Raspberry Pi - 25 Dollar PC on a USB stick

[Exophase]

HDMI would be great. Whatever is chosen should ideally be digital and include audio, although honestly component has always looked fine to me for 720p. Of course it'd be great if Pandora 2 can output 1080p.

 

[Nintendo]

Yeah, component is something I don't mind using. I use component for GameCube all the time...although I don't have any better more affordable alternatives, really.

 

[Prometheus]

I have a little bit of information on the Raspberry Pi "USB stick PC", as I sent them an e-mail, and received a response today now that they've cleared the backlog that was caused by the interest the news articles on it generated.


They're expecting the devices to be available to the general public later in the year, but most interesting of all (and I hope they don't mind me quoting this one line) is this;

We'll definitely have a buy-one-give-one scheme when we launch.

So there we go, folks. If you're after one, you will be able to get one, and benefit a kid's learning in the process, too.

 

[elwing]

So there we go, folks. If you're after one, you will be able to get one, and benefit a kid's learning in the process, too.

interesting, but I'm still wondering what is the use for poor country as they will still need to buy a screen that worth quite more than the pc on a stick...

 

[Nintendo]

They're going to have to go out and get a decent paying job.

 

[Prometheus]

Sorry for the bump here, but I had an e-mail from the Raspberry Pi mailing list today, and I figured that at least a few folks here might be interested, too.

Over the past three months, we’ve been working hard to finalize the specs


for the Raspberry Pi device, and to produce schematics and a PCB layout. Last


Tuesday, we sent an alpha release of the board for manufacture.

Short but sweet. Also they've revised their website, where more information about the prototype boards and pricing for the final units is now available.

 

[Exophase]

This gets a big additional price-kick due to being non-profit as well. It's Broadcom SoC and Broadcom engineers are designing it. They're possibly getting a special price and fab connections that they might not get otherwise.. not unlike Beagleboard/Pandaboard.


I expect that the SoC is in the vicinity of $10 and the RAM perhaps around $5. The power regulation may consist of nothing more than a 5V buck converter off of a 6-24V or so input, if the SoC has its own regulators. The SoC probably also has builtin HDMI and it isn't bothering with any other kind of audio/video outputs. This kind of project really shows just how far you can go on the integration of a single SoC.


One interesting thing about this is that Broadcom is said to have pretty novel and high performing GPUs in this space (much more so than the aging ARM11 CPU). The released specs for Raspberry Pi support this: 1gpixel/1.5gtexel/s fill rate, and 24GFLOPs (dunno anything about triangle setup like limits though). That alone sounds well beyond what Pandora's 110MHz SGX530 can do, not to mention the 1080p decode capabilities.

 

[gunni]

*bump*


the alpha boards have arrived. new post on the blog


http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=78

 

[Asmo]

Most interesting pics of the alpha unit - though it's probably time to retire the "on a USB stick" description, it's likely to wind up half the size of a Pandora


No bad thing though, it has a decent set of standard ports on it.


Regular RCA jack for composite video out too, non HDMI owners need not worry.

 

[Exophase]

These boards aren't indicative of what the shipping ones will look like. In the comments, one of the developers says that they hope for the final boards to be about the size of a credit card. Still not USB stick realm though.


It looks like I was wrong about analog audio/video - the SoC probably supports component natively since you don't need a very high precision DAC for it. As for analog audio, they're actually just using PWM (1-bit DAC!) and a low pass filter, so expect it to not sound that amazing.

 

[gunni]

raspberry pi running quake 3!


http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=106

 

[Jourdy288]

0_o.


Wow. Mind=Blown.

 

[SavageMind]

I like the idea. We should get back to the basics of computers. All I know is my 6 year old daughter knows; Load"*",8,1. She has a Wii, but she loves her Commodore 64.....well my Commodore 64..lol :blink:

 

[gunni]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/28/ict-changes-needed-national-curriculum?CMP=twt_gu

 

[Prometheus]

Wow, what a great article - decent-enough knowledge about the subject-matter and the problems currently relating to it, correct usage of the term "hacker", and plenty of bits of interesting stuff.


Did I step into Bizarro World today or something? :blink:

 

[Exophase]

Oh god, this guy again.

 

[DaMummy]

careful Exophase, hes coming to get you

 

[Nintendo]

And Radical is 14/F/Cali.

 

[Kaepora Gaebora]

I think he was hoping for 9/m/Home Alone :mellow:


Anyways this little Raspberry looks great for the price.

 

[Exophase]

careful Exophase, hes coming to get you

You'll protect me won't you?