Raspberry Pi ... for £25

[psd99]

due to come to you all soon

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17703852

 

[Anon_F]

and sure to be a great seller when people realize the big boys have been ripping us all off for years!

 

[Abarbarian]

http://www.linuxnov.com/magpi-a-dedicated-magazine-for-raspberry-pi/

MagPI is a new dedicated magazine for Raspberry PI will be released monthly for free. This magazine aimed to provide a variety of tutorials, articles, how to setup your Raspberry PI and much more. It has been written by many volunteers with many levels in mind. Check more information about the first issue of MagPI down below.

This is quite interesting.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Nice link Squire, have downloaded.

I ordered one from Farnell yesterday £29.46 inc VAT. Gave my debit card details but as yet they haven't taken any money from me. They're giving a downtime of 135 days so it may be around late September/early October before I receive one. It's not clear when they'll take the money for it, I'm assuming when it's eventually sent to me.

They're offering memory cards and they want £64 plus vat for the 32Gb card, will have to shop around for one of those.

I also have one ordered with RS, I have an account with them so I may get one sooner from RS if I'm lucky.

Anybody here have one yet? The first batch sold out in a flash apparently.

 

[Abarbarian]

Mine is supposed to arrive at the end of June .

You might want to study this before buying a sd card. 2 to 8 GB should do for most uses for the Pi.

http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals

Are you going to use yours for a media center?

 

[floppybootstomp]

Are you going to use yours for a media center?

I honestly haven't a clue what I'll use it for But at that price I thought it would be worth getting just to see what it can do. I quite like the idea of trying to make a very small custom enclosure to fit it into as well.

Can be run from a mains powered USB charger I believe so no worrying about a bulky PSU or cooling issues presumably.

A media centre though? That's not a bad idea is it, assuming the graphics are up to showing Bluray films. My media centre atm is housed in an Antec Media case, very nicely made and good looking but a Rasberry Pi, one optical drive and a coupla 2.5" hard disks could be put in something a lot smaller.

I'm looking forward to getting one of these.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Just had an e-mail from Farnell saying my Rasberry Pi has been posted to me

I have most peripherals but will need a PSU, keyboard & USB hub. There are some nice cases available on Ebay but I may make one myself.

I have a spare 4Gb sdhc memory card which will do for now but I may buy a bigger one for the OS. Looking forward to messing with this thing.

Oh, I also ordered one from RS and they've taken the money for the Pi, transparent case & PSU, a total of £41.50 inc VAT. But there's a downtime of ten weeks for that one. Doubt if I'll want two so will probably flog the RS one when it eventually arrives.

 

[Ian]

I'm really looking forward to see what you do with it Flops. I'm hoping to get one in a few months once I've got some free time to have a proper play and build something.

I'll probably go for a media centre like Abarbarian suggested, as it should be able to do some nifty stuff - especially if you stream things and have network storage.

 

[Abarbarian]

For powering up me Pi I have ordered one of these as I have a cable and this was the cheapest option I have seen.

http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/13417253/-/Product.html#TechnicalDetails

Looks like it will be acceptable.

• Input: AC100-240W 0.1A 50-60Hz
• Output: DC 5V 1000mA MAX

I believe that the Pi needs 5V and 700/750mAh to run and power peripherals so the above should suffice.

Flops I might be very interested in your spare Pi. However you might find plenty of uses for your Pi's as they are pretty useful for a lot of tasks.

I will be trying out Arch on my Pi as I recon it will run like a greyhound on amphetamines.

Happy cooking campers.

MagPi issue 2 is out if you all want some background and current info on the Pi and its current usage.

 

[muckshifter]

http://www.themagpi.com/

 

[Abarbarian]

http://www.themagpi.com/

Thanks for the link I forgot to place.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Abarbs, my other Pi probably won't be here for ten weeks, I may feel differerently then but if I still want to flog it I'll give you first dibs. I have one of those USB/Mains chargers for my phone so I could use that just to fire the thing up but I'll likely get one of those you linked to - nice and cheap.

I'm not sure what Distro to use, I really like Mint 12 KDE and am using that on desktop atm but I feel it may be too big for a 4Gb card. SD cards seem rather expensive for what they are, especially the 32Gb variety.

I'll use my external SATA disk caddy with it for storage so no probs there, I have a few smaller disks (80Gb and others) knocking around. Well, it didn't arrive today, postie's been and Parcel Force always call before 14:00 so here's hoping tomorrow.

 

[Abarbarian]

Fedora, Debian and ArchLinux will be supported from the start. We hope to see support from other distros later. (Because of issues with newer releases of Ubuntu and the ARM processor we are using, Ubuntu can’t commit to support Raspberry Pi at the moment.) You will be able to download distro images from us as soon as the Raspberry Pi is released, and we will also be selling pre-loaded SD cards shortly after release.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

The first Rasperry Pi's boards have been shipped to their new owners and in response to high demand for an OpenELEC/XBMC image we have merged our RPi development work into our public github repository. The OpenELEC RPi project code that you can download has already been run by the XBMC team on pre-production Raspberry Pi boards so we know it can be used to build a working system

http://openelec.tv/component/k2/item/241-openelec-meets-raspberry-pi-part-1


Part two of the MagPi magazine would be very useful reading for you Flops

 

[itsme]

no, I didn't misspell Pie, this isn't something to eat, although I'll be having some meringue pie after me sweet chilli king prawns, no, this is a ... computer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17192823


now where did I put my glasses?

Binoculars more like it?

 

[floppybootstomp]

It arrived today. I have enough parts to run it but having a prob getting an OS to Memory Disk.

Downloaded Arch Linux which comes in a 2Gb .img format and used Nero Lite 12 within Win 8 to burn the .img to a DVD with the intention of then copying the conrtents of the disk to the card. But neither Linux Mint or Win 8 can access the files on the DVD.

I suspect there's a way to extract the .img files to hard disk rather than a DVD but I haven't sussed that one out yet. Time for a break, I'm going out in the sun (and the wind) on me bicycle.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Ok, back from bike ride, panic over This is how you do it.

Now for a bite to eat then afterwards let's see what occurs.

 

[Abarbarian]

Ok, back from bike ride, panic over This is how you do it.

Now for a bite to eat then afterwards let's see what occurs.

Must have been a big banquet

 

[floppybootstomp]

Nope had a munch, connected all - didn't work. Wiped sd card, loaded Debian instead of Arch, it still no work.

Here's what I'm using:

1A mini USB PSU (It's for my HTC phone)
USB Keyboard
USB Mouse
USB Speakers
HDMI to DVI lead plugged into DVI port of 24" Samsung 245B Monitor.
Sandisk Micromate SD Card reader which plugs into USB port.
4Gb Kingston SD Card
'PC Line' 4 way active USB hub.

I tried just connecting card reader and keyboard into the 2 onboard USB ports - no go.
I rather suspect the USB hub as it relies on power from Rasberry to power it and it has five very bright blue led's on it. I also noticed that when I unplugged the HDMI cable the five blue led's glowed considerably brighter which makes me believe there's not enough power being supplied to power the USB hub and everything else.

The card reader is another suspect as I've read not all card readers work with Linux which seems strange to me.

To that end I'm going to order a Belkin 7 port mains powered USB hub from E-Buyer for £22 and also a different SD Card reader. I'm also going to order an HDMI to HDMI cable so I can try the Rasberry with my main Monitor which has two HDMI inputs.

I've also read of non-powered and low-powered usb hubs not working with the Rasberry.

E-Buyer's free postage takes up to five working days so it'll probably be a week before I get to try again.

Not too impressed so far and hoping the one I have isn't faulty.

 

[Anon_F]

watching this thread with interest hope all goes ok fbs.

 

[Abarbarian]

Took a bit of finding on the first page of the MagPi 2nd issue but here is some information that might be of use to you mate.