holes so it is easyer to mount.

There are many good points about both boards and cheap enough to have one of each.

[StubbornGreek]

There seem to be a number of products being introduced as "mini" computers. The RPi looks great, so does this $74 Android option below and finally, the Intel NUC is looking sheksy!

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/05/new-74-android-mini-computer-is-slightly-larger-than-a-thumb-drive/

[Quiggers]

I've registered but heard nothing since the original e-mail to say they recieved my request,
the other mini pc's are great if you want to add internet to your home cinema but i want
the Pi so i can use it as an embedded dev board, plus I like to support the foundations education ethos.

[Kremmen]

I can't recall when i sent the original email to register for buying but it was some time ago already. However, just yesterday they (RS) sent me an invitation to place my order which i did. They quoted a 10 week delivery time - we'll see.

[caroper]

I have also had mine for nearly a month, I ordered it from RS South Africa but it was shipped by RS UK. Certainly good value for money, but it is definitely still a beta.


I don't really have the time to learn Linux and Python right now. so rather than have it sit idle on my desk I loaded XBMC for Raspberry Pi and hung a usb drive off it.
It makes a very usable and cheep Media Center PC.


Cheers
Chris

[gtsili]

I just received my Raspberry Pi on Friday and quickly put together an SD card with Debian and omxplayer. I am attaching a picture of the Pi playing a 1080p x264 DTS movie over my LAN. I am very happy with it so far and can't wait to try xbmc. Note the CEC capability.   

[ndictu]

I just received my Raspberry Pi on Friday and quickly put together an SD card with Debian and omxplayer. I am attaching a picture of the Pi playing a 1080p x264 DTS movie over my LAN. I am very happy with it so far and can't wait to try xbmc. Note the CEC capability.

I might try that next, I've used some old OpenELEC builds when I received mine and it was extremely slow while in the menus, playback itself was OK. I don't plan to use it as a serious media center but only as a small and simple player that I can put behind TV and remotely start a movie on it.

BTW, anyone using some remote control receiver?

[elliot42]

I might try that next, I've used some old OpenELEC builds when I received mine and it was extremely slow while in the menus, playback itself was OK. I don't plan to use it as a serious media center but only as a small and simple player that I can put behind TV and remotely start a movie on it.

BTW, anyone using some remote control receiver?

I've also tried OpenELEC and found the menus much more responsive with the CPU overclocked to 900MHz. I also clocked the RAM to 450MHz but it was unstable when I tried it at 500MHz. I still get freezes/crashes sometimes when using the menus or scanning for media. Video playback has been fine, I've watched a few full movies and haven't had problems while watching them.

[gtsili]

Hi guys,

I have tried Raspbmc (see attached photo), that has a very smooth and easy automated installation. The menus where not that slow but the playback on high definition was very choppy and I did manage to crash it while playing a video. Under the hood Raspbmc is a very minimalistic Debian so you can ssh and tinker with thinks from the console (I did a proper nfs4 mount because I do not like the way xbmc does that). I was thinking of trying OpenELEC too. I do not like this overclocking business, Raspbmc also overclocks the CPU at 800MHz but the chips are quite hot already. I have not connected any remote control receivers yet but there are several options (either a usb one or something using the GPIO) but the one I prefer is the CEC solution. Raspbmc does not use libCEC from what little I have read. One more think I forgot to mention is that omxplayer does not need X-windows to display the movie, so memory-wise and performance-wise it will be the clear winner. I am sure that with a little bit of effort I can put together a simple ncurses program that just browses around a predefined path and uses omxplayer to play the selected movie. What the heck, you can even set up midnight commander to do that.

I might try that next, I've used some old OpenELEC builds when I received mine and it was extremely slow while in the menus, playback itself was OK. I don't plan to use it as a serious media center but only as a small and simple player that I can put behind TV and remotely start a movie on it.

BTW, anyone using some remote control receiver?

I've also tried OpenELEC and found the menus much more responsive with the CPU overclocked to 900MHz. I also clocked the RAM to 450MHz but it was unstable when I tried it at 500MHz. I still get freezes/crashes sometimes when using the menus or scanning for media. Video playback has been fine, I've watched a few full movies and haven't had problems while watching them.

[T4P]

Throw a heatsink onto it. It will help in the long run

[gtsili]

I was thinking the same Dave however, both chips are a very small die with headers and jacks around them. So I need to search around for something suitably small and low profile as well as a good thermal conductive adhesive.

Throw a heatsink onto it. It will help in the long run

[T4P]

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/aluminum-cooler-heat-sink-chipset-for-ram-memory-w-type-8-piece-set-35816
Or this one if it fits:
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/universal-southbridge-heat-sink-chipset-cooler-48616

I'm aware of the size of the broadcom chip it's pretty small

[elliot42]

I haven't yet noticed any heat issues with mine. The highest I've measured the CPU at is 42 degrees Celsius (surface temperature).

[gtsili]

Thanks Dave, those are great!

I suppose it depends on your ambient temperature (quite hot in Greece at the moment), the load on the CPU/GPU as well as what features of the board you are using. Add to that, a bit of overclocking and encase the board on a box with low ventilation and you have a possible problem. I have not measured the actual temperature but after an hour of playing around with it, the chips were bearably comfortable to the touch, so as a rule of thumb around 50 C. I am attaching a picture taken with a thermal camera with the board under full load playing high definition video and using the ethernet. More images and info at: http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/675/what-are-the-maximum-operating-temperatures-of-the-components

I haven't yet noticed any heat issues with mine. The highest I've measured the CPU at is 42 degrees Celsius (surface temperature).

[ndictu]

I'm probably going to make an enclosure for it and put a big PC fan at low speed to get some airflow, and maybe mount some heatsinks on it (although I don't really want to put on any adhesive, so maybe some clip-on heatsinks with just thermal compound). I need to get a proper thermometer gun but the chip and SD card gets quite warm.

I've tried an ear thermometer but it only said 45+, a sad face and started beeping like crazy because it thought I'm going to die in the next few seconds

[elliot42]

gtsili: Interesting photo, thanks. Ambient temperature here isn't very high at the moment when I'm running it, 20C max. I don't have a fancy thermal imaging camera, just a cheap IR thermometer, but I'll keep an eye on the temperature when I'm next playing with the Pi.

[T4P]

The ambient temperature around here is always like 36 or something else when it's not raining
Things can get crazy here... The high ambient temperature claimed my old HP laptop many times
my 858D once
basically fried many things due to the HAT,
i mean like, where the hell have they been developing them? OHWAIT ... China