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Two million Raspberry Pi sold
- ck2 13y agoWhat's great is now you can just pop onto Amazon, order a model B for $40 shipped and have it at your door in 48 hours.
- masmullin 13y agoTry element14. 1/2 the shipping time for $8, and you can order a tonne of other electronics stuff for the same shipping price too. Very good customer service if anything goes wrong too.
- Ihmahr 13y agoI am running two Tor nodes on two raspberries: https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/B679923178D2B63F22C98489E689E1F91B899624 https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/B679923178D2B63F22C984... https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/0A7028F6600F940D1A680AEBCD928509A17AE8FC https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/0A7028F6600F940D1A680A... A single pi can push about 600 kb/s. This includes a lot of circuit requests and other encryption. Thinking of buying some more.
- sard420 13y agoMy tor nodes (bridge relay) on my Pi seems to go into "Relay unresponsive" and sometimes crash with what looks like circuit storms, experienced any of that on the Pi?
- Ihmahr 13y agoNo, not really. What happens sometimes is that there is insufficient memory. This happens if you do a lot of apt-get update and upgrade, or run other stuff. My relay just starts at boot and then does nothing else. EDIT: I chose 600 kb/s because this means that my cpu (almost) never hits 100%, but is still pretty active.
- lurker1 13y agoInteresting - I've been thinking about doing this for a while. So I take it from the atlas page that you are running a standard (non-exit) relay?
- Ihmahr 13y agoYes. As you can see my first relay started out as an exit relay, but my fascist ISP (whom I can not choose or contact) kept on blocking my router's mac address, which made my relay unstable. Since I am not an exit anymore the relay has been running fine.
- ersii 13y agoI noticed you seem to be in The Netherlands (from the Atlas GeoIP lookup). Have you heard of the organization "Hart voor internetvrijheid"? For what I've understood, they try to increase the number of Tor relays and exit-nodes. Their site: https://www.hartvoorinternetvrijheid.nl/eng.html https://www.hartvoorinternetvrijheid.nl/eng.html A small lightening talk on OHM2013 about 'em: https://archive.org/details/D4T208201308031515HartVoorInternetvrijheidMerlijnWajer https://archive.org/details/D4T208201308031515HartVoorIntern...
- melling 13y agoWhat's the plan for future devices? It would be great if some low cost device like this would have a 12-18 month upgrade cycle and create the sort of buzz as an Apple or Samsung device. Moore's law has benefits at $30 too. Maybe release a $99 version every year then make last year's model available at $35. Get Intel involved? They're really working hard to get into low-power devices.
- Derbasti 13y agoYes! I am waiting desperately for a Raspberry Pi with an updated CPU!
- joezydeco 13y agoTry a Beaglebone Black. Or move up to something like a Boundary Devices unit (Quad-core A9 @ 1Ghz)
- Derbasti 13y agoYes, I own a Beaglebone Black. But the operating system and the ecosystem surrounding it is oh so aweful compared to simply-Debian it-just-works Wheezy for the Raspberry Pi. That probably doesn't matter too much if you are building some embedded thing, but I am mostly using my Pi as a web server, and I like that is so easy to set up and configure.
- joezydeco 13y agoYeah, I agree, Angstrom is awful. I got Debian Wheezy booting off of the Black in under an hour or so. Sorry to hear you had difficulty getting it to work on yours.
- slug 13y agoIt's very easy to install ubuntu on a BBB. I have 13.04 and 13.10, both running from the eMMC and uSD cards. http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu I own 1 rpi and 2 BBBs and all work just fine. I have the rpi 24/24h connected to a relay board and other things but tend to prefer the BBB due to the better CPU and easier to keep up to date with regular distros.
- joezydeco 13y agoI'd like to hear a little about the educational successes that RPi may have achieved since launch. That was the goal, right?
- edent 13y agoLots of schools now have Raspberry Pi clubs - often teaching programming and basic hardware stuff. I've been teaching a Scratch class in my local library (https://www.codeclub.org.uk/ https://www.codeclub.org.uk/) which has also been distributing Pi's to kids and classrooms. I'm sure there are some more verified statistics - but from an anecdotal POV, they've been a resounding success.
- sean-duffy 13y agoMy university sent out all the new computer science undergraduates a RPi each and held two challenges at the start of term, here's a video of the event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgjbiBG2sf8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgjbiBG2sf8 .
- calv 13y agoMy university gave us all one when we arrived. It's just been gaining dust as my laptop runs Linux and I just do all my programming on there. That and if I wanted to do a hobby project, I have coursework to do.
- analog31 13y agoWell, it's a small and localized data point, but my kids (both in middle school) have had a blast with theirs. They've played around with a lot of things, including Scratch programming and a little bit of Python. We've gone back and forth between RPi and the desktop, since they can run pretty much the same software anywhere. Something to consider is that the RPi wasn't launched into a vacuum like the earliest microcomputers were. So it won't have as profound of an impact. At the lower grade levels, around 3rd through maybe 8th grade, Scratch seems to be a pretty big deal. Somehow, Scratch has been installed on every computer in our house, and a couple of Arduino boards arrived shortly after S4A was mentioned recently here on HN. I'd encourage Scratch in the schools before RPi. The RPi has certainly been educational for me. I'm sure it wasn't the first, or the best, little Linux board. But in part due to hobbyist interest in it, there's a lot of good tutorial information out there, making it easy for someone like me (minimal formal training in programming and electronics) to create some pretty cool things.
- royjacobs 13y agoI absolutely love how ubiquitous these things have become. They're genuinely useful for a lot of different purposes but, to me personally, I like how eco they are. I realize this sounds a bit eco-hipster, but I really mean it: Whereas people used to have big media center machines under their TVs, you can just pop a Pi underneath your TV, install RaspBMC, and that's all you need. It takes 3-4w, nothing more. Lovely. Having said that, a 60" TV and surround sound receiver will probably also take a least a few watts, if I had to guesstimate :)
- mtgx 13y agoI wonder when they plan to make one based on Cortex A53/ARMv8. I assume sometime in 2015, to get it a little cheaper?
- happycube 13y agoThe Pi already has a trailing-edge ARMv6 SoC for cost reasons. They'll probably be reluctant to move until the fab line used to make the current chip shuts down. And Arduino is still very popular with a much simpler chip.
- ris 13y agoDude, the current Raspberry Pis aren't even based on ARMv7.
- middleclick 13y agoI would love to get a Raspberry Pi but I don't know what I would like to do with it. Suggestions?
- Ihmahr 13y agoRun a Tor node (as per my other comment).
- ancarda 13y agoHere's what I use mine for: > Hosting my website (with CloudFlare in front) > A gateway into my network (almost all ports are open to the RPi including SSH). I can ssh in and then every device on my network is configured to accept connections from it. Hitting my devices directly (over v6, for instance) would be rejected by firewalls and such. > Personal Cloud: I use BitTorrent sync to move files around my computers. Sometimes my desktop / laptop aren't on at the same time. I solved this problem by putting BTSync on my RPi. It's online 24/7 so my files are always accessible. > MySQL server (for development). Ideas I have floating around: > Possibly hosting my email > Internal services like Squid caching. > Server-Side Development. It's a tight environment (ram is limited, cpu is fairly slow) so it forces you to build lightweight programs. If it can run well on a RPi, it's probably fine on a VPS. > Monitoring/graphing uptime/latency -- My router doesn't do this for me. > Scheduling backups (possibly via rsync?) Your RPi is basically a home server. Use it to control devices in your house and do automation.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoI've been following Pi folks since it came out and there are a range of people from those who pre-ordered to those who got one only as the result of a gift. Pi's are good for teaching you things, so if you got one you would learn with it. A number of folks have started learning about Linux system administration with theirs after being somewhat 'light weight' in that department. Others are learning about new programming languages or environments, from node.js, to R, to Scratch, to python. Getting Docker on them has had people setting up server deploys. Running web servers have people creating small web sites with bootstrap and other technologies. But if you really aren't interested in learning those sorts of things, well its not really very useful. Everything it does can be done 'better' in a production environment by a server, usually x86 based, designed to do what ever it is it is doing. Bottom line is there are a lot of things an RPi can help you learn by giving you hands on experience. If you're not interested in learning those things, it probably isn't all that useful.
- cabbeer 13y agoWould I notice any performance gain from using a cheap pc over a pi for something like BT sync? The Pi's processor is equivalent to a 300MHz Pentium 2, and that's kinds scary.
- noselasd 13y agoCertainly. The RPI is not able to even remotely saturate its network card + a USB harddrive.
- vjoel 13y agoEspecially with an encrypted disk.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- agumonkey 13y agoAfter googling for alternative arm credit card boards I'm now looking into not too old [thin]m-itx atom ones. I wonder what's the cheapest out there.
- masmullin 13y agoyou will notice a serious performance upgrade by switching to a BeagleBone black. IMHO the BBB is about twice as fast (or more) as the rPi. The BBB is lacking in community support vs the rPi.
- Theodores 13y agoOne of those two million is sat under my desk, collecting dust. I know a few others that are, and, I wonder what percentage of that 2 million are in the same situation? Because you need a few bits and bobs to get your pi working there is a major disincentive to complete and finish whatever that hobby project was to be. Hence the situation with my pi - the wait for bits and bobs, a small bout of illness and the initial enthusiasm gone. I think that the price of those extra bits and bobs is also quite a bit. Sure, everyone has spare power supplies and SD cards knocking around, but maybe not a spare video lead, keyboard, mouse, whatever is needed for the project. Just one of these parts missing from the misc. hardware drawer means a hurdle to getting started. It is bit like buying a barebones car where you just need to put in a motor, a few seats, a few door panels, oh, and paint it yourself. You would learn a lot about auto engineering, for sure, but, it would cost more than initially expected. What I would like to see is a raspberry pi that works like a 'hardware virtualbox', networking over USB, power over the same lead so you just plug it into your PC/Mac and you have something right there, ready for whatever web/hardware development needed.
- johnchristopher 13y ago> What I would like to see is a raspberry pi that works like a 'hardware virtualbox', networking over USB, power over the same lead so you just plug it into your PC/Mac and you have something right there, ready for whatever web/hardware development needed. But it is. My Pi's are running headless and I access them over Ethernet. They suck less power than a VM running on a more powerful hardware and that's the point. edit: I admit that it's easier for Web dev than for HW dev. I'd use Arduino for HW hobbies before a Pi if the project can be done with both.
- andyidsinga 13y agoits a good point about arduino being easier for hw dev than some of the other boards out there. Once you slap a full OS like linux on a device writing high level software is easier and very low level hacking becomes an exercise in operating systems and drivers etc etc and not a quick weekend long project controlling servos and whatnot. I was particularly impressed with the approach of the Getting Started with Arduino book - for artists / non-electronics / non-programmers.
- thearn4 13y agoGreat little boards, I use these as mini portable file servers/Git hosts in my lab.
- source99 13y agoWho is buying these? 2 Million is way above hobbiest usage.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoActually not above 'hobbiest' usage. Its comparable to sales of other comparable things like Arduinos which have sold north of 2M units at this point if you count all the variations. That said, like the Arduino, there are a small mix of custom-commercial uses in there, some educational where the units are purchased as part of a curriculum, and of course some 'novelty' purchases where people think "I should get one of these" and then never use it again. So it has good penetration in the hobbiest market which, depending on who you believe is 3 to 5 million 'seats'.
- aerolite 13y agohobbyist
- JetSetWilly 13y agoI have found mine very useful. It turned my old USB printer into a fancy-pants wifi printer. It has been running tiny-tiny rss since google reader shutdown. It runs an irc bouncer for me. It runs a dyndns updater for me much better than my buggy router. It would also run an rss-full-article-fetcher process I wrote but it turns out to be impossible-mission to get ghc to compile or cross-compile anything for arm. I've found it really useful for lots of low-power bandaid solutions to various problems I have had.
- atmosx 13y agoA website to buy second hand Pi in bulk might work.
- eyeareque 13y agoOr a place to donate all of the ones that are collecting dust. Like other commenters have said, I'm sure computer departments at community colleges could use them.
- whyenot 13y agoI am using two of those two million RPis with camera modules to record pollinators visiting flowers (backpackable; activated by motion; solar powered). I'm still ironing out some kinks with the software, but the quality of footage produce by the camera module, the low power requirements and the flexibility you get with the RPi are really pretty amazing considering the price.
- possibilistic 13y agoDo you have any pictures or footage? I'd love to see.
- whyenot 13y agoI do. I'd rather not post links to them here for privacy reasons.
- guipinto 13y agoI use a camera module to capture and catalog a daily timelapse video of the sky and weather above Boston: http://guipinto.com/skylapse http://guipinto.com/skylapse
- shutupalready 13y agoThat's really excellent. Is this website being fed in real-time by the RPi? What framework/tool are you using to create the UI for your website?
- guipinto 13y agoI have the raspi collecting images every 5 seconds, then shipping them off to a local box i'm dedicating to render the videos using ffmpeg (ffmpeg -r 30 -i "images_*.jpg" [+ x264 and crf at 23]). Then I ship them off to S3 for storage/serving. The UI was custom built and is still very bare right now. Simply includes HTML5-video object with 2 video options (ogv and mp4). The quality of the rendered video, as well as capture settings (controlling exposure instead of auto, etc.) still needs a lot of work, and this is an ongoing project for me.
- blisterpeanuts 13y agoI got a Pi and a case and connected it via a USB-to-MIDI cable to my electronic piano, and now I can play and record performances to midi files on the Pi. Really cool. It basically gave my piano a technology update so I don't have to spend hundreds of dollars for one of those newer keyboards with a USB port. My next mini-project is to build a web app that can run these midi tools and list the performances in a nice UI, so that I can control the piano with a tablet or phone on the wifi network (using something other than an SSH terminal). I am thinking of getting a couple of other Pi's for webcam use. I had one hooked up to a cam but it kept dying for some reason. Maybe because of the cheap wifi dongle. It's an amazing little gadget and the sky's the limit on what you can do with it.
- snom380 13y agoAh cool, I do the same thing (with arecordmidi)! Would really love a web interface if you make one.
- blisterpeanuts 13y agoI'll try to remember to reply here when I get it working.
- dil8 13y agoI just got mine on the weekend! I have it set as a home theater PC with Rasbmc, so far I am absolutely loving it.
- roel_v 13y agoHow reliable are they as always-on 'servers' wrt running off an sd card? Doesn't it wear out the card in a few months time if you consider all the writing to /var/log? Anyone had one running for close to the two year's it's been out now?
- zippergz 13y agoMine has been running for a little over a year with no problems so far. It's not under very heavy load, though.
- Maakuth 13y agoI think there is wear leveling that's pretty similar to SSDs. If you use a filesystem without journaling, it shouldn't be an issue. If the wear leveling is good enough, it could be that even with journaling, there's no problem. One could of course use jffs2 or another flash fs that has wear leveling in it if it proves to be a problem.
- rcarmo 13y agoToo bad that miscellaneous issues prevent them from getting an Android port out -- regardless of RAM and CPU requirements, I've been trying to get a decent accelerated web view going on it since I first got one, and _nothing_ works well enough (Qt5 took forever to stabilise - and still isn't quite there yet, X11 still has no hardware acceleration, there are no browsers that take advantage of Wayland, Firefox OS is still not stable enough, and even the JavaFX preview ships without a web view). But hey, they can play back video pretty OK, so I eventually settled on a mix of video and live streaming a desktop browser rendered on a normal PC: http://the.taoofmac.com/space/hw/RaspberryPi/Streaming http://the.taoofmac.com/space/hw/RaspberryPi/Streaming Thing is, omxplayer crashes out of the blue for no apparent reason (either halts the player process or locks up the RPi _completely_, on any hardware rev) and have an alarming tendency to corrupt SD cards, so I'm moving to the Beaglebone Black ASAP. They do make very nice low-power servers (I have one doing AirPrint via CUPS for iOS devices), though, and of course I try out a bunch of things on mine - if it runs quickly enough on a Pi, then it's blisteringly fast on a "normal" machine.
- masmullin 13y agoI've had Android running on the BBB. The BBB's main issue is the lack of support from TI for the graphics chip. Android is 'acceptable' on BBB, but the lack of hardware accel graphics puts a major damper on the fun (aka no youtube).
- lanewinfield 13y agoAlthough perhaps better suited for arduino, I have one sensing bathroom availability in my old office. http://briiiiian.com/bathroom-f-graf http://briiiiian.com/bathroom-f-graf
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]