Raspberry Pi is FINALLY shipping in the USA

[Bino]

I placed my order for a Raspberry Pi back on August 06 of this year and just this morning I got the email announcing it has shipped from Allied Electronics, the USA distributor.  Man!  Four months wait to get it at the retail price!  I know these have been offered on Ebay, but I rebelled at paying a premium for the product of the not-for-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation.

[mbailey]

I read the site, It looks really neat, but still dont 100% understand what it does (forgive me, im not tech savy......I could build you a house around this thing if you needed it, but probably couldnt operate it  )  In a nutshell, when it comes to me and computers, my 12yrold is my tech support   lol.

That said, in laymans terms, what does it do Bino?

[VonMessa]

You can download pron to your TV with it...

[Dragon]

Hmm, streaming music into my old home entertainment center without a lot of fuss.   

You can download pron to your TV with it...

 

[Bino]

I read the site, It looks really neat, but still dont 100% understand what it does (forgive me, im not tech savy......I could build you a house around this thing if you needed it, but probably couldnt operate it  )  In a nutshell, when it comes to me and computers, my 12yrold is my tech support   lol.

That said, in laymans terms, what does it do Bino?

Hi MBailey,

It's a Linux computer. Here's the intro line from the FAQ:

"The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming."

And here is the question that everyone seems to ask:

"Will it fit in an Altoids tin?
Doesn’t quite work, I’m afraid – because we don’t round off the edges of the board, it’s a little too big to fit the tin."

Since it's so small and cheap but also so extensible and programmable, I figured there's got to be *something* useful I can do with it.

[mthrockmor]

Bino, asking the obvious but this little computer can surf the net and access education websites? We are looking for ubber cheap computers to help both inner-city and rural kids access the internet for educational purposes.

Thanks in advance!

Boo

[VonMessa]

Hi MBailey,

It's a Linux computer. Here's the intro line from the FAQ:

"The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming."

And here is the question that everyone seems to ask:

"Will it fit in an Altoids tin?
Doesn’t quite work, I’m afraid – because we don’t round off the edges of the board, it’s a little too big to fit the tin."

Since it's so small and cheap but also so extensible and programmable, I figured there's got to be *something* useful I can do with it.

Can you program it for me to use in the brewery for automation?

[Bino]

Can you program it for me to use in the brewery for automation?

You bet, Von!  Here is one of the links to folks doing just that:

http://brewpi.com/

[Bino]

Bino, asking the obvious but this little computer can surf the net and access education websites? We are looking for ubber cheap computers to help both inner-city and rural kids access the internet for educational purposes.

Thanks in advance!

Boo

Hey, Boo

Yes, the Raspberry Pi "model B" has an Ethernet port.  The Raspberry Pi is hardwired to boot from an SD card. You can put together a custom Linux distro of your own, or download a Linux distro file to "dd" onto your own SD card (my plan), or you can buy a pre-configured SD card.  The Raspberry Pi uses a Broadcom BCM2835 system-on-a-chip, so you need a Linux version that'll run on an ARM11 CPU.  Raspberry Pi has no plans to run any version of Windows.

In terms of speed, here's what the FAQ says:

"Overall real world performance is something like a 300MHz Pentium 2, only with much, much swankier graphics."

[VonMessa]

You bet, Von!  Here is one of the links to folks doing just that:

http://brewpi.com/

Oh Hell yeah!   

[rogwar]

Seems like you could make a very low cost internet browser for use in living room using the TV with this thing? correct?

[Bino]

Seems like you could make a very low cost internet browser for use in living room using the TV with this thing? correct?

Yup!

Here are a couple other things folks out there in Pi-land are using:

http://www.savagehomeautomation.com/projects/raspberry-pi-sunrise-sunset-timer-for-christmas-lights.html
http://pi4j.com/
http://www.powerswitchtail.com/Pages/default.aspx

[Copprhed]

Bino, do you think that they will be able to be linked together to make a more powerful puter, as can be done with some Linus distros?

[Bino]

Bino, do you think that they will be able to be linked together to make a more powerful puter, as can be done with some Linus distros?

I'd guess that as pretty unlikely.  The whole design focus has been on "small" and "cheap".

[mbailey]

Hi MBailey,

It's a Linux computer. Here's the intro line from the FAQ:

"The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming."

And here is the question that everyone seems to ask:

"Will it fit in an Altoids tin?
Doesn’t quite work, I’m afraid – because we don’t round off the edges of the board, it’s a little too big to fit the tin."

Since it's so small and cheap but also so extensible and programmable, I figured there's got to be *something* useful I can do with it.

Thanks sir....I think ill look into one of these after I have my tech support take a look at it as well