$5.00 Raspberry Pi

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Wug
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$5.00 Raspberry Pi

Post by Wug »

Since no one here mentioned it before, the new Raspberry Pi Zero has a $5.00 MSRP. Eventually supply will catch up with demand.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/1 ... or-just-4/

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/11/ ... -24-hours/

Mike
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naoto
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Post by naoto »

If you're not familiar with Raspberry Pi, here's a good place to start to learn more about it -- the Raspberry Pi Foundation website: https://www.raspberrypi.org/

Picked up a model B a couple years ago (biggest advantage at the time was that it had twice the memory of the model A and had a built-in network connector).

The Raspberry Pi is a pretty nifty little computer -- just enough power for a number of various tasks -- including stuff browsing the web. Setup is pretty easy with most of the OS distros available for the Pi. If you aren't comfortable with installing the OS "from scratch", you could always get the microSD from various vendors with the OS pre-installed. If you get the Raspberry Pi 2, then it's possible to install Windows 10, which runs in "headless" mode (i.e. without keyboard, mouse nor keyboard -- you connect it to network and log in remotely from a terminal).

Although quite likely *not* more powerful (in all likelihood it is *less* powerful) than your current desktop or laptop computer, it is certainly still useful. One of its main strengths is that it makes it lot easier to fiddle with it than your current desktop or laptop -- mostly because since it's not your main computing rig, you're less apt to scared of damaging it (i.e. ruining something that is at most $40 is less scary than ruining something is hundreds of dollars).
Last edited by naoto on Tue Dec 01, 2015 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
Naoto Kimura
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Post by Saturn »

I may give this a whirl as a Media Server using a USB HDD... Five bucks is five bucks.
"Of all the chili that I've eaten in my travels, this has the most.......Cumin."
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naoto
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Post by naoto »

One thing that I've not yet checked on is how the RasPi has affected OLPC ( http://one.laptop.org/ ) and PlayPower ( http://playpower.org/ ).

I did consider purchasing the $10 computer that Playpower using as its platform, -- the only stateside vendor that carried it was selling it for $60, and they sold out before I had a chance to order one. I was aware that it was cheaply made and likely to have its flaws (i.e. I've already seen enough cheap PC keyboards that are *more* than $10, I certainly wouldn't expect a computer that is sold for $10 to have anything better) -- main area of interest for me was it apparently shared some similarity to the NES as well as being a bit more accessible at the software level than trying to deal with a Famiclone/Nintenclone.
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Wug
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Post by Wug »

naoto,

The specs claim Raspberry Pis play 1080p60 HD media. Do they play it well? When Pis first came out there were construction articles by people using them for home entertainment centers. Yet the early versions had audio problems.

When I was in a RadioShack about a year ago they sold Raspberry Pi kits that included a book, a board, some cables and maybe some other stuff.

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naoto
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Post by naoto »

Frankly I wouldn't know how well the original Pi would be with media -- been mostly puttering about with Raspbian ( https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ ). I have downloaded an image of OSMC ( https://osmc.tv/ ) but haven't gotten around to popping it into the RasPi to try it out. I vaguely recall one of the reasons they said why they relocated some of the ports on the A+/B+ (and subsequent models) was not only to make room for an expanded GPIO but also to resolve a few issues that were discovered with interference between some of the ports.
I'll have to check at the Barnes & Noble in a couple weeks -- they should be getting the new issue of the MagPi magazine (which apparently has a RasPi Zero attached to it) -- folks in the UK can already get the issue now (that is if they aren't already sold out).
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