back to article 75,000 Raspberry Pi baked before August

RS Components, one of two distributors for the Raspberry Pi, says the 75,000 of the tiny computers are burbling through the manufacturing supply chain and will be ready for release “in July to August”. Speaking at a press event in Sydney today, ANZ Country Manager Jeremy Edward said many buyers of the computer come from within …

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  1. Bruce Hoult

    not really the same thing

    While the price is similar to Arduinos intended for general prototyping (e.g. the Uno), they're not really the same thing at all.

    On the one side, Arduinos go down to much lower prices, with a bare chip with Arduino boot loader available for about 5 EUR. And Arduinos are suitable for hard real-time programming as they don't run an operating system at all — you're programming the bare metal.

    On the other side, the Pi has at least 100 times more CPU power and 100 thousand times as much RAM. And while the Pi has a few pins of digital I/O, it has no analogue I/O at all.

    The Pi is much more comparable to something like an old 700 MHz - 1 GHz Pentium III box that you can pick up used for about the same price (I have half a dozen of them in use as routers and so forth so I know). The Pi is much physically smaller and uses less power. But it's lacking any ability to add multiple ethernet cards or the like.

    1. David Hicks
      Linux

      Re: not really the same thing

      If you wanted multiple ethernet cards wouldn't you just add them on USB?

      Of course you'd need a hub. You'd be able to add more using the GPIO pins too, as they are often used for connecting sata or ethernet controllers on other boards.

      I am slightly disappointed at the weird bootloader stuff they do, when the nice, open, u-boot is out there, but I suppose you can't have everything.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: not really the same thing

        They've got to get the GPU firmware into it somehow, I thought that was a pretty elegant solution that allows later updates to GPU firmware quite nicely.

        - and keeps the price down as no need for any extra onboard Flash or seperate BIOS/bootloader silicon.

        1. David Hicks

          Re: not really the same thing

          I guess it saves on silicon, and therefore on price. People who want the more advanced stuff like network boot will just have to put a u-boot image on the sd card instead of a kernel I guess.

    2. Charles Manning

      Another big difference

      Anyone can easily make an Arduino-like system with a soldering iron and basic hand tools. All you need are an AVR chip, veroboard and a few other easy to source components. This means many hobbiests make their own Arduinos, or variants, and many companies sell clones.

      The RPi, OTOH, can only be assembled in a factory with professional tools/equipment and is way beyond amateur assemblers.

    3. paulc
      WTF?

      Re: not really the same thing

      "On the other side, the Pi has at least 100 times more CPU power and 100 thousand times as much RAM. And while the Pi has a few pins of digital I/O, it has no analogue I/O at all."

      oh for heck's sake... that's merely a minor issue... someone will quickly come up with the additional hardware and software to utilise a couple of digital I/O pins to implement an analogue input or output...

      I can think of several ways right off the top of my head right now...

      And someone has already done that self same thing:

      http://expeyes.in/

      USB version and there's also a version which utilises the digital I/O pins as well...

      http://www.raspberrypi.org/

      scroll down a bit and there's an image covering this...

      "It connects via USB, and Ajith has also designed a version which interfaces through a serial interface using the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins."

      http://expeyes.in/articles/54/expeyes-meets-raspberry-pi

      1. ArmanX

        Re: not really the same thing

        As far as the bootloader, I hear the reason for its design is that it's pretty much impossible to brick, now; everything runs off flash, so if you screw something up, you can just pull out the card, format and reinstall, and away you go again. Anything more complicated adds the possibility of error, and it would really, really suck to brick your RPi after waiting four months to receive it.

        And as far comparing it to the Arduino... it's really not a good comparison. The RPi can play full 1080p video, decode DVDs, run a webserver, and interface with any USB device it has drivers for. To do that, an Arduino would either need a very skilled programmer, or some fairly costly shields (plates? Whatever the daughter boards are called). Or, a shorter explanation:

        You can plug an Arduino into a Raspberry Pi in about two seconds (using a USB cord), but it would take quite a while (and lots of programming) to plug a Raspberry Pi into an Arduino.

        They both have their use, but what I'm most excited about is both of them *together*.

  2. Ole Juul
    Coat

    One more

    At the event, your correspondent nestled a Pi into his iPhone 3G case. We've dubbed the result the PiPhone

    Now stick that in a guitar and you'll have an Epiphone.

    1. Ian Johnston Silver badge
      Alert

      An EpiPhone?

      Is that the one with the real strong vibrating alert?

  3. LarsG

    careful there

    You should have used a Samsung case, less chance of being sued for copyright.

    1. craigj

      Re: careful there

      Only because the samsung lawyers probably couldnt tell a samsung case from an iPhone case

  4. ElNumbre
    Holmes

    Farnelll

    Farnell seems to have gone very quiet in the last few weeks. My Pi was due to be baked any time now, but I have no idea. Im hoping they're on similar delivery schedules to RS.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Farnelll went quiet, Re: Arduino

      Really?

      I've seen posts from Farnell reps, and there seem to be many responses to them, on the raspberry pi bog (and probably even more in the forums) at www.raspberrypi.org

      E.g. start at http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1214 (May 14, ie Monday just gone). 142 responses as I write.

      There is also a post on the "Pi vs Arduino" topic on the bog. In summary: different products for different purposes, only appearing to compete if you don't really understand. Maybe it should be Pi + Arduino in some cases.

      Lots of downvotes for the article itself. Not sure why?

      1. cliveski
        Happy

        Re: Farnelll went quiet, Arduino

        "...on the raspberry pi bog..."

        The mind bog-gles!

  5. Haku

    Prince

    Please tell me I'm not the only one whose brain can't help hear the words "She wore a raspberry beret" every time a Raspberry Pi story pops up on one of these tech news sites?

    1. VinceH
      Thumb Up

      Re: Prince

      Not until now, no - but now you've put the connection in my head!

      "She wore a raspberry pi-i, and if it was warm, she wouldn't wear much more..."

      I demand a PlayMobil mock up of what that might look like as an advertising campaign! ;)

    2. Dblv
      Trollface

      Re: Prince

      Sorry, it is only you... :-)

      1. Haku

        Re: Prince

        Thank you for your confirmation of my oddness :)

  6. Alister

    “Pi sales have overtaken Arduino in an instant”

    Sales maybe, but deliveries? Not so much...

    1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      On the other hand

      there's those of us who have been waiting for the Arduino Leonardo (the real one, not a clone) since something like September so it pretty much balances out. Of course sales numbers are meaningless here. For example, no one really knows what percentage of Atmegas end up as de facto Arduinos. These aren't commercial projects folks. They aren't competing projects. I wish people (who should know better) would stop talking as if they were.

    2. Benchops
      Devil

      Re: “Pi sales have overtaken Arduino in an instant”

      And don't all things that overtake do so "in an instant". I mean, there's one moment where they haven't overtaken, and the "next" moment they have.

      Does anyone else thing that devil head looks more like a car (with a mouth) approaching?

      1. Simon Harris

        Re: “Pi sales have overtaken Arduino in an instant”

        "Does anyone else thing that devil head looks more like a car (with a mouth) approaching?"

        Maybe it's Christine, then it works whichever way you look at it!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: “Pi sales have overtaken Arduino in an instant”

        Are you saying it's actually a devil and not a red car approaching??

      3. Unlucky
        Flame

        Re: “Pi sales have overtaken Arduino in an instant”

        "And don't all things that overtake do so "in an instant"."

        Well, except any two lorries on a 2-lane carriageway...

        1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
          Coffee/keyboard

          Re: “Pi sales have overtaken Arduino in an instant”

          Good one - see icon!

  7. Lee Dowling Silver badge

    Put it this way - they can only get faster.

    My order was put into the RS website as soon as was technically possible (their website basically folded before the release time even arrived). I have *just* got a note from the Post Office that my order (number 4401 from RS's "half") of the release minute (I would say release day, but really if you didn't order in the first few minutes, you were stuffed) has finally arrived.

    The release date was February 29th, by the way. March, April, May. So they just about delivered those orders from the first few minutes of release in 2 and a bit months after "release" (which is really a pre-order that I got suckered into because they kept telling us it was a "release").

    The forums are pretty quiet on actual content - everything is either a two-line port from Debian archives, or some Hello World knocked up in Python. Sure, you can run Quake on it, but I didn't expect anything less given the specs. The troubleshooting forums describe myriad power problems which, yes, technically people should read the specs on but that's only going to get worse on public release. There's a couple of broken units (bad solder joints on things like the Ethernet port that had to ALL be redone because of a manufacturing cockup, broken SD card readers, HDMI compatibility problems, etc.) but there's no way to gauge how many are actually in the wild and being used at the moment (already people are just selling them on unopened). And the amount of people who say "I want it to do X" - media centre PC, emulators, etc. - and the answer is basically "It won't" show that it's being regarded as some general purpose device instead of a small embedded unit that's not suitable for most things a smartphone can manage.

    So they still have a LLOOONNNGGG way to go to get to their goal of having these things just thrown into random schools. Sure there are Scout groups and schools posting about using them, but those are the geek-teachers anyway who do infinitely more interesting things than I ever did at school. But I think it's going to be way past this September, and maybe even the next, before they actually get them near to schools in general except as a fad item. Give it a couple of years and maybe some real educational company will pick them up and package them into something more useful but at the moment they are nothing more interesting or special than, say, a GP2X (and the GP2X was designed and used educationally in Korea, and has a successor already, and could do everything I've so far seen thrown at the Pi).

    I'll be unpacking mine tonight to give it a run-through but, if I'm honest, the only thing I can see them used for is my own projects whereas I originally ordered on the hopes my school might be able to find some use for them (I was expecting there to be educational software, cases, etc. available on general sale by now but it's still just a bare ARM board at the moment).

    Being on BBC News, all the tech sites, etc. and becoming a new buzzword is actually just annoying because hardly anybody's done with them what they were originally intended for, and hardly anybody's even been able to get one yet. It's not a release day, if people can't buy and get it sent out for delivery that same week. It's going to be a while before they're able to do that and even then, three-four months late, there's not much in terms of their original plan that you can use them for. Sure, you can boot Linux and play around in Scratch, but you can do that on any PC anyway like schools have in droves in their ICT suites.

    1. GrumpyJoe
      Thumb Up

      agreed

      I'm tired of waiting for this to be honest - they've been blindsided by the demand (which everbody else seemed to know was coming), and now it's pretty much condensation-ware (slightly more substantial vapourware).

      My 9 year old is asking what's going on - I tell him - 'nothing yet' - complete farce. At this rate I may as well get him a second hand desktop and have done with it - sad but true.

    2. Stuart 22
      Facepalm

      Optimist!

      Hey - this is an IT product. And it follows in the grand tradition of new groundbreaking IT products. This one, so far, is running months rather than years late. And you complain?

      Look the guys who developed it are a tad optimistic. If you weren't they wouldn't do it. Developers are just that, developers. When it works they think their job done. Sadly geting it into manufacturing is also a specialist activity requiring different skills and finally distribution is yet another field.

      Getting all three back to back defeats even the most well financed and resource rich multinationals. You can either take the Apple approach of enforcing (and for this you need expensive lawyers) silence till its in the supply chain - or suffer publicly from slippages and overblown expectations.

      If you teach IT - this is as important to teach as hardware and software. Otherwise we do get IT shops unconnected with reality outside their bubble.

      Finally this product depends on user development. As the number is still small and 'time in hand' is even smaller then you need to question your expectations. As also that the product would ever be ready for mass educational deployment in September (which actually means having everything in hand by June/July). This really was never on.

      To think so says something about you. I don't think I would want you running my IT shop. Sorry ..

      1. Lee Dowling Silver badge

        Re: Optimist!

        "As also that the product would ever be ready for mass educational deployment in September (which actually means having everything in hand by June/July). This really was never on.

        To think so says something about you. I don't think I would want you running my IT shop. Sorry .."

        Er.. This is my point. I never expected them to but they kept saying that they would and that was their target. And if they expected to and that was unrealistic (as I've posted on their forums in the past), then they should have revised their estimates or done *SOMETHING* about it.

        They will barely manage to supply first-day pre-orders in time for the Summer, let alone anyone else. The number of schools (outside of those "specially selected") who will see a Pi this year is going to be near zero. And evaluating even what I consider the "prototype" device that I've been sent shows you have another good year of development before anyone will see them as an actual product.

        That's not to mention encasement, packaging, shipping, board revisions, SOME SOFTWARE (other than a plain debian image), and - working in schools - most important of all: Some fecking staff training, or at least people trying to tie the device into the curriculum somehow rather than dump-and-run on the teachers. They're just dumping a Linux distro, GCompris, Python, Scratch and TuxPaint (which seems to be as far as they'll get at the moment) on people and saying "get on with it" which won't wash in schools except as a fad project, and all of the above they can do on their machines NOW - faster, cheaper (because they already have those machines) and more reliably.

        A user-developed product is not necessarily a failure - but if there are next-to-no users and even less developers among them, then there's not going to be a product. There's no focus on that. There's no focus on schools. There's no focus on SELLING the product to schools. There's no focus on tying it into schools. It's a complete bandwagon device to hang on the coattails of the Government's "we need more proper IT" stance with nothing to actually help kids.

        I don't care about the IT side as much (though I'll certainly find uses for it in my own projects) as targetting education with a dump-and-run scheme. When you spout off on BBC News, BBC Breakfast, Slashdot, The Register, and just about every tech-site, news outlet and newspaper about your marvellous release and what your plans are, you should make damn sure those plans are realistic, IT project or not, and certainly educational IT. And they didn't. Because airtime seems more important to them than actually fulfilling the educational side of this venture, and more than anything else.

        1. James Hughes 1

          Re: Optimist! @Lee Dowling

          You have made lots of statements in your post that are untrue. You have made assumption that the device has been thrown out there, that no-one is working on educational software and documents, on syllabus etc. All that stuff IS indeed going on. Unless you actually work with the Foundation, you are unlikely to know that stuff, so please don't spread misinformation on areas you know nothing about. Just because YOU haven't seen it, doesn't mean it's not happening. So stop guessing and making yourself look foolish.

    3. Bruce Hoult

      I was a bit slow

      I was asleep and ordered my Pi about two hours after orders went live on February 29.

      On April 27 I got an email from Farnell (nz.element14.com, actually), saying "Having successfully passed its CE compliance testing, we can now confirm that your Raspberry Pi will be dispatched week commencing 28-May-12."

      I haven't heard anything more since, so hopefully that's still true.

      1. Cyberspice

        Re: I was a bit slow

        I got the same e-mail!

    4. Degenerate Scumbag

      "And the amount of people who say "I want it to do X" - media centre PC, emulators, etc. - and the answer is basically "It won't" show that it's being regarded as some general purpose device instead of a small embedded unit that's not suitable for most things a smartphone can manage."

      It can do most of the things a smartphone can manage. It has the guts of a smartphone, after all, minus things like the radio, keyboard and screen, all of which can be attached via external ports as required. It's eminently suitable as a network media player, having ethernet, 1080p playback capability, HDMI output, and running linux which has plenty of media centre options available.

      If you're seeing lot's of "it can'ts", it's only because the software to easily achieve these tasks has not been ported yet - and this will change once enough people start getting their hands on the thing.

  8. annodomini2
    FAIL

    Need to check again

    “Pi sales have overtaken Arduino in an instant,” he said, attributing the surge of interest to the Pi's small price and the wealth of developer tools it offers. ®

    Nope it's because people can buy a £30 media streamer.

    I will use mine for dev, but many won't.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Need to check again

      You say that like it's a bad thing, but if I had loads of people willing to subsidize the price of my toys I'd be a happy bunny.

      1. annodomini2

        Re: Need to check again

        "You say that like it's a bad thing, but if I had loads of people willing to subsidize the price of my toys I'd be a happy bunny."

        My comment was on the basis that the statement made was incorrect.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Cheap media streamer?

      Well, yes, in the sense that the Raspberry Pi is a board which costs under £30, and can be turned into a functional XBMC unit.

      However, speaking as a new Pi owner (as of last week), I'd say it's not as straightforward as that. For starters, you really need to invest in a powered USB hub, a micro-USB power supply that delivers exactly the correct voltage/current (the Pi is a very fussy little chap on that front, let me assure you) and if you're thinking of using it with the telly from your sofa, ideally a wireless USB keyboard/pointer. Once you have that lot, you then have to flash an SD card with a suitable OS (such as the Pi-orientated XBMC Linux distro), and then cross your fingers that everything works.

      Don't get me wrong - I love the RasPi, but if someone just wants a low-cost, plug'n'play HDMI media player: once they've invested in all the necessary add-ons and the time needed to configure the Pi, I think they'd be better off with something like a WD Live or Apple TV.

      1. Degenerate Scumbag

        Re: Cheap media streamer?

        "Don't get me wrong - I love the RasPi, but if someone just wants a low-cost, plug'n'play HDMI media player: once they've invested in all the necessary add-ons and the time needed to configure the Pi, I think they'd be better off with something like a WD Live or Apple TV."

        The people buying Raspberry Pis for this purpose don't want plug-and-play, we want openness and customisability. You won't get that from WD, and especially not from Apple.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Cheap media streamer?

          Fair point. For myself, I was saying that (as I see it) there are at least some people investing in a Raspberry Pi, because some quarters of the tech media (not the RP folk) have given the impression that the Pi is a £25 media player.

          My point was: yes, that can be done, but it'll cost rather more than the "ticket price" in extra peripherals and the effort to get it working. I pulled the WD Live and ATV out of the air as two random examples of not-that-expensive HD media players, which would be rather less trouble to set up for the "plug'n'play" brigade.

          And as for the ATV not being "open and customisable": agreed, certainly not out of the box, though don't a lot of "techie" ATV buyers jailbreak the thing and stick XBMC on it anyway?

  9. Joeman
    Pint

    Anyone planning to put one into orbit?? would make a great platform for a micro satellite...

    1. David Gosnell
      Coat

      Pi in the sky?

  10. banjomike
    WTF?

    your correspondent nestled a Pi into his iPhone 3G case ...

    ooh, shoplifting in action!

  11. Dark Horse

    Here we go again... :-)

    It made me laugh when the Pi's were being bought on ebay for 100+ quid. Nutters! You could've bought a much better platform (beagleboard, pandaboard, cubox, snowball, etc) for not much more with more memory, faster processor (even with hardware floating point!) and more on-board peripherals.

    As for the arduino vs pi argument, I definitely agree with the sentiment that they're different tools for different jobs.

    Depending on the project, you could use the Pi as the main processor with the arduino (or the leaflabs maple, or even a bare-bones ATmega with arduino bootloader) as an "intelligent" I/O daughter board powered and communicated via the Pi's USB host.

  12. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
    Stop

    Disingenuous

    Raspberry Pi sales may have overtaken Arduino sales at RS but not as a result of low price nor because of the developer tools.

    It is more likely because RS are not a competitive seller in the Arduino market, and only selling to business customers, and RS is just one of two companies holding exclusive deals to sell the Pi so buyers have little choice in the matter. Arduino purchasers have many alternative options, including building their own.

    The foundation, fanbois and now RS are hyping the Pi, with the world's media along for the ride, but looking at the Raspberry PI forum, reading reports of crashes, failures to boot, over heating, potential hardware flaws, power supply problems, things not working as expected and sluggishness, it is difficult to tell if it is a credible offering or a pig in a poke.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's why they call it a "development board"...

      I don't think the RP folk are pretending this is a finished product - if you read the FAQ at the site, they're basically saying the current run is for the hackers, tinkerers and "Linux geeks" (I'd fall into the latter two categories, I think :-) ) to test and experiment with, hopefully so that the wrinkles get ironed out before the machines get near a school.

      And yes, there are wrinkles - my Pi is rather fussy on the power supply front (it needs at least 1A of consistent power over micro-USB, or it behaves erratically), but otherwise it's a great, cheap little machine for experimenting with, which it seems to me was most of the aim in the first place.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: That's why they call it a "development board"...

        "Or it behaves erratically"

        More like the 80's micros than I thought!

      2. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

        Re: That's why they call it a "development board"...

        I don't think the RP folk are pretending this is a finished product

        No? Then why is it being sold to members of the general public and not only to developers? Why were the first boards handed out to school children? There is nothing I saw from RS (nor Farnell) when it comes to ordering that it is a developer's board or that it likely might not work as expected, may even be flawed.

        Where exactly does it tell the general public that it's not finished product or lead them to even suspect that it is not?

        It sounds like public beta testing to me without warning of what is being gotten into or worse still; if it doesn't perform as advertised then that's your fault excuse making.

        1. James Hughes 1

          Re: That's why they call it a "development board"...

          @Jason. FFS , it's plastered all over the Raspberry Pi site that this is a work in progress. If you cannot be arsed to read up on things before buying, caveat emptor.

          That said, most stuff just works. And yes, it does perform as advertised. If you don;t read the advertisement, who's fault is that?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            @ James Hughes

            It seems there is something wrong with your keyboard - it is inadvertently inserting an apostrophe every time you press the 's' key.

            1. Steve Knox
              Headmaster

              Re: @ James Hughes

              I count 22 s's in James Hughes' post and two apostrophes. One of these is correctly used (it's for it is) and one is incorrectly used (who's for whose).

              If you're going to make a snarky grammar-related comment (and trust me, they're generally better received here than on other forums) at least take the time to make it somewhat appropriate, and have the decency to post with a pseudonym rather than AC. We do have some standards.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: That's why they call it a "development board"...

          "Then why is it being sold to members of the general public and not only to developers? Why were the first boards handed out to school children?"

          I can't speak for the Foundation, but I'd hazard a guess that it's because there are members of the public who (a) are not software developers, (b) are aware that the Pi isn't a finished product, but (c) are tech-savvy enough (with Linux, computers, etc.) still want to have a go at tinkering with it.

          Case study: I'm not a programmer (beyond a certain level of scripting), and I know full well the Pi isn't a polished product (I mean, it comes without a case or any peripherals - what more alerting do you need? neon signs?), but I have ten years of Linux experience and jumped at the chance to get a small, dirt-cheap unit I could tinker around with (and maybe do something useful with, though that's a bonus).

          And as for the schools: I think you may find that at this stage, the dev boards are generally going to the computing/electronics clubs, where the kids are interested and/or more capable of coping with the Pi's current "quirks". (Certainly, if the Scout troop showcased on the RPi site is anything to go by.)

          I see the point you're trying to make, but it seems to me the situation is a bit less black/white (devs/public) than you may be suggesting.

    2. Pete 2 Silver badge

      a credible offering or a pig in a poke

      It's the Mark 1. We know (some through experience and some by learning from the mistakes of others) all about "Mark 1"'s.

      Although I doubt if they planned it like this, but the RPi people seem to have got the hacker community to do the beta-testing for them. Discovering the real-world problems is always a necessary task and one that's usually devolved to the early adopters who, through the powers of marketing, seem to be happy to spend their money on unproven stuff in return for the bragging rights of "I was in at the beginning".

      [Disclaimer: sometime between now and (hopefully) christmas (hopefully 2012) I'll get to the top of the list and be invited into the RPi store, too.]

      What should be happening now is that the professional designers will be looking at all the criticisms and feedback. They'll be tearing apart the initial designs and looking for improvements. With some luck, the current run of Mark 1's will be superceded by faster, cooler (in all senses), more reliable boards using up-to-date chips with more memory, peripherals and a better layout (you really don't want I-O on all sides of the board) that may cost more but be generally better suited to mass-use.

      Depending on when that happens, I may grab a Mk 1 when the time comes - or I may get the opportunity to buy a Mk2 when the current design gets obsoleted.

  13. Mage Silver badge
    Linux

    Ardunio no good for Linux

    Pi doesn't really make sense as a Media Streaming box. More sense as Embedded system running Linux on battery. If mains or car electrics is available a micro ITX for media might be more flexible.

    If you want a volume low power low cost Media on TV solution you are going to use ARM, ST20, MIPS SoCs and DSP especially for that.

    In one sense the HDMI is redundant until there are cheap 3" to 5" HDMI touch screens with 4:3, 16:9 and 3:1 form factors for cheap embedded GUI. Like a simulating a radio Dial on portable radio or home media IR remote with optional WiFi, Or CNC control panel

    1. parityerror

      Re: Ardunio no good for Linux

      The Roku uses the same chipset, BCM2835 so it can't be such a bad choice for a media streamer.

      But if you want that you buy a Roku. If you want to tinker you get a Pi.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Having ordered mine from Farnell Ireland at 9am on the day, it arrived last week.

    Works fine on an HP Touchpad microUSB power supply.

    Nice little chipset for hacking at. Not a general purpose PC - I have a desktop, netbook, work laptop, touchpad etc. for all that.

    <- Someone mentioned that the devil icon looks like a car, possibly a Mazda 3?

  15. Allan George Dyer
    Paris Hilton

    Frustration:

    The feeling experienced, when, on finally receiving your email from RS with the one-time code to enter the Pi order website, you mess up the checkout process and can't restart.

    Anyone got a good book to read while I'm waiting for a code reset?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Crap codec support

    Cheap media centre? Don't make me laugh. Not until they provide the driver blobs to access the hardware MPEG2/MPEG4 decoding that the internal GPU can do. The provided H264 is not enough - most of the world uses MPEG2 for DVB, DVDs use MPEG2, people have xvid/divx collections. Media centres need to do this kind of stuff.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    JUST MAKE MORE OF THEM!

    It's called supply and demand.

    Typical British company - doesn't know how to make money, even for charity!

    : )

    .

  18. godanov
    Happy

    NEED

    I so want a dozen of these things.

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