Post: #1

I first came across this about a year ago when I was installing Kodi on my computer, and there were instructions there for something called Raspberry Pi.

I looked into it since I'd never heard of it before, and essentially what it is, is a bare bones basic computer, roughly the size of a credit card. It costs depending on the model from $5-$40.

It's established a bit of a cult following, and people have used it to create some pretty interesting things. It can be used as the brain for old video game emulators, KODI TV box (as above), actual old arcade style games, one person wanted to use it as an MP3 player with an SD slot attached and with a LCD touch screen for input, it really seems like the possibilities are fairly endless, as long as it's a reasonably low computation task. The other thing which seems very interesting, is it seems to make the leap from pure programming (entirely digital) to devices which can have external real world inputs and outputs.

Has anyone bought and used one of these before or made any creations? Given how prominent programming is here for the location independence aspect, I'm surprised this little device hasn't been brought up before (aside from being briefly touched on in a Python thread).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

https://www.raspberrypi.org/

Post: #2

I have a bunch of them. I bought five model Bs a couple years ago intending to make a Beowulf cluster, then I realized I have no idea what to actually do with a cluster, so most of them are still in the boxes. Someday...

I've used them for various projects. It's an easy way to spin up a local server, for example, so I use them to try out doing things over SSH. I used one as a wireless access point for awhile, but it turned out too flaky for my needs. Lots of problems with httpd so I had to reboot the damn thing all the time. It might've been due to overheating, I didn't have the patience to diagnose it. It was extremely fast wireless, though, and much more powerful (in terms of functionality) than a basic wireless box. I used a B+ for that, and a 2A power supply because I was using a powerful USB antenna.

Now I'm using one as an always-on server for some web apps I wrote to help run the household. Stuff like grocery lists, so we can all add stuff to the list and print it over the network, recipes, meal planning. Not very exciting. I'm considering using one as a way to stream stuff to my TV from the internet, but I need to run network cable out to the living room first and that's going to be a pain in the ass.

Weak points are the microSD cards and the power supplies, in my experience. I went through 1A power supplies like crazy, because the cords kept failing at the connector. Best thing to do is buy the USB power supply that has an actual USB port, and be ready to replace the USB cord for $1.50 or so every few months.

As far as the microSD cards, they corrupt easily and they're glacial for read/write. Backup your OS image frequently if it changes, and don't store important media on the card. Use an external HDD instead. Sometimes the RPi will lock up and you won't be able to safely shut it down, and pulling the plug while it's locked up is pretty much guaranteed to corrupt the SD card.

All in all, they're neat, but for my needs it's about 100x easier to just use an old laptop with Linux installed. I'm a lot more interested in arduino at this point, and I'm learning C both so I can get into embedded programming and so I can write Python extensions as needed.

Post: #3

I just bought a PI 3B running the Jessie version of Raspian. It's fast enough to be usable as a backup computer but I'm running my home media network from it. So far, I have about 6 TB of movies, documentaries and TV shows that I can access from just about anywhere using almost any device.

I love it but I have limited experience with Linux so the learning curve is pretty steep.

Post: #4

My main PC at work is a Raspberry Pi model B.

Running Raspbian with the Epiphany browser, Libre Office and xpdf, does everything I need it to.

Post: #5

The rp3 is super neat. It's a very low cost linux that you can keep always running. I mostly use it as a media server and for torrents. I can listen to music or manage torrents from any place - when connected to the home network or outside of it.

Overall, it's a very fun thing to play around with. I don't think it can be used for anything serious, but considering its price, you have nothing to lose.