Ouch! Somebody is taking Pi out to lunch!

no clue as its not in my hands as of now (it wasnt really a concern of mine)

though

http://www.mini-box.com/mini-2440-Samsung-S3C2240-ARM9-Board-7-TFT

Graynomad:
Looks pretty tempting, I may have to drag my old rusty *nix skills out of the attic :slight_smile:

*nix skills are required for the pi as well, though you pretty much get a blank board and have to go though (ie) debian's klingon worded, multipaged, broken up, maybe out of date depending on where you happen to link to, gawd awefull instructions (really... these people make installing a video driver look like effin rocket science is some grade school stuff at times... I know, I did a build on a Powemac 9600 dual cpu, took me a month to figure out how to change the freakin volume)

least with scripting like QTlua you can bang out a UI in a couple hours, change a config file and have a custom controller :wink: (or python or whatever else open source you happen to like)

but android?

android 2.3?

really does not tempt me at all.

so? dont use it, it comes with linux QT installed with a generic 2.6.x kernel, and you CAN use IF you want to Android or windows CE

aaaah... thats... how is it put? "a horse of a different colour" .... I misunderstood, thought it was an android only platform which confused me...

Osgeld:
*nix skills are required for the pi as well, though you pretty much get a blank board and have to go though (ie) debian's klingon worded, multipaged, broken up, maybe out of date depending on where you happen to link to, gawd awefull instructions

Or, you could read the RPi's FAQ, which directs you to a download page with instructions even a call-center staffer could follow for creating a bootable SD with your choice of three different flavors of Linux.

light instructions and a call center, not quite the "oh I can plug this in and it will boot to basic" that many people seem to think

I am still waiting when I can get a PI, I just think a lot of expectations are unrealistic

I got my Pi last week. I must say I was not impressed until I came across an example of displaying a HD movie, that is impressive. The other stuff looks it came right out of the 80s.

They do have a bit of an issue with poly fuses on the USB outputs, limiting USB current draw to about 100mA on a good day. The normal on resistance is about 5R and this messes up the voltage regulation on the USB power output. However my Apple keyboard with only a 22mA draw choked it. Either that or the software.

I have been playing around with the GPIO pins. For me those are the most exciting aspect of the pi. Guess I will eventually connect some nice ADCs vie I2C.

question to you guys: If you could mod the pi (or if you will mod the pi) what will/would your first hardware ad-on be?

VGA

A second serial port and 2x RS-485


Rob

I am going to fix the poly fuse issue and use a proper USB power controller chip. I have about 100 rescued from a skip.

what would your first hardware ad-on be?

An Arduino. :slight_smile:
Because I don't want by 1GHz-class CPU having to bit-bang I2C (400kHz) out some GPIO pins.

First prize to whoever reconfigures a Rasberry-pi or similar board to be an "ethernet shield" for an Arduino!
(that may be the best way to get advanced networking features like IPV6, IPSEC, SSL, etc. And it's cheaper than the existing ethernet shield...)

Because I don't want by 1GHz-class CPU having to bit-bang I2C (400kHz) out some GPIO pins.

You will be disappointed if you did.
I have just done some quick tests to see how fast you can toggle a pin on an off with a simple loop. You can only go at 4MHz and it is very glitchie due to interrupts popping off all over the place.

westfw:

what would your first hardware ad-on be?

First prize to whoever reconfigures a Rasberry-pi or similar board to be an "ethernet shield" for an Arduino!
(that may be the best way to get advanced networking features like IPV6, IPSEC, SSL, etc. And it's cheaper than the existing ethernet shield...)

Main usage I see is to connect it to arduino and take the ethernet and sd load to the raspberrie.
Sd can take up to 250 ms and downloading a file is taking long. Moreover starting Ethernet with DHCP on my arduino in my setup takes several seconds. If these delays happen "at a bad moment" my robot is blindfolded and will not respond properly. For a 1000+ euro robot having 2 100 watt engines driving blades at 3000rpm..... :astonished: ... I prefer to be on the safe side.
Using the Rapsberry to read/write the serial data from/to arduino; Arduino could send my logging information to raspberry. Raspberrie can process the input (get out the business data) and service the Ethernet and do the SD logging.
At the same time Ethernet actions could be translated to Serial commands send to the Arduino. The nice thing about this is that you can test with the shield or with the serial monitor (so not 2 systems but 1)
This setup would take quite some work from Arduino. It would also make your website/webserver config lots easier as it runs on linux on the raspberry. And finally it would free up some pins for other usage. Maybe I can go back to the UNO :smiley:

This would not make it an "Ethernet shield" but a "Smart Serial shield capable of SD and Ethernet"
In short "don't expect me to win the first prize." 8)
Best regards
Jantje

I have been able to order my raspberry today. Expected to ship in 4 weeks.

fkeel:
I have been playing around with the GPIO pins. For me those are the most exciting aspect of the pi. Guess I will eventually connect some nice ADCs vie I2C.

Yeap I agree with that. For some like me who likes hacking hardware the GPIO are the RPi's most attractive feature :slight_smile:

The APC IO looks a great board, but there's no info on what GPIO is got. Connector J3 is a mystery, perhaps that's got GPIO or I2C.

fkeel:
question to you guys: If you could mod the pi (or if you will mod the pi) what will/would your first hardware ad-on be?

Already done my first, second and third addon board for the Pi: Prototyping Board. BBC like I/O User Port. MIDI Interface.
Just waiting for my PCB's to arrive and then my old soldering iron won't know what's hit it :slight_smile:

Even if J3 does have GPIO there can't be much of it. And the blurb says

Input and Output
HDMI
VGA
USB 2.0 (x4)
Audio out / Mic in
microSD Slot

No mention of GPIO in the IO section so it's not going to be a big selling point.

That said it's the first of these boards that interests me, although the mini-box looks pretty good as well.


Rob

Osgeld:
I am still waiting when I can get a PI

Not me: I'm officially giving up on it. I've had it with their "bleep you" attitude toward potential customers. After seeing a posting the other day that said they were finally taking orders, I discovered that what they were actually doing was allowing some of the people who signed up months ago to backorder units for possible delivery in a month or so. And still not a word about if (much less when) they're ever going to start shipping in quantities that would allow people to actually buy them for practical uses.

I've spent more than 2 decades working in technology start-ups, and many more years as an end-user, so I understand the growing pains and glitches that arise in bringing something new to market. But this nonsense of "Don't call us: we'll call you. Someday. Maybe.." is beyond the pale.

its really quickly falling into my vaporware pile, While I dont have decade or even years (yet) in production, just my handful of months in it, there seems to be a lack of commitment in producing the units.

You must remember that this is just five people who are amatures at production. World wide intrest has taken them aback somewhat.
You can't just turn on a tap and have product come out. This sort of volume can take up to a year to plan. I have worked for companies that do this sort of volume and more and it is not a smooth process.
At the moment they are trying to meet the demand on a first come first served basis, so there is a queu, one way of handling it is to have a waiting list - registration of interest - and then an invertation to order.
How would you handle 100,000 individual orders on day one, when you only had 10,000 boards in the pipe line?

For what it's worth, mine arrived yesterday. I was one of those that 'expressed interest' on launch day (being too late to actually order then), and I got to place my actual order about three weeks ago.

No real idea what I'm going to do with it yet. Not sure whether to try and learn python, or just stick with C. Or just stuff XBMC on it and have a tiny media player.