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Raspberry Pi

Started by Mequa, November 26, 2014, 02:05:55 AM

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Mequa

Hi, has anyone here tried one of these?

Raspberry Pi

I have a few of them. It's a very cheap lightweight PC with a slow ARM CPU which runs Linux (primarily Debian). It also has basic 2D and 3D video acceleration, and supports playing HD video over HDMI.

I primarily use mine as a solid state device to play (mostly) HD movies (via flash-based storage) over HDMI on my TV.

I have my SD card set up using the NOOBS bootloader to multi-boot into Raspbian, RISC OS Pi, and OpenELEC (with XBMC). OpenELEC running XBMC on a Raspberry Pi over HDMI gives me a cheap and very lightweight media centre.

As a lightweight PC it can do lightweight web browsing, word processing and spreadsheets, as well as let you learn to code (Scratch and Python are recommended for beginners, BASIC is also available), and run lightweight educational software. There are a few games for it too.

The CPU performance is very poor in my estimation though - a 700MHz ARM11 comparable to a 300MHz Pentium 2. So essentially late 1990s desktop performance running Raspbian with LXDE lightweight desktop. There is a new desktop environment planned for RasPi called "Maynard", which will be much smoother and faster, utilising accelerated graphics.

Still, it's cheap enough to buy one for playing HD video alone, as well as to have a toy to hack.

Solitary

 :eh: Technocrat idiot here.  :redface:
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

Atheon

I have one but haven't had the time to play around with it.
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Seneca

Jason78

I'm thinking of buying an Arduino .

Mostly because while software is all very well and good, there's something enchanting about giving it form and letting it interact with the real world.   I'm thinking of building a robot with it.  I've not settled on a name yet, but I might call it Dorfl.
Winner of WitchSabrinas Best Advice Award 2012


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