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A slice of Pi...

tonyh66

By tonyh66
in DIY Astronomer

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Reggie

Reggie

Posted
Posted

Nope, the foundation posted news on their website that people should set their alarms for 6am (GMT) yesterday morning suggesting people would be very interested in what they had to announce, given that they've got something like 200,000 members on their mailing list, there was a lot of people worldwide waiting for the announcement. Farnell and RS couldn't cope, the european server broke for farnell ;)

Lots of people expected to be able to order yesterday, unfortunately, given that they only had 10k boards in the first batch and the mailing list subscriptions of 200k, somewhere in the order of 90-95% of people were going to be disappointed, lots of people just expected the foundations webstore to be the place they would order from, the licensing deal with farnell/RS to distribute the current batch and take over manufacturing of the pi was an absolute master stroke imho.

Whatever they had done on release day, as mentioned, most people would be disappointed but with the distribution and manufacturing deal they can now fulfill orders much, much more quickly. As it stood, the foundation had to find the money for the first 10k boards, somewhere in the order of £250k apparently, they'd then have to sell all of those boards, recoup all the money and then go an order another batch, Farnell and RS will now be making them, constantly, no 10k batches, just continually manufacturing ;)

Personally, I wouldn't wait for the bundle versions myself, you're paying a premium for someone getting you an SD card, a usb hub (A cheap one, have you noticed it looks very much like yesyes hub in his LX mod?) and what looks to be a dirt cheap wifi or bluetooth adapter.

Another thing, right now, do not by a class 10 SD card for the pi, they have some compatibility issues, a class 6 will work just fine apparently :)

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Chris Rowland

Chris Rowland

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I've heard that they compiled Stellarium on a beta Pi, it took about 6 hours. No indication of how well it ran but the device is supposed to have good graphics.

Personally I'd think that something like an Arduino would be better for real time control of motors to handle scope tracking but it could replace a PC for the higher level control. There's all sorts of plans for extension boards.

It's going to be fun finding out; this could be the killer app that makes Linux main stream. By Christmas I can see being able to buy specialised SD cards for it in Smiths, alongside the special magazines - just like it was in the 80s with the Spectrum and BBC Micro.

Chris

PS I managed to order one from Farnell - estimated delivery mid April - whatever that means. The Farnell price includes shipping so currently it's costing me just under £30. I've survived for nearly 64 years without one so I guess I'll be able to cope for another couple of months.

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yesyes

yesyes

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Personally, I wouldn't wait for the bundle versions myself, you're paying a premium for someone getting you an SD card, a usb hub (A cheap one, have you noticed it looks very much like yesyes hub in his LX mod?) and what looks to be a dirt cheap wifi or bluetooth adapter.

Do you happen to have a link to these bundles, out of interest?

What would be really nice would be an enclosure for it of the right size...

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ismangil

ismangil

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Do you happen to have a link to these bundles, out of interest?

What would be really nice would be an enclosure for it of the right size...

Search for element14 raspberry pi.

Just received email tonight from Farnell inviting preorder, no idea when I will get it.

RS hasn't got back, so one up for Farnell...

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Reggie

Reggie

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I have a delivery date of 23rd april for my pi. ;)

whilst the design of the pi is open source it's not going to be useful, seeing as you can't buy the chips, and it's certainly not the kind of thing that I'd say 99% of the forum members would be tackling this side of eternity.

Whoever compiled stellarium directly on the PI is a nutter, it was bound to take a long time ;) Cross compiling will be the order of the day, compile it on a quad core intel PC and copy the binary across.

As for stellariums performance, not sure, it wasn't brilliant when they initially tried it for me but this was the day that the beta testers received their boards, so there hadn't been any tweaking of code. Now, whilst the graphics on the unit are supposed to be great, your mileage may vary, it can do 1080p@30fps but that doesn't mean a great deal without codecs, of which it has 1, h.264, everything else will be encoded/decoded via cpu, sound onboard won't be brilliant either, unless someone makes an audio 'codec' board (something like a cirrus logic audio ic, connected to the i2s pins, which will require a hardware mod to the PI to implement).

I agree with Chris ® over the realtime aspect of the OS, it won't be well suited to it, but with add on boards or even a plain old arduino, it shouldn't be an issue.

Lastly, screens, you can either use something that has hdmi on it (modern hdtv, some monitors, or possibly hdmi lead to DVI to gain access to older monitors) or the good old standby of composite, so pretty much any old TV from the last 10-15 or so years but it will be (comparitively) low resolution at 640x480 I believe. You won't be able to use a VGA connection at all unfortunately. Of course you can always run the PI headless and I expect to see lots of different solutions for this, whether they're standard linux fare or android phone software hookups :)

There aren't any particular links for the bundles, apart from what's on the farnell/RS pages for the pi. The bundles really are just for people that can't source their own SD card, usb hub etc.

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Gonzo

Gonzo

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not expecting too much?

plug in a webcam and a finder and you can platesolve on the fly! The Pi will just shout out "up a bit.... left a bit"

I'll be placing and order for a Pi soon :D

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pete_l

pete_l

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Thread resurrection time!

Just got my activation code from RS to order mine :) :) :D

No idea what I'm going to do with it .....

You could sell it. they fetch up to £100 on the bay! :)

However, I do suggest you join the RPi forum as, apparently, the devices are not always trouble free and can be picky about what you connect to them.

[ Mine's due in a couple of weeks (cripes, sounds like parenthood looming :)) and I'm hoping to use it as a dedicated video Skype device ]

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Stephen

Stephen

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You could sell it. they fetch up to £100 on the bay! :)

However, I do suggest you join the RPi forum as, apparently, the devices are not always trouble free and can be picky about what you connect to them.

[ Mine's due in a couple of weeks (cripes, sounds like parenthood looming :)) and I'm hoping to use it as a dedicated video Skype device ]

I could, but I'm not that sort :D I have no time for those who solely want to make a profit on kit (astro/tech/olympics) :)

Thanks for the forum suggestion, I will check it out.

No idea what I want to do with mine yet, got a few astro ideas, got to think it through a bit more and see what sort of USB sensors I can get for it ...

Saw the other day they are releasing a camera that connects to the main board, that would work very well as a remote rig security device .... :)

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Gina

Gina

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Glad you've got your code, Stephen - let us know when you get it please :) And when you've got it working I'll be very interested in what you do with it and how you find it. I have my name down for one as well :)

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Jim-a

Jim-a

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I got my Raspberry Pi a couple of weeks ago - but so far haven't had time to do much more than plug it into the TV and watch it boot up. Incredibly impressive for the price, but I think they were right to get the first boards out there as a developer release, as I'm not sure that the OS distro is ready for the prime time yet.

However, fascinated to see what uses people put them to.

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Reggie

Reggie

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My pi has been shipped today apparently, so it should be with me in the next few days.

As for the pi itself, definitely get up to the forums, you'll need to know a few things to avoid dissapointment, there is also an IRC channel on freenode ( #raspberrypi ) that has a lot of people working on fixing up issues for the pi, so the bugs are being ironed out and of course you can get semi-live answers to problems you might be having :)

As for the camera, they're testing some PCBs and sensors but there do seem to be some caveats atm.

1. The camera connection is a dedicated 'CSI' connection, specifically for cameras, which means that you need csi based cameras.

2. the gpu 'blob' (the binary file that tells the gpu what the gpu can do) is locked down, the csi camera connection data comes via the gpu, the gpu essentially handles the data, does some post processing etc. so whilst we'll get a driver and an api for *this* camera, it probably won't be as open as we'd like and you can't just go and buy a random csi based camera and expect to plug it in, if you do plug it in it is unlikely to work, the only way to get it to work will be to get broadcom to write a driver for it.

3. They're talking about 14MP sensors but they're also showing images of the sensors, there isn't a single sensor there that is over 1cm in size!! We're talking mobile phone sensors here :D

4. Long exposure on these cameras, probably isn't going to happen, not in any meaningful way, unless we can work out a hardware mod to do it, if it's even possible. Whilst that might sound bad, it's not quite as bad as you might think, they've tested the camera and gotten a maximum of 2.7seconds exposure out of it. So if they go for this model, then we can possibly do guiding with this camera but won't be doing anything in the way of long exposure. The good news is that it will do 1080p @30fps so moonshots could be quite tidy!

That's about all the info I have for the camera :)

Now for other issues with the pi, You should be aware that the pi really does like a decent power supply, don't expect to run the pi, a usb hub, wifi, mouse, keyboard with the pi just powered via a usb cable from your main PC. Even with decent power to the pi, you're probably going to want to use a powered hub, make sure it also has a decent power supply!!

SD cards, there has been a mixed response to SD cards from the pi, some cards work, some don't, don't go buying random 16/32GB cards and just expect them to work. don't go buying class 10 over class 4,6 because you think it'll get you blistering speed!! I would suggest getting any SD/microSD cards that are of a suitable size (2gb or above I believe) that you already own and testing through them first, just to get you off the ground, if you still get issues, look on the forums, wiki and ask on freenode for advice on sd cards before you go committing any cash to a purchase.

You may get issues with sound, it's very hit and miss as the driver is in the alpha phase of development, if it doesn't work, there may be many reasons why, jump on the forums or wiki or freenode for help in resolving them.

There are other issues such as hdmi resolutions etc. again, check the forum, wiki, freenode for help in resolving them.

I urge anyone getting a pi to look at the troubleshooting section on the pi wiki @ www.elinux.org then you'll be pre-armed about what to expect when you boot your pi :)

Regards,

Reggie.

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Reggie

Reggie

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Not sure if the SD card is the same issue as on the sheeva, possible though. The pi issues stem from there not being a circuit on the pi to switch from one voltage for another for the different cards, I believe it's all running at 3.3v and the cards fail when it tries to switch to 1.8v because of the lack of circuit. I suspect there will be a cludge in the drivers to stop it trying to switch to 1.8v, if not they could always put a switch in the config.txt file that allows it to be turned off. I wonder if it's possible to add to the driver, use a gpio and an extra circuit to switch in 1.8v? a bit like the amp off mod for the lx webcams.

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The Sailor

The Sailor

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My Pi arrived today, have had a quick look at it, although I had seen photos and the specs I am still impressed that there is so much on the card. Just the board, no instructions, a getting started label on the box gives a link so been there and downloaded the pdf to have a read later. Just to make a list of what I need to add and in what priority, as in a box to put it in, seen some custom made ones on Fleabay, half the price of the board :), when China gets it's hands on it the boxes will be pennies :(. That is till later, back to copmosting :).

Jim

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pete_l

pete_l

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Just to make a list of what I need to add and in what priority, as in a box to put it in, seen some custom made ones on Fleabay, half the price of the board :), when China gets it's hands on it the boxes will be pennies :(.
You could always try one of these. You print it yourself onto card stock, then fold and glue in best Blue Peter fashion
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Reggie

Reggie

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Finally got my hands on a raspberry pi today, all worked quite well straight out of the box. Grabbed a random 4GB microSD card, put it in an adapter, used the windows image writer software and put raspbian on the card with it, plugged in usb keyboard, mouse, internet cable and hdmi, powered the pi up, booted to the console, put username and password in, typed 'startx' hit enter, a few moments later and I'm at the desktop :(

Opened a console and pinged the bbc, job done :(

Very simple to use, very happy with my pi so far.

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