6 ms·
Imagine all the cool stuff you could do with a box of these... yet a huge chunk of the things I keep coming back to are various nefarious or gray area uses, whe
by sophacles 14y ago
Imagine all the cool stuff you could do with a box of these... yet a huge chunk of the things I keep coming back to are various nefarious or gray area uses, where these are cheap enough to be effectively disposable:
* Put them in cheap weatherproof housing, with cheap storage, and place them all over as communication and file sharing hubs. Combine with meshing (like the commotion project) and use them in arab spring situations. Essentially darknet building.
* Put it in your coffee shop with ettercap running and mitm everyone. So what if the thing is found - presumably you can get another with proceeds.
* Similarly put it anywhere you need/want a gateway that doesn't look like a gateway. Good wifi at some coffee shop? Put your box there, and now you have device to do whatever from, and you can be 1000 miles away. No need to break anything. Total time saver. Want to get around firewall crap? Just have this guy in the wiring closet opening a "reverse shell" out (probably to the afore-mentioned gateway :) ).
* (not nefarious or grey at all) - cheap video player/presentation player. It has hdmi out, so you can just send it a video feed/remote desktop feed via wifi and not worry about cables/connectors/drivers that are still an issue in 2012.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoI can assure you, even if you buy well and minimize it, there is still need to play with drivers to get wifi working. (It doesn't have on board wifi, not sure if you know that from your post). I mean, mine was as simple as a single modprobe, but that's because I was using raspbian and not the stock image or the XBMC builds.
- SwellJoe 14y agoI'm confused. Isn't the B model equipped with onboard WiFi?
- Kliment 14y agoEthernet, not WiFi. None of the models have wireless. A wireless module costs nearly as much as the entire board in parts.
- sophacles 14y agoThat doesn't make sense to me, I mean they can sell usb wifi dongles for less than $10, presumably profitably, so I would presume they could add wifi to the RP board for pretty cheap. What am I missing?
- catch23 14y agoProbably that they're still trying to make it under $35 and get it out the door. Keep in mind that this is technically their first model, they probably wanted to keep things simple for a first release. You can easily add wifi using this $10 dongle: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005CLMJLU http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005CLMJLU (according to the rpi forums, it works out of the box with current kernels)
- commandar 14y agoWouldn't they also have to submit it for regulatory approval if they included wifi?
- ktizo 14y agoethernet is relatively stable, whereas new wireless protocols and upgrades come out all the time. I would rather have wireless through usb or as a component of a daughterboard via the onboard bus, than soldered onto the board.
- commandar 14y ago>ethernet is relatively stable, whereas new wireless protocols and upgrades come out all the time I can't really agree with this line of thought: 802.11a - 1999 (5GHz) 802.11b - 1999 (2.4GHz) 802.11g - 2003 (2.4GHz) 802.11n - 2009 (2.4GHz + 5GHz) 802.11ac - 2012 (5GHz) The only new standard on the immediate horizon is 802.11ac, and that's targeted strictly at the 5GHz band. Additionally, all the 2.4GHz stuff is backwards compatible all the way back to the old 802.11b standard. Things certainly change, but it's more in the range of once every 4-5 years than it is all the time. There are good reasons not to include wifi on-board on the pi, but I don't see that as being one of them.
- huskyr 14y agoNope, Model B has an Ethernet jack but no wifi.
- luser001 14y agoI use the Asus 330GE "personal hotspot" device to convert my wifi to wired ethernet.
- nl 14y agoIronically, put DD-WRT on the Asus 330GE and you have a device that is very roughly equivalent to the RasberryPi (excluding the Pi's graphics abilities)
- sophacles 14y agoHrm, I was under the impression it had built-in wifi, but, as far as firmware/software, almost all of the usages in my list would probably be done by the type of person (e.g. me) who would re-image the boot sd card with his own distro anyway, so drivers would be an issue for the first image, but the nth (assuming the same wifi dongle) would be 0 extra cost.
- cameronh90 14y agoI'm using the Arch image and a ZyXEL NWD2105. Worked with absolutely no problems OOTB - well after installing the wireless_tools package. Didn't even need an external powered USB hub.
- ars 14y agoIf only it had VGA output - there are so many incredibly cheap old LCD monitors on eBay. You could setup a huge number of very cheap terminals anywhere.
- corin_ 14y agoYou can always add a small amount to the cost and get hdmi-vga cables.
- DannoHung 14y agoThere are none. You need a $40 (checked at monoprice) converter that's almost as big as the Pi.
- corin_ 14y agoHmm.. you're probably right. But HDMI/DVI adapters work, as do DVI/VGA, why can't they be combined?
- mikeash 14y agoDVI can carry both analog (VGA-compatible) and digital (HDMI-compatible) signals on the same cable. HDMI is digital-only, and VGA is analog-only.
- idan 14y agoDVI has additional pins for carrying an analog signal, but they don't have to be used to transmit the digital one. The simple DVI-VGA adapters are merely shape changers, wiring the relevant pins from the DVI side to the VGA side.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Inufu 14y agoDVI/VGA only works if the GPU puts out VGA in the first place - the VGA signal just happens to be present in the same cable.
- ajays 14y agoI like the first one. Think anonymous dropboxes. You don't need much storage; hopefully (and if someone has the moolah) put 256GB of SSD (so it doesn't use much power); power it with a solar charger and hide in a tree or in some out-of-the-way place. Slap a webserver on it, and let people upload/download content...
- inoop 14y agoThe thing that sets the Pi apart for me is that is actually has some I/O broken out right on the board, which makes it much more suitable for things like robotics and automation. The things you mention can be done better with different hardware imho. Pi doesn't have Wi-Fi, if you want to do ad-hoc Wi-Fi stuff I would suggest you get a cheap Linux-based router. If you want a video player, you can get cheap Android-based ones for ~50 bucks (i.e. http://www.dealextreme.com/p/mini-android-4-0-network-media-player-w-wi-fi-hdmi-usb-micro-usb-white-4gb-141172 http://www.dealextreme.com/p/mini-android-4-0-network-media-...).
- gaius 14y agoNone of these are in any way related to what the Pi was allegedly designed for, recreating the learning experience of the BBC Micro in the early 80s.