Raspberry Pi

[Mprentice1]

I Went along to a Raspberry Pi Jam in london the other day. Really was a great evening, and loads of great projects going on.
Hope you'll have a read of my blog post and my friends more informative post.
What does everyone else think about the R Pi? what have you done with it?

http://theelectronicbyte.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/my-first-rapsberry-jam/

[fazz33]

Hey,

I'm enjoying my RPi that being said I'm more or less using it as a XBMC at the moment. It's got a lot of horse power for such a little platform. I do plan to learn more about controlling it's GPIO to more some more fun things but I got caught up in building things with arduinos instead.

[eyebrow]

I did see a guy restore a very very old tv with a new LCD and Rpi to drive it. Looked very tidy and was able to put old war movies on it. Good prop for antique store.

[c4757p]

I did see a guy restore a very very old tv with a new LCD

You mean, he put an LCD in an *old* TV (that previously had a CRT)? Poor TV... That's like emptying a beautiful old Tek scope with vacuum tubes and putting the guts of a Rigol inside.

[arekm]

Tried to use rpi (256MB version, without overclocking) with XBMC. Rather bad experience. Worked but far from being smooth or fast, especially with 1080p movies.

[AlphZeta]

Tried to use rpi (256MB version, without overclocking) with XBMC. Rather bad experience. Worked but far from being smooth or fast, especially with 1080p movies.

That's probably why they had decided to ship all with 512MB in Rev 2. I have the latest revision, but I think it's more or less of an expectation thing. Since I knew that it wasn't a powerful computer, I was actually quite amazed at what it can do for it's small size.

Yes, it is slow by modern standard (a simple apt-get dist-upgrade will take forever), but it runs the latest Linux, has support for tons of readily available apps and you can integrate with other hardware rather effortlessly. So it is actually quite an amazing achievement in my opion.

[NiHaoMike]

I did see a guy restore a very very old tv with a new LCD

You mean, he put an LCD in an *old* TV (that previously had a CRT)? Poor TV... That's like emptying a beautiful old Tek scope with vacuum tubes and putting the guts of a Rigol inside.

It was not mentioned if the TV was still working. Granted, putting a Pi and a LCD inside is not a particularly good use of space, the real deal is to put a LCD and a full gaming PC into an old TV.
http://technabob.com/blog/2007/11/12/soviet-tv-pc-casemod-from-russia-with-wood/
Also note that it's possible to put a Pi into a working CRT TV with little or no permanent modification to the TV, but who actually wants to watch a flickery low resolution video nowadays?

[jh15]

Hmnn, I was going to strip my Hickok (Tektronics clone) Oscope for its 535a parts, but maybe I'll turn it into an aquarium for my Beta fish. (Until I get a final version fish).

[Denhart]

I did see a guy restore a very very old tv with a new LCD

You mean, he put an LCD in an *old* TV (that previously had a CRT)? Poor TV... That's like emptying a beautiful old Tek scope with vacuum tubes and putting the guts of a Rigol inside.

It was not mentioned if the TV was still working. Granted, putting a Pi and a LCD inside is not a particularly good use of space, the real deal is to put a LCD and a full gaming PC into an old TV.
http://technabob.com/blog/2007/11/12/soviet-tv-pc-casemod-from-russia-with-wood/
Also note that it's possible to put a Pi into a working CRT TV with little or no permanent modification to the TV, but who actually wants to watch a flickery low resolution video nowadays?

Looks amazing though, the TV mod that is... screw CRT TV's

[Kaluriel]

My Raspberry Pi is now a lovely ornament under my TV. I've turned it on once, played a basic python game example they had they got bored. If I had a spare HDMI port, I'd probably use it more.

[melonstorm]

My Raspberry Pi is now a lovely ornament under my TV. I've turned it on once, played a basic python game example they had they got bored. If I had a spare HDMI port, I'd probably use it more.

I'm not sure, but if you still got an older spare LCD screen or something lying around, you could try hooking up a HDMI to DVI adapter to the RPi. HDMI is supposed to be backwards compatible to DVI.

[hammy]

... you could try hooking up a HDMI to DVI adapter to the RPi. HDMI is supposed to be backwards compatible to DVI.

Yes, that works. I use such a HDMI-to-DVI Adapter with my RasPi. 

[jh15]

I also just tested a cheap HDMI to VGA adapter cable on my PI, it worked ok.

The PI inside an antique tv is a good idea, it has pond scum yellow video output jack, so it could be wired in after the IF stage or even through an RF modulator available at every yard sale.

[mbqwerty]

My Raspberry Pi is now a lovely ornament under my TV. I've turned it on once, played a basic python game example they had they got bored. If I had a spare HDMI port, I'd probably use it more.

I'm not sure, but if you still got an older spare LCD screen or something lying around, you could try hooking up a HDMI to DVI adapter to the RPi. HDMI is supposed to be backwards compatible to DVI.

I have seen some cases to mount the Raspberry Pi to the VESA mounting brackets of most monitors.

[aparlett]

I just got my Raspberry Pi and i'm quite impressed the sky is the limit if what you can with it seem some pretty interesting projects.

[Joules]

I have a Raspberry Pi here, but since we don't own a TV or any monitors with HDMI the Pi got plugged straight into the router and configured with terminal software and then access via VNC.   Lovely, every device on the network can now access it, be that a smart phone, iOS or humble PC.   As you say loads of fun and potential, we even have multiple VNC sessions on the Pi but it doesn't half crawl with 3 people trying to using it.

[marcel.j]

I am using it to run Open VC on my Robot

[amyk]

I have a feeling the Raspberry Pi is not OSHW...

[Mprentice1]

Another little project using the raspberry pi,
This time controlling a LED via twitter. Keep an eye out for where this idea is headed, a twitter controlled automatic drinks dispenser.
http://theelectronicbyte.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/twitter-led/

[Alana]

Can i use TX and RX pins from GPIO header as terminal connection for Pi by default?

[and101]

Can i use TX and RX pins from GPIO header as terminal connection for Pi by default?

You can, you just need to convert the ttl level signals to RS232 level with a MAX3232 chip.  There are a few add-on boards available like the Serial Pi that plug into the raspberry pi and give you a DB9 serial connector so you can plug that into your pc with a null-modem cable.

You will need to make sure that the linux distro you are using is configured for terminal access, the Raspian image should work out of the box but some of the other images may need updating for them to work.

[cthree]

I have a feeling the Raspberry Pi is not OSHW...

It is unfortunate that it uses a Broadcom ARM processor. Not only not open source, covered under NDA as well. I have one, used it once or twice, it was fine but I simply don't have the time to do more. Too many gadgets, not enough time to use them all.

[metalskin]

I've got a couple of Pis.

I've used the Pi as a headless server running node.js. The server connects to UAVs using the mavlink protocol and then allows clients to connect via websocket (HTML5 implemented protocol over TCP).

I setup a battery pack with a usb splitter cable so I can power the pi and a usb device. This lets me use a wifi dongle and a 433Mhz radio (3DR). I add a portable wireless router (also a 3g modem) and I have multiple clients connecting to the pi via tcp, with the pi connecting to UAVs.

I've also had two USB WiFi dongles connected to the pi and the UAV. This was to connect to the Parrot Drone (manually controlled UAV) with the client controlling the drone.

Just too much fun :-)

[zitman]

I have a few of them too.

One has been running as an XBMC box at home for just over a year now, it's one of the 256M units running OpenElec XBMC connected to my home network via mains networking, controlled via a Microsoft Media Centre remote control and receiver and it has played everything I have thrown at it so far.  It is used pretty much every day.

I have played around with one at home connecting to RTC's Accellerometers, LCD Displays, Barometric sensors, Current sesnors etc using GPIO & I2C.

I have set a handful up for work in kiosk mode to run our web dashboard system and, again, had no problems to date.

Nice piece of kit when used within it's capabilities.  Also served to remind me of the days when I was a Unix programmer!

Z

[Rory]

I have a few of them too.

One has been running as an XBMC box at home for just over a year now, it's one of the 256M units running OpenElec XBMC connected to my home network via mains networking, controlled via a Microsoft Media Centre remote control and receiver and it has played everything I have thrown at it so far.  It is used pretty much every day.

Z

I have a couple of them as well. One is a dedicated XBMC box but I'm not entirely happy with it, as it crashes/reboots on many h.264 encoded mp4 videos - and always crashes at the same point on the video each time.