BartC wrote:
"Clive George" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 05/03/2012 00:55, BartC wrote:


"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six
weeks I
am told, for mine) does anyone have any interesting ideas about what
they
might do with it/them?

I'm not quite sure what the purpose of this machine is. Low cost? Once
you've added a monitor, keyboard, mouse, memory (and a PSU?), it won't
be far from the cost of a netbook. (Edit: just seen that it plugs into a
TV. Still, you need a spare TV...)

How about for applications where you don't need a monitor, keyboard,
mouse, extra memory? Think automation, control, robots, etc.

Sure. But then maybe they don't need 1080p mpeg decoding support, and
they could have saved a few quid of licensing to these Broadcom people
or whoever supplies that technology. And I would have thought there are
enough control boards out there for this sort of stuff (where you use a
normal PC for developing the software then just download it).

Broadcomm are chip suppliers and designers based in Cambridge and supply
video and audio playback chips, as well as Bluetooth chippery.

The decoding's in the firmware, and the GPU and CPU are on one chip to
save time, space and money. It seems almost like something a couple of
Broadcomm engineers started playing with and then the project grew,
taking in the local University computer department.

Mainly, the whole thing is a hack of a Broadcomm media playback chip,
for which full documentation is available freely on the net.

I understand this is mainly for kids but are there really many children
now without access to a computer?

Not many, but most of them only have access to a fully built, locked
down PC system based on Windows and MS Office, and probably something
like an XBox and their smartphone, which are even more tightly locked
down. You can't learn many of the basics from a computer that you're not
even allowed to try and program at any low level.

This comes as standard with a BIOS, some connectivity to eternal stuff,
and that's your lot. Add input from a USB keyboard, output to a TV set
and an SD card, and you're able to start writing assembly code. Put a
compiler on the card, and you're writing higher level language.

Or you can download Linux onto the SD card, and you're off with a small,
cheap computer that it doesn't matter if you break. Unplug the card, and
you're back to a motherboard with a bit of RAM.

I can think of quite a few uses for one of these that a PC is overkill
for, especially at the price being charged, and all of them have been
mentioned by others in this thread.


--
Tciao for Now!

John.