rasberry Pi (ARM chip computer)

[roberts]

An award for a non-shipping product? I truly hope that this product does come to fruition.
Not Novemeber, even December will be late and very limited. Doubtful that one will be available until later in 2012.
Nonetheless very interesting.

[netnomad]

hi roberts,

moving from debian to microcore as my daily used platform,
i probably will move slowly from i386 to arm.
i guess that the great minimalistic vison and reality of tinycore finds its counterpart in the arm-platform.
like i spread the use of nice microcore-configurations on usbsticks in my direct environment,
i will start a little project with friends and family members to use the raspberry for the daily use...
do you think we will find a path to use tinycore on arm?
what do you think?
what do we have to help, to change or to enhance for succeeding?

thank you for your help.

[roberts]

 I am planning to get one when they actually become available.
For $25-$35 dollars. That is something that I can actually afford!

I still have much reservations about arm processors. For example when comparing arm versus atom. First most will agree atom is not very powerful.
Running tinycore on atom make atom OK.

I have had the pleasure to experience Android (Cynogenmod 7) on a friend's Nook Color as well as playing with a first generation SmartQ5 Ubuntu/Android. Lately I have Android running on atom. Atom's performance is much much faster than the Samsung 667Mhz SmartQ or even the Nook Color 800Mhz. So, how well will a 700Mhz arm in a raspberry perform? Well for such a low price I plan to find out.

Hopefully it wll come to market. I think the lowest beagleboard is $89 so I wonder how they will be able to sell for $25-$35. Let's see what develops.

[curaga]

It's so cheap because it's based on older tech - arm11 cpu, 128mb ram etc. It won't be close to current smartphones, and I find them sluggish too with their dual cores of a later architecture.

[roberts]

I would then expect the performace to be in line with the samsung soc arm11 first generation SmartQ5 which sported 128MB and was sold with Ubuntu. Perhaps tinycore with minimal configuration would be acceptable. I would at least be interested in prototyping tinycore on it.

[bmarkus]

Well, it depends on your application. I do not expect to get a notebook or netbook performance of course. There are many possible embedded tasks where such a board may fit. For example for Amateur Radio APRS gateway to manage one radio and an Internet connection there are applications available written in C, Ruby or Python. My server written in Python runs fine on ASUS WL500 router with a 100MHz ARM and 32MByte RAM from USB stick on OPENWRT LINUX. OK, CPU laod is around 20% but who cares. Radio is connected via USB, no other hw is used.

A second hand ASUS router (first generation) is available for $49 including housing and PSU. Any hw which can do the same for better price and a bit higher performance appreciated. This is just one example, there can be many others. Well, you do need video output. What you need in connectivity:

- min 1x USB 2.0 (2x is better)
- 10 Mbit/s wired Ethernet

Optional:

- 1x serial RS232 port
- 1x WiFi
- sound interface
- floating point arithmetic for math intensive tasks

Can Raspberry Pi used for such application? I think yes. Is it competive for $25? Definitely.

[netnomad]

hi bmarkus,

i agree with you that also minimum hardware offers wide fields of usage and even heavy usage.
the interesting thing of the raspberry pi is the hdmi and the grafic-capabilities
that are shown in various videos in the web... often poor grafic slows down tiny hardware.
the only thing i would prefer is a bit more ram.
i experience that almost everything what i want and need is possible also with older hardware,
but it's convenient to work in a 1gb-ram environment.
probably the few ram will be the only limit that will be a bit annoying.
but nevertheless it will be great experience to expand this little board.
i'm looking forward to and i hope that we will get tinycore on it!!!

[cast-fish]

Yes

The Rasberry Pi goes on public sale in about 4 weeks time..... or near End of Decemeber according to twitter.

All 10 thousand "parts kits" have already been ordered.

Assembly is by robot because the chip is special and needs re-flow soldering.

They are assembling them on a piece meal basis for say the first 500
computers......... and sending them out quikly....they hope people will bang away on the new boards
and report back that ALL is well in maybe 80 percent of reports.

When they have these 80 percent replies....they will then UPSPEED the manufacture and maybe
make 2000 computers and those will be on sale to the general public....and so on....3000 more computers
and so on.

WHen the webpage first starts selling they will perhaps ENFORCE a "buy one donate one" option
to try to stop a web site Frenzy....this will mean the computer costs 50 or 70 dollars for the first few
hundred items in weeks 1 to 5....after that, they will make the "buy one donate one" theory become OPTIONAL for the general public that are buying RP's. (So the computer will indeed by $25)

The computer will come delivered without any SD card. You must buy the SD card with OS as a seperate purchase from the website........or use your own SD card and download the OS from the RP website.

The computer will be powered by many CELL PHONE power bricks.....the RP has a micro USB power connector.

That's it.

There is no question as to  "whether or not the Rasberry Pi" will arrive as is mentioned in this thread....it's just a case of when it will arrive within a 2 month elastic band period.

yes

V.

[cast-fish]

Ahh

the final Printed Circuit board is finished for Rasberry pi.
(the exact size of a credit card)

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

That is an entire PC on a credit card. Just stop and think about that for a minute
or two.

V.

[bmarkus]

Ahh

the final Printed Circuit board is finished for Rasberry pi.
(the exact size of a credit card)

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

That is an entire PC on a credit card. Just stop and think about that for a minute
or two.

V.

Depends on how 'entire PC' is defined. For me it includes housing, power supply and connectors. A PCB is just a PCB.

In fact, technology wise nothing new in Raspberry. It is great especially its price, they have excellent PR and marketing, but it is just an SBC out of many.

A plug computer is much closer to 'entire PC' for example except HDMI video.

[cast-fish]

sbc?

i just didn't hink anywhere else does it. Making the stacked ram
and the form factor design.

ofcourse, the price is so enticing isn't it. In my local town it just
gets you a round of drinks....barely.

Can you imagine kids doing google on these?...google maps
...... imagine what they will learn about the world in a year...

:--)

V.

[curaga]

Looks to get competition already:
http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/52054-british-company-looks-to-create-cheap-open-platforms

Another british company says they can provide 3x the cpu for 15$. If nothing else, gotta say the Chinese designs are improving at a huge rate.

[vinceASPECT]

Ye...thanks for the heads up

but

a few paragraphs of text and wannabee's is a million miles away
from Rasberry Pi...

The RPi which has a container of 10 thousand units winging
over the ocean from Taiwan right now....the Linux OS is ready and released on the website
plus a whole bunch of other goodies regarding media tools and usage of the Pi.

I think the Rasberry Pi goes on sale in about 10 days. End of January 2012.

however, it's nice to see competition...

there are already several products up there...but they can't meet the price
match of the RPi....also the RPi has a great great community and there is so
much going on with it right now....(i think it will sell out instantly...and they
hope to shift 30K per year)

i don't believe the NON profit thing with RPi for a single minute

They auctioned the first 10 RPi boards on ebay for people to collect....the total normal
selling cost would have been 380 dollars......they sold for 25 thousand dollars to people....just.....prooving the level of interest in the RPi...

You will be able to get a RPi for 35 dollars real soon....if your very very quik.

Vince.

[curaga]

Can't say this wasn't expected, but the Pi will have binary blobs for the gpu and video decoder:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA1MTc

[bmarkus]

Funny. It is not allowed to sell to chineese customers due to EU export restrictions. At least it is what I heard

Never mind, you can by stickers in the mean time waiting for product.