Raspberry Pi launched!

[warwickw]

The Raspberry Pi was launched yesterday. http://www.raspberrypi.org/

The site was under a lot of stress yesterday, and the partner sites selling the units were barely usable, I imagine it will calm down today. You can only order single unit's present, they do however state on the site that bulk orders will open up next month.

Model B has gone into production and sale first, this is the unit with LAN and USB ports. RS Components SA site has it listed at R259.20 with a note that they are waiting for stock to arrive.

To-date there have been video's of it running Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu as well as various derivatives like XBMC.

Raspberry Pi SBC

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer board that plugs into a TV and a keyboard. It’s a miniature ARM-based PC which can be used for many of the things that a desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays High-Definition video.

Features
Broadcom BCM2835 700MHz ARM1176JZFS processor with FPU and Videocore 4 GPU
GPU provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering and DMA infrastructure
256MB RAM
Boots from SD card, running the Fedora version of Linux
10/100 BaseT Ethernet socket
HDMI socket
USB 2.0 socket
RCA video socket
SD card socket
Powered from microUSB socket
3.5mm audio out jack
Header footprint for camera connection
Size: 85.6 x 53.98 x 17mm

 

[froot]

That sounds pretty awesome. Not too pricey either!
I wonder if MyBB will sponsor someone to review it for us?

 

[Messugga]

Really looking forward to this. I'm thinking about setting up an Ubuntu one in my garage workbench since I don't really need much processing power for AVR development.

 

[warwickw]

Check how nice this tiny thing is..

[video=youtube;6BbufUp_HNs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6BbufUp_HNs[/video]

 

[warwickw]

That sounds pretty awesome. Not too pricey either!
I wonder if MyBB will sponsor someone to review it for us?

Me me me!

 

[warwickw]

For the guys running XBMC :

[video=youtube;4NR57ELY28s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4NR57ELY28s[/video]

 

[burn]

There is already a thread on this product here

 

[rpm]

That sounds pretty awesome. Not too pricey either!
I wonder if MyBB will sponsor someone to review it for us?

Definitely - the moment that we can get our hands on one!

 

[froot]

Definitely - the moment that we can get our hands on one!

^5.

 

[Praeses]

I wonder if it's powerful enough to run a home squid caching proxy? Plug in an external hard drive for caching space, set up VNC and squid...would be awesome

 

[froot]

I wonder if it's powerful enough to run a home squid caching proxy? Plug in an external hard drive for caching space, set up VNC and squid...would be awesome

I think as long as you keep everything down to basics it should be fine?

 

[warwickw]

The potential for this is amazing :

Media Streaming
Home Proxy
NAS storage
Web Server
3G failover router

Coupled with a serial port we can use it to control items as well. I see robot's, home automation etc..

It will be interesting to see all the developments happening around this platform.

 

[froot]

It will be nice to see how people will use it for "other purposes", considering the serial port they've left for you. Since it's 100x more powerful than a PIC, (nothing wrong with a PIC I might add) you can do a fair bit with it.

 

[stevovo]

Pretty cool. I'm blocked at the moment from watching the videos, so does anyone know how you can plug in a hdd? Do you have to use USB?

 

[froot]

Pretty cool. I'm blocked at the moment from watching the videos, so does anyone know how you can plug in a hdd? Do you have to use USB?

You will have to use USB. The "computer" is a low-power device so it will rely on external sources for stuff like that - it uses a mere 1-2W at full steam (hdd's do around 5W).

 

[jxharding]

I really want this device, but so does the whole world.
So the only option we south africans have is RS to source this?

 

[Messugga]

You will have to use USB. The "computer" is a low-power device so it will rely on external sources for stuff like that - it uses a mere 1-2W at full steam (hdd's do around 5W).

Looks to be powered via USB as well, which is mighty cool in my opinion. Imagine running a system, stuck to the back of one of your screens like you would any other device connected to your computer. I doubt that you would be able to interface with it via that connection though, but it would be awesome if you could.

 

[froot]

Looks to be powered via USB as well, which is mighty cool in my opinion. Imagine running a system, stuck to the back of one of your screens like you would any other device connected to your computer. I doubt that you would be able to interface with it via that connection though, but it would be awesome if you could.

Yup. You can use either a cellphone charger (assuming it pushes the right amount of current) or your cellphone's usb-charger (micro-usb).

 

[warwickw]

Looks to be powered via USB as well, which is mighty cool in my opinion. Imagine running a system, stuck to the back of one of your screens like you would any other device connected to your computer. I doubt that you would be able to interface with it via that connection though, but it would be awesome if you could.

Yup plug it into one of those TV's with HDMI and a USB port, then a bluetooth usb adapter and use a wireless keyboard and mouse.

 

[hellfire]

I really want this device, but so does the whole world.
So the only option we south africans have is RS to source this?

Local distributors:
Electrocomp Express (Pty) Ltd
Sharecall: 0860 10 20 20 (SA Residents only)
Tel: +27 (0) 11 458-9055
Fax: +27 (0) 11 608-0401
E-mail: sales@eexpress.co.za

Obtained here