Anybody been following the development of this thing? It's basically a $25 or $35 (depending on the amount of RAM/USB ports) credit card sized ARM based computer. Should be cheap enough to be a throwaway toy, but powerful enough to be a pretty decent little media device. It supports AirPlay and they are in talks with XBMC to have their code put in the default file system.

Here's a video of XBMC running 1080p videos.



http://www.raspberrypi.org/

1/22/2012 12:11:48 AM

I thought Ethernet was the distinguishing feature for the price difference

1/22/2012 12:27:48 AM

I would say double the RAM would be the bigger selling point, but yeah, that's another one. The $35 version seems to be a no brainer.

[Edited on January 22, 2012 at 12:29 AM. Reason : I doubt XBMC even runs on the 128MB version.]

1/22/2012 12:29:14 AM

Looks like an arduino shield offshoot on steroids. I'm def interested at that price point.

1/22/2012 10:58:09 AM

WANT

1/22/2012 11:00:35 AM

This thing makes an arduino look like a pocket calculator by comparison. This is an actual full featured PC in a credit card form factor. I've been following the development for several months and will definitely be buying one, maybe two when they come out. Right now I'm using a nettop pc as a vpn gateway and media PC, and this would make a fantastic low-power replacement. Also thinking of doing some kind of unified media center setup with them in the bedrooms.

1/22/2012 12:03:17 PM

I've been watching it not release for about 6 months now.

1/22/2012 1:58:22 PM

I have been drooling over these since I heard about them. I've been wanting to build a custom remote video player that I can push data to it's local drive and have it play it in a loop. Here's hoping!

1/23/2012 2:51:25 PM

If it will play high bitrate multichannel FLACs better than my Patriot Box Office, I'll get one.

1/24/2012 1:00:42 AM

dumb question: is this something you could use with netflix, hulu, amazon vod, pandora, etc?

1/24/2012 2:58:25 PM

In theory, if there's a browser made for it that supports flash or if they specifically wrote apps for it. The former is far more likely. But then you have to deal with a mouse and keyboard like you would with any other HTPC.

1/24/2012 4:28:23 PM

You have to keep in mind that this is not a device targeted at the average consumer by any stretch. In its current iteration and for the near future, this is targeted at the educational, hacker, and developer community so that they can build a framework to make it more consumer-friendly. If you can't compile a kernel, this probably isn't for you, at least not until the development scene for it is more mature.

1/25/2012 10:54:10 AM

They said there will be 10k available at the first release in February. I have a feeling these will be gone as soon as they are available. Future releases will have cases as well. Wonder if its worth the wait for the case. The options are truly endless with a device like this.

2/6/2012 11:23:02 AM

why would they even make the 25$ model? seems like a no brainer and the difference of having 1 production model vs 2 could bring the already insanely low 35$ even lower.

2/6/2012 12:19:26 PM

I think it's because the end product is targeted at schools and the education market. If you don't need wired ethernet and 256mb of memory, you stand to save over 25% - a fair amount of money once you start buying them in significant quantities.

2/6/2012 2:46:52 PM

I would also imagine a fair number of people will be using them via a usb wireless adapter.

I already have a couple of projects in mind that I am only going to buy the cheaper one for.

2/6/2012 7:57:21 PM

Looks like most, if not all of the first run of 10,000 will be the B model instead of the A.

2/7/2012 5:15:03 AM

Quote :

"I would also imagine a fair number of people will be using them via a usb wireless adapter."

there's only one USB port, though...i'd hate to waste that on a wireless dongle

2/7/2012 8:40:37 AM

What else do you plan to use the USB port for?

In any situation where you want a keyboard/mouse, you will need a USB hub anyway, unless you buy one of those all in one keyboards.

2/7/2012 9:40:59 AM

Quote :

"What else do you plan to use the USB port for?"

external hard drive or flash drive? what do most people use USB ports for on media players?

Quote :

"In any situation where you want a keyboard/mouse, you will need a USB hub anyway, unless you buy one of those all in one keyboards."

why would anyone buy a wired keyboard and mouse for a media player? especially when you get a logitech unified system for $cheap

2/7/2012 9:53:12 AM

Quote :

"there's only one USB port, though"

The B model has 2, btw.

2/7/2012 11:20:18 AM

^ oh, are they stacked? i was just looking at the diagram and figured that since it didn't mention two, it only had one

2/7/2012 12:38:36 PM

You are focusing on it's use as a media player, which is just a very small subset of what this thing can do.

I am going to be continuing to use my apple tv's as media players, but will be using the RPi for cheap remote sensor packages, etc....

These are so cheap, it is easier to use one of these and ignore the other functionality you don't need than it is to build up an AVR or something to support the functionality that you do need.

Even the SD Card interface and dealing with the various possible filesystems is a nightmare with AVR sometimes, something I hope the RPi makes easy.

2/7/2012 1:15:23 PM

Quote :

"You are focusing on it's use as a media player"

well, duh...statements like OP's of "they are in talks with XBMC to have their code put in the default file system" and the fact that XBMC is, by definition, a media center application, definitely leads one to believe that one of its more targeted purposes is to act as a media center...so, yeah, i was (am) admittedly focusing on one of the device's MAIN uses

my bad, i guess?

2/7/2012 2:02:57 PM

The XBMC thing is cool, but I personally doubt that even 5% of these will be used as media players. I am just conjecturing, but unless someone packages this thing up into a real product I don't see this breaking into the media player market in any significant numbers.

2/7/2012 2:05:42 PM

I can use this to run NES/SNES/Sega Genesis emulators, right? Or am I missing something?

Thinking of tailgating applications here

2/7/2012 5:25:59 PM

2/21/2012 1:15:26 PM

i had never heard of this device before this thread

watching the first 2 mins of that video implies that this is a ~$35 full functioning computer. If that is true I am very impressed

2/21/2012 1:52:28 PM

So now I'm confused, the XBMC guys got it running and are using the built in GPU to do 1080p, but the Fedora team hasn't implemented that yet?

Err, odd.

2/21/2012 5:33:34 PM

Just remember this is *not* x86, this is ARM, so while it is a fully functional computer, this is really more akin to an android phone than your desktop pc in terms of what it is capable of. You won't be able to drop your favorite games and media stuff on there and just go.

Quote :

"The XBMC thing is cool, but I personally doubt that even 5% of these will be used as media players. I am just conjecturing, but unless someone packages this thing up into a real product I don't see this breaking into the media player market in any significant numbers."

That pretty much sums it up, because it's not designed to be used by the average person. This is a development platform for ARM-based computing. You may see a future iteration of this as a PC that can play games and function as a media center pc, but at this point it's more like a souped-up Arduino with a GPU.

2/22/2012 10:37:22 AM

Quote :

" but at this point it's more like a souped-up Arduino with a GPU."

Good lord dude, you're way off on what this thing is.

Arduino in the latest UNO incarnation is an 8 bit mcu running at 16MHz, no native FPU. The Raspberry Pi is running at 700MHz with a native FPU running the same and a separate graphics core. It's right in the FAQ:

Quote :

"That is, graphics capabilities are roughly equivalent to Xbox 1 level of performance. Overall real world performance is something like a 300MHz Pentium 2, only with much, much swankier graphics."

Maybe when you said "souped up" Arduino this is what you had in mind. Or maybe you just meant its a development platform waiting for the other pieces to be plugged in to make a full personal computer. If you mean that latter, it's all there ready to go as shown by both the XBMC guys and the Fedora guys.

My comment two posts ago was wondering what the XBMC guys did/used to enable the GPU core to run 1080p video that the Fedora guys don't have? I didn't look myself, was hoping someone else would. I can guess that it's just the flavor of Linux each side chose to base off of, but again, I was hoping someone else would figure that out.

Quote :

" this is really more akin to an android phone than your desktop pc in terms of what it is capable of."

Many Android phones are more capable right now than a lot of laptops/desktops still in use first world countries all over the world.

[Edited on February 22, 2012 at 5:55 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2012 5:52:59 PM

^my guess re: the 1080p support is that XBMC has much much more mature hardware decoding for h.264 and mpeg video.

I just want to buy like 5 of these. Everytime I see this thread at the top, I get all excited that they're finally shipping... then I come read the thread and go

2/22/2012 6:30:03 PM

^^ I was referring to the fact that there is very little in the way of "load and go" software. I am not insinuating that this is anything like an ATMega in terms of processing power. I'm not that daft. It is, however, a development platform, and most of the "cool stuff" you see people doing with it took a a fair amount of effort to do. You don't just plug it in and watch it go. Not yet, at least. That's all I was getting at.

It is also similar in the fact that as soon as these ship, people will be buying tons of them then getting home and realizing they don't have the skills to do half the shit they saw on the internet. Cue the "What is a GPIO" and "Why is windows not installing" posts because they have no idea what they just bought.

2/23/2012 10:25:10 AM

But come Windows 8....

2/23/2012 2:59:05 PM

im going to buy a few and wait for people to do interesting things i can copy

2/23/2012 3:26:46 PM

Quote :

"It is, however, a development platform, and most of the "cool stuff" you see people doing with it took a a fair amount of effort to do. You don't just plug it in and watch it go. Not yet, at least. That's all I was getting at."

You don't plug an x86 in and watch it go either. The XBMC folks have demonstrated that yeah, you can do this with the Pi as well...now. Meaning, someone already did the hard work to come up with whatever flavor of Linux they are using. If you are meaning that the platform itself has the capability to do a lot of things which aren't implement yet, then yeah, I agree. But let's be a bit more precise in what we are talking about here.

2/23/2012 5:29:49 PM

Looks like they go on sale at 1am our time tonight.

2/28/2012 7:24:22 AM

Silly me, I thought that signing up for the newsletter to be informed when it would go on sale would actually be useful. I've heard nothing at all about this from signing up for that. I presume I would have gotten an email around 1AM, and read it when I woke up, only to find out that it sold out before 2:30. A lot of good that would have done.

Thanks for the heads up.

2/28/2012 6:33:35 PM

I'm just guessing its the sale announcement, it would be stupid of them not to with all the hype they are generating.

It being at 1am pretty much ensures I won't get one of the first ones. Fuck staying up for that.

2/28/2012 7:33:19 PM

not sure if i want to buy one now or not

2/28/2012 8:20:44 PM

Server is fucked.

2/29/2012 12:48:57 AM

Quote :

"How to Buy The Raspberry Pi is available at either Premier Farnell or RS Components. Search for Raspberry Pi, and then follow the normal shopping and checkout process."

Except now both those sites are also down. I go in before the major rush, Farnell just errored out when you tried to actually pre-order (item number not found) . . . and even if you do manage to add it to your cart they say you have to e-mail them to arrange export shipping outside Europe. RS won't even sell outside the UK.

So yeah, looks like we're fucked for the moment.

2/29/2012 1:10:39 AM

This is a fuckup of epic proportions. Although #RaspberryPi is trending on twitter worldwide and Raspberry Pi is trending in Raleigh. I guess this is more popular than I thought.

2/29/2012 1:20:20 AM

Now they're saying it's sold out on Farnell. I don't know how, I never got it to actually put a unit in my cart. Oh well, it was $43 USD there plus lord knows how much in shipping.

They upped the RAM to 256 in the $25 unit. I'll probably end up waiting for that (and to when you can actually buy one in the US) anyway.

But still, I can't believe they didn't handle this better. They could have put 10,000 units in a box in a field in the middle of a random town in England and it would have been less of a clusterfuck than this mess.

2/29/2012 1:36:10 AM

I can't believe I woke up to try and get one.

2/29/2012 1:36:16 AM

Not a one of the hundreds of people in the IRC were able to order (despite being some of the most fanatical, obviously). Yet all the initial quantity are now sold out apparently.

Nobody in the US was ever given an opportunity to buy. RS and Farnell never even offered shipment outside of Europe.

2/29/2012 1:38:13 AM

Surely they knew there was us interest. Seems odd the way this was handled.

[Edited on February 29, 2012 at 1:41 AM. Reason : T]

2/29/2012 1:41:14 AM

I am way too about something that I really have no use for and probably won't use more than 2 times before it gets thrown in a drawer and forgotten about.

But still.

2/29/2012 1:44:23 AM

I was on the farnell site at 10:07 and it never even resolved until almost midnight. bullllshit

2/29/2012 5:21:05 AM

Lame.

2/29/2012 7:24:19 AM