A slice of Pi...

[angusb1]

BBC basic and assembler sounds like bringing back some long missing usefulness and fun in computing.

+1

[Stephen]

Finally got my dispatch email today, should be here Monday

[Gina]

Lovely

[StuW]

Me and my wife just got our order numbers for the 26th

[Leo.A]

Wow, 5 have already been shipped to Australia and one is currently on ebay at $51 with 8 days of bidding to go.

My son has an Arduino Uno and an Arduino Mega (plus Ipad2, Motorolla Xoom, HP I5 laptop) but will want one of these too. He will have to wait till they are readily available at a reasonable cost.

I just purchased a near new Skywatcher 102mm, 1000mm focal length refractor with Meade eyepieces for $300 (purchased new under a year ago for $1200 in NZ) and I can't afford telescopes and microprocessors on a disability pension.

Sorry son, I've got planets and nebula to look at........

How selfish am I??

Now if any members were to find themselves with a readily available spare Raspberry PI and would like to sell it to me at a reasonable cost (cost plus small margin) and freight it to Australia (at my expense of course) I'd really love to have one here for his birthday in August.

[Reggie]

My son's pi has now turned up, along with my Dads The mod my pi cases are probably about the best looking out there (Imho) .

There seem to be quite a lot of issues with USB devices and powering the pi. You really must make sure that you power the pi with a decent 5v supply!! 700ma phone chargers don't really quite cut the mustard, as they have a tendency to drop voltage whenever they approach full current draw. Cruddy usb cables can cause issues too, somewhere in the order of 0.5v voltage drop with the usb cables and my usb hib being plugged in I found the samsung galaxy microusb cables to be the best (they're marked with a samsung sticker with 'u2' on it).

With the usb, it's important that you get a decent usb hub. the 7port cheapies off ebay *are not suitable* for the raspi, they have inadequate protection and allow power to 'backwash' down the Vusb cable. The 7 ports are really unusable unless you alter the circuit on the usb hub.

As for plugging in usb devices, be aware that the pi's 2 ports can only supply a maximum of 100ma, so anything more than a simple keyboard and mouse *must* be plugged into a hub, if you don't you'll most likely trip the polyfuses on the usb ports on the pi and it'll stop working (until its cooled sufficiently for the polyfuses to re-fuse).

Not all usb stuff will work out of the box, some of it may not work at all, bit of a roullette atm but the situation is improving slowly.

Sd card issues are mostly sorted, most cards are correctly recognised and put into the appropriate mode/speeds, the pi is limited to 50Mhz for the emmc controller clock speed, so maximum speed you will get from an SD card is around 20MB/s, theoretical limit is 25MB/s but doubtful you'll hit that due to overheads. So even if you have got a card that's marked as '45MB/s', it will never work that fast in the pi. Perhaps in the future there might be an upgraded pi design to address the faster speeds.

If you have any issues with anything at all, I would suggest trying the new debian wheezy image that the foundation released a couple of days ago, this has fixed SD drivers and other patches. There is also the Rasbian wheezy version, which should theoretically be faster than the debian image as raspbian is using 'hard float'.

Cya,

Reggie.

[pete_l]

Now if any members were to find themselves with a readily available spare Raspberry PI and would like to sell it to me at a reasonable cost (cost plus small margin) and freight it to Australia (at my expense of course) I'd really love to have one here for his birthday in August.

You're not having my Pi

However, if what you want is a small, cheap ARM-based thingy to play around with Linux on, the Mele A2000 is a serious contender. Some would say: better. It's got a faster processor, more memory and has built-in wifi. Oh yes, and it's cased.

As delivered it runs Android 2.3 and is usually sold as a set-top box. They are available, shipping now from your favourite chinese supplier (DX and others) for less than 100 USD.

[Leo.A]

I found this item on Ebay for $40 AU.

Hey, in order to purchase a Raspberry Pi you must enter a waiting list for around 4-5 months. Once it is your turn to order they send you a code which allows you to access the purchase page and buy one. This is simply the code to skip waiting you still much purchase the micro processor by yourself

It's only some code to buy the Pi when it's available and the Pi still cost $40-$50 on top of lining this guy's pocket.

I may be silly but I'm not STUPID!

My son already has the Arduino Uno and Mega but since I was silly enough to email him at his mothers place about this, he said he wants one.

I have to learn to keep my big mouth shut!

[Gina]

I got my code and ordered mine a few weeks ago. By the time you've added a few desirable or necessary extras the price come to well over £50! Have I wasted my money? Probably, seemed a good idea at the time. Something to play with when it eventually comes anyway

[Stephen]

What necessary extras do you mean Gina?

HDMI cable stole from DVD player

SD cards, have loads for cameras

Power : runs from standard mobile phone/camera USB cable plugged into anything with a USB port (Mines currently powered by my PS3)

KB/Mouse : borrowed from PC

Network : loads of spare lying around

Didn't buy a single extra for mine!

Once it's up and running, install SSH and remove all cables bar USB : job done

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[The Sailor]

I have had mine a few weeks now but have not had the time to do anything with it, also I am waiting for a cover for it, don't want to get my clumsy static fueled fingers all over it. I have still yet to see what I will use it for as it is just another gadget to me and I just bought it out of interest, the addons I have so just the software.

Jim

[pete_l]

... it is just another gadget to me and I just bought it out of interest,

Yes, me too. I got mine a while back with a view to using it for Skype / webcam-y type applications. I had a play with it for a few weeks and came to the conclusion that, as it stands, it won't do any of the things I wanted from it.

I plan to keep it and wait to see if the software ever catches up.

But I have a feeling that most of the ones that have been bought will end up gathering dust once the initial interest wears off.

[mikehab]

I joined the waiting list 2-3 months ago, actually placed the order exactly a month ago today, and have still not received it, or even any notification that it's even been dispatched yet. To be honest - the 'wow' factor and 'eagerness' has long worn off and I think the delays in supplying/distributing could actually prove to be the downfall / death-knell for Raspberry Pi. Everyone was really interested and eager when it was initially announced as being "available", but failure to deliver 3-4 months down the line means that people are (generally) fed up waiting. I know I am.

[Gina]

I joined the waiting list 2-3 months ago, actually placed the order exactly a month ago today, and have still not received it, or even any notification that it's even been dispatched yet. To be honest - the 'wow' factor and 'eagerness' has long worn off and I think the delays in supplying/distributing could actually prove to be the downfall / death-knell for Raspberry Pi. Everyone was really interested and eager when it was initially announced as being "available", but failure to deliver 3-4 months down the line means that people are (generally) fed up waiting. I know I am.

Me too - I've pretty much written it off Seemed a good idea at the time...

[The Sailor]

I was actually kept informed all the way after getting on the list. What is annoying me at the moment is the case, I ordered it after some prompting from here and it is taking longer than the board, they email lovely pictures of the case and the die that will be used to make it , I WANT THE CASE NOT A PHOTO .

Jim

[mikehab]

I joined the waiting list 2-3 months ago, actually placed the order exactly a month ago today, and have still not received it, or even any notification that it's even been dispatched yet. To be honest - the 'wow' factor and 'eagerness' has long worn off and I think the delays in supplying/distributing could actually prove to be the downfall / death-knell for Raspberry Pi. Everyone was really interested and eager when it was initially announced as being "available", but failure to deliver 3-4 months down the line means that people are (generally) fed up waiting. I know I am.

And Lo .... no sooner do I post this in a public forum and surprise, surprise I get an email 10 minutes later saying it has been dispatched.... Is Big Brother monitoring SGL? Whooooooo!

[Gina]

Perhaps I'll get an email too then

[Gina]

My Pi arrived this morning Had a look at it but not tried it yet. Have AP related thingss to do first.

[Enrico]

Mine's arrived. Only took a few minutes to get up and running. Have just ordered a case, and need to get a gpio cable too.

Case-wise I went for the new pibow ( http://pibow.com/ ). Now I can start teaching my son to code (as soon as I learn myself...)!

[The Sailor]

Mine is still sitting in it's wrapping, have not had the time to look at it, what I have done is got a refund from the people making those cases, got fed up waiting for them to sort themselves out. Maybe one day I will look at it and probably use it .

Jim

[themos]

So,. are you able to connect a Philips webcam to them and get something useful out?

[pete_l]

So,. are you able to connect a Philips webcam to them and get something useful out?

I've had absoluetly zero success getting anything usable from a Pi+webcam. I've tried 4 different types, from an old Philips PCVC680K (the egg shaped ones), a Toucam, a no-name cheapy and most recently a Logitech C300 with a UVC driver (that works great - well, great for Linux - on my Unbuntu box).

For all intents and purposes, not a single one of them produces anything usable - no matter what webcam viewer I try with any of them

Although, for the sake of balance it's worth mentioning that one guy has managed to get a webcam to work. However he did have to hack the Pi's hardware to do it (as the board's not capable of supplying a full USB spec. current to the webcam) and only used a small image size. ref: http://www.raspberry...g/archives/1620

[Gonzo]

So I've also received my PI the other day, installed Raspbian and Also RaspBMC on two different cards for some tests. The XMBC port to PI works quite well on my large TV and it's fast enough. Used the Airplay and was amazed when I've sent a youTube video from my iPhone 4S over Airplay to the PI, buttery smooth videos.

Raspbian is just Debian (been using it for a long time...), it does work well but I'm not happy with the gui choice as I find it a bit slow(ish).

Now, I've installed open PHD on the Raspbian, it works (well, it starts....).

Apparently there is someone who is using the INDI drive on a QHY5 camera and ST-4 guiding.

http://code.google.com/p/open-phd-guiding/issues/detail?id=31

[Gonzo]

Somehow, not sure the PI will be that useful to be honest. By the time you "hack" a LCD screen to it, a decent battery to power the all lot etc... you might as well get an old decent small laptop off fleebay running XP or try your luck with Linux/open-phd.

I'm going to use mine as a wannabe AppleTV stuck behind my TV .

[Gina]

Haven't even unpacked mine - think I'll sell it. I don't think it will do anything I want. Arduino has taken over OK I know the Pi is a different beast but it would seem to be more trouble than it's worth.