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A tiny ultra cheap (almost throwaway) PC might also open up some interesting possibilities for scientific research. For example, for placing sensor/processor co
by GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
A tiny ultra cheap (almost throwaway) PC might also open up some interesting possibilities for scientific research. For example, for placing sensor/processor combinations in places where they are likely to be lost or destroyed.
- Florin_Andrei 15y ago> placing sensor/processor combinations in places where they are likely to be lost or destroyed. Well, you could already do that with microcontrollers. An AVR is pretty powerful actually, and costs a buck a pop. But of course there will be cases when an AVR would not be enough, so the Pi might be the better choice.
- joezydeco 15y agoThe Pi would be overkill for that type of application. You're not going to be decoding video in a disposable chip.
- adestefan 15y agoUsually the expense is in the actual sensor and not the chip running the thing.
- ctdonath 15y agoIt allows easy screwing around with nontrivial system configurations without worrying about interfering with other important configurations. Say, if you want to mess about with an assortment of Linux installations, $25 gives you a platform cheap enough to have several handy to tinker with and still leave primary computer(s) in their workable state; >$250 may give you pause because you may not have very many units subjectable to misconfiguration, crashing, system wipe & reinstall, etc. I'd like to tinker with various OSes, but at present all my computers are either expensive enough they must be devoted to useful reliable purposes, or are cheap enough they're grossly underpowered to do anything interesting. The RPi is cheap enough - and easy enough to slap on any available I/O - to do frequent ground-up tinkering with.
- easp 15y agoWhy wouldn't you just use virtual machines?