4 ms·

The comments in this thread kind of miss what I perceive to be the main point of Raspberry Pi. The great thing about Raspberry Pi is not that's it's a cheap eno

by 4ad 14y ago

The comments in this thread kind of miss what I perceive to be the main point of Raspberry Pi. The great thing about Raspberry Pi is not that's it's a cheap enough PC that you can run Python on, it's that it's a cheap device that has GPIO pins and video. There are significantly cheaper ARM boards than the Raspberry Pi, but to my knowledge none that have video output, or at least reasonably fast video output. Tell the children (or potentially interested adults that have only done software, never hardware) that they need to learn how to use a terminal connected through a serial port, or that they need to learn about cross compiling and other things and instantly the barrier of entry is huge. Tell them they can't have graphics, only a teletype and nobody will care. Let them have a simple thing they can plug a display and a keyboard into and program the I/O pins live while displaying graphical stuff you can see and relate to, now that's something! Look at Arduino, an expensive and vastly underpowered device, in many ways unsuitable for the task people use it for, but very, very successful because people don't have to deal with all the boring and idiosyncratic low level setup stuff.

deleted 14y ago
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leephillips 14y ago
Is there an API for using the GPIO pins from python?
- fooandbarify 14y ago
  http://code.google.com/p/raspberry-gpio-python/ http://code.google.com/p/raspberry-gpio-python/
HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago
Absolutely correct. I'm excited about the Pi because I can see a number of low-end industrial applications that are now economically feasible. Once they get popular, competitors will arise and drive the price down even further. Add a cheap touch screen and suddenly applications that could only be done with high $$$ interfaces suddenly come downmarket where there is (I hope!) a hungrily waiting audience with their wallets open :-)
shanselman 14y ago
Excellent point. I tried to get my boys excited about the Arduino and Netduino and they couldn't have cared less. But when the giant raspberry wallpaper came up they got excited.
bandy 14y ago
I keep watching, but all of the other ARM boards cost more than the Rπ – usually greater than 3x the cost of the RπB. You can occasionally find an Arduino for less than what the RπB will run you, and while it has the GPIO, it doesn't have nearly the crunch the Rπ gets you. Mine will be running some network testing software, driving a small handful of devices – doing the work a small laptop was doing before, but with a better power budget and in a much smaller form-factor. I don't need a display while it's running - it's going to sit there and collect data for me until I command it to shut down, at which point, I'll remove the SD, grab the data, and process it a bit on a more capable box, although it's conceivable that I could do it all on the Rπ itself.
- bigiain 14y ago
  A bunch of us at Robots & Dinosaurs (a HackerSpace in Sydney) have been playing with the TP Link WR-703N wireless routers* reflashing them with OpenWRT - they're available from Deal Extreme or eBay for under $25 - it's got no video, but it includes ethernet and onboard wifi. One of the guys has a stackable "daugherboard" which breaks-out/adds a USB hub, FTDI/GPIO/JTAG and two serial ports: http://www.kean.com.au/oshw/WR703N/ http://www.kean.com.au/oshw/WR703N/ It's not as high powered as a RaspberryPi though, only a 400MHz cpu and 32M ram (+4M flash) - they're useful little machines, but the onboard video on the Pi kinda puts them in a different class. On the other hand, a Pi with ethernet/wifi/powersupply costs several times what a TP-W703N costs... * http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n
  - bandy 14y ago
    Several times? $35USD list price, and approximately $49USD delivered (tax/shipping). I could do my project with dd-wrt/openwrt, but I'd be storage-limited. A day's worth of data is in the hundreds of megabytes range, uncompressed. Your WR-703N plus a daughterboard would make an OK basis for a NAS.
    - semanticist 14y ago
      A Raspberry Pi also requires a PSU, an SD card, and a case. By the time you add those in, you've probably doubled your cost, at least.

by 4ad 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

leephillips 14y ago

Is there an API for using the GPIO pins from python?

fooandbarify 14y ago
http://code.google.com/p/raspberry-gpio-python/ http://code.google.com/p/raspberry-gpio-python/

HeyLaughingBoy 14y ago

Absolutely correct. I'm excited about the Pi because I can see a number of low-end industrial applications that are now economically feasible. Once they get popular, competitors will arise and drive the price down even further. Add a cheap touch screen and suddenly applications that could only be done with high $$$ interfaces suddenly come downmarket where there is (I hope!) a hungrily waiting audience with their wallets open :-)

shanselman 14y ago

Excellent point. I tried to get my boys excited about the Arduino and Netduino and they couldn't have cared less. But when the giant raspberry wallpaper came up they got excited.

bandy 14y ago

I keep watching, but all of the other ARM boards cost more than the Rπ – usually greater than 3x the cost of the RπB. You can occasionally find an Arduino for less than what the RπB will run you, and while it has the GPIO, it doesn't have nearly the crunch the Rπ gets you. Mine will be running some network testing software, driving a small handful of devices – doing the work a small laptop was doing before, but with a better power budget and in a much smaller form-factor. I don't need a display while it's running - it's going to sit there and collect data for me until I command it to shut down, at which point, I'll remove the SD, grab the data, and process it a bit on a more capable box, although it's conceivable that I could do it all on the Rπ itself.

bigiain 14y ago
A bunch of us at Robots & Dinosaurs (a HackerSpace in Sydney) have been playing with the TP Link WR-703N wireless routers* reflashing them with OpenWRT - they're available from Deal Extreme or eBay for under $25 - it's got no video, but it includes ethernet and onboard wifi. One of the guys has a stackable "daugherboard" which breaks-out/adds a USB hub, FTDI/GPIO/JTAG and two serial ports: http://www.kean.com.au/oshw/WR703N/ http://www.kean.com.au/oshw/WR703N/ It's not as high powered as a RaspberryPi though, only a 400MHz cpu and 32M ram (+4M flash) - they're useful little machines, but the onboard video on the Pi kinda puts them in a different class. On the other hand, a Pi with ethernet/wifi/powersupply costs several times what a TP-W703N costs... * http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n
- bandy 14y ago
  Several times? $35USD list price, and approximately $49USD delivered (tax/shipping). I could do my project with dd-wrt/openwrt, but I'd be storage-limited. A day's worth of data is in the hundreds of megabytes range, uncompressed. Your WR-703N plus a daughterboard would make an OK basis for a NAS.
  - semanticist 14y ago
    A Raspberry Pi also requires a PSU, an SD card, and a case. By the time you add those in, you've probably doubled your cost, at least.