Raspberry pi anyone?

[tez77]

I am itching for this thing to go on sale, I have so many ideas for what I will be doing with mine!

For those of you who aren't aware, the raspberry pi is a $30 PC the size of a credit card with full 1080p capabilites. Its GPU offers double the performance of an iphone 4s and is expected to outperform nvidias tegra2 with ease.... for $30!! Broadcom rocks!

See http://www.raspberrypi.org/ for the low down.

[Knoton]

Wow, they have XBMC for it 

[tez77]

Yep and looking pretty good although I'm more interested in seeing if boxee can be compiled to run on it.

[Knoton]

What ports do they have on this thing?

[tez77]

What specifically are you after knoton. As soon as I get my hands on one I will be on a cross compiling mission

[Knoton]

I had another check at the site.
It has everything I need to make a mediastation of it 
USB (keyboard,mice, HD)
Ethernet (easier transfer of media)
HDMI (graphich and sound)

Unfortunately it had no case, but there will be one later on.
If it is really up to the task of playing HD movies it will make my wife happy we can throw out my other homemade mediastation
that is much bigger and ugly looking, and I can have some more fun 
 
I have never tried Boxee is it any good?

[VicP]

This is really interesting. I used to love apple but I'd quite happily run a mile now.

[tez77]

I have several commercial applications lined up for this board so I may well be having a case manufactured although it would be IP66 rated so is going to look fairly industrial Knoton, perhaps not what you want for a media station. Also, note there will be two different versions produced, model A will not have onboard ethernet so you most likely want model B.

It'll handle 1080p 30fps h.264/MPEG-4 AVC High-Profile.  Boxee is a really nice looking application, I will have a play with XBMC anyway as it's been a long time since I last looked at it but will definitely have a crack at compiling the boxee source. I will probably use one as a media server for myself but I am far more interested in the I2C & SPI bus, I'm currently using an arduino for these features and with those busses included on the pi I can eliminate the arduino board from my project completely, don't get me wrong, arduino rocks and whilst you can make your own arduino for just a few pounds a pre-fabricated board costs as much as the pi itself.

VicP, are you into linux (if you've delved under the hood of OSX that's probably a yes)? The pi will ship with an arm port of debian (I believe there are also Fedora and Arch Linux offerings too ), as long as you're ok with that it will be a nice little board for just surfing the net, hd movies, open office etc etcf. No, its not going to compete with a top end PC or a mac but it costs next to nothing

[Knoton]

Well the look of the case is not important to me.
the case is just for protection.
The best part of this is the size that means I can hide it very easily.
And if I hide it the look doesnt matter.

[tez77]

Well the look of the case is not important to me.
the case is just for protection.
The best part of this is the size that means I can hide it very easily.
And if I hide it the look doesnt matter.

I'll be sure to let you know if I get my case manufactured then If not im sure there will be alterative cases appearing on the market shortly after release.

In the meantime Knoton, you might want to take a look at the windows binaries for boxee http://www.boxee.tv/make, at least you'll know if you like it or not

[Knoton]

Looks by appearance that boxee more is for online television and rental movies.
I just want a really good movieplayer with a good browser.
Online television from sweden is not that good from other countries.
and our national has a lot to wish for.
I know that XMBC distribute all the neccessary codecs and such to be able to play most formats.
Think I read on the boxee page that it doesnt. mentioning that it will be able to play any format your computer are able to.
That is fine with a windows machine, but on linux. no, that is a big no...
I dont want the hazzle of configuring in all eternity, not my thing really.

[tez77]

Looks by appearance that boxee more is for online television and rental movies.
I just want a really good movieplayer with a good browser.
Online television from sweden is not that good from other countries.
and our national has a lot to wish for.
I know that XMBC distribute all the neccessary codecs and such to be able to play most formats.
Think I read on the boxee page that it doesnt. mentioning that it will be able to play any format your computer are able to.
That is fine with a windows machine, but on linux. no, that is a big no...
I dont want the hazzle of configuring in all eternity, not my thing really.

Boxee does do online tv and will play local/network media fine but you are correct, it very much depends on codecs installed on the host system etc. That said it's really not that much hassle getting linux to play pretty much anything, not sure how your linux experience is?

For most people though xbmc will be a quick and easy solution, I love to tinker so the challenge of getting boxee running is right up my street. It might be a while though as its really not going to be top of my priority list when I do get my hands on the pi, I need to get all my arduino work ported over to the pi and hopefully get a couple of cool products on the shelf When I have time to kick back and relax I'll start working on boxee.

I'll be putting a review and a getting started video on youtube just as soon as I get the hardware for anyone else interested in having a play.

[Knoton]

I used to play with some linux distro some years agoo.
But I got tired of it, always a struggle to find things that works with the distro at hand.
Then you need to configure it.
I know a bit about working with a linux distro, I can follow guides step by step.
But I have never done any real hardcore, just what has to be done to set up a distro for desktop use.
And sometimes some special server to play with, nothing fancy at all.
Since I am a systemdeveloper for windows I very much prefer windows for that very reason.
If it wasnt for the programming and I only would use a machine for internet, mail and some videowatching
I might consider using a ubuntu distro.
After all I am not using a computer much except for programming, internet and watching videos.

[tez77]

Linux has come on a long way in a very short time knoton, maybe the pi is the perfect excuse to start playing again Certainly ubuntu makes things very user friendly if you are a gui type of person. I spend 99% of my time in a terminal window, I rarely use a gui for anything, I code everything in a simple text editor, I remember when I first started coding websites, couldn't picture how things would look on screen by working in a text editor but now its second nature... sure stuff like dreamweaver is very good but I feel more comfortable in vim

The only time I use an IDE is for windows programming, c# (and SQL work) mainly but I rarely use MS products, it costs too much to license SQL server when I can use MySQL for nothing

[Tara]

are you into linux (if you've delved under the hood of OSX that's probably a yes)? The pi will ship with an arm port of debian (I believe there are also Fedora and Arch Linux offerings too ), as long as you're ok with that it will be a nice little board for just surfing the net, hd movies, open office etc etcf. No, its not going to compete with a top end PC or a mac but it costs next to nothing

See I was mildly curious about this but had yet to click the link as I was idly scrolling through the rest of the comments and then I saw this, I had terrible flashbacks of days gone by when SuSe didn't have any number after it, Fedora was called Red Hat and Mandrake was just a twinkle of uncompiled code in it's programmers eyes, I remember the many lost weekends surrounded by empty Pizza boxes, piles of Red Bull Cans and empty wine bottles writing drivers just to make a blimmin Epson Printer work, and the pain in my little squinty mole like eyes as I stepped forth into the sunlight to commute to work, followed by the blissful relief of flickering strip lighting and the wonders of Microshaft when I got there; and I thought......nah buggrit even $30 is too expensive, my time is too precious.

[Tara]

I might consider using a ubuntu distro.
After all I am not using a computer much except for programming, internet and watching videos.

Ubuntu is actually quite reasonable, I'm running a cut down version called easypeasy for my tiny Asus 701 netbook, its tolerable but only because it is only used to surf the net once in a blue moon when I go away and don't want to lug my "laptop" (read stupidly big i7 machine which is more a desktop replacement) around.

[vp_smoker]

Really looking forward to this, got so many ideas for a new media centre can't wait to get one and have a play.

[jediknight129]

any chance of details when you do it for the less techy minded?

[tez77]

See I was mildly curious about this but had yet to click the link as I was idly scrolling through the rest of the comments and then I saw this, I had terrible flashbacks of days gone by when SuSe didn't have any number after it, Fedora was called Red Hat and Mandrake was just a twinkle of uncompiled code in it's programmers eyes, I remember the many lost weekends surrounded by empty Pizza boxes, piles of Red Bull Cans and empty wine bottles writing drivers just to make a blimmin Epson Printer work, and the pain in my little squinty mole like eyes as I stepped forth into the sunlight to commute to work, followed by the blissful relief of flickering strip lighting and the wonders of Microshaft when I got there; and I thought......nah buggrit even $30 is too expensive, my time is too precious.

Ahhh I remember those days so well tara, but really it was all part of the fun.... at least for me it was

Seriously though, $30 is nothing and I'd hate for anyone to dismiss this little gem just because they remember the work involved in the good old days. Debian is a solid os and whilst not as gui friendly as something like ubuntu, it doesnt bring with it the pain of some other distros (or compiling gentoo from source which admittedly is as much fun as decorating your entire house, then sitting and watching the paint dry )

any chance of details when you do it for the less techy minded?

Yep, be glad to help if it gets more people into it

[Knoton]

Linux has come on a long way in a very short time knoton, maybe the pi is the perfect excuse to start playing again Certainly ubuntu makes things very user friendly if you are a gui type of person. I spend 99% of my time in a terminal window, I rarely use a gui for anything, I code everything in a simple text editor, I remember when I first started coding websites, couldn't picture how things would look on screen by working in a text editor but now its second nature... sure stuff like dreamweaver is very good but I feel more comfortable in vim

The only time I use an IDE is for windows programming, c# (and SQL work) mainly but I rarely use MS products, it costs too much to license SQL server when I can use MySQL for nothing

I use MS Visual Studio  for my development.
But I know what you mean when coding websites,
I never use the graphical interface if I make a website, just use the textbased editor.
the gui just mess things up and you end up with a lot of unneccesary code.

You do know that there is a completly free version of MS SQL Server, the express edition.
It is completly enough for most cases.
The adminstrative tools as well are free today.

[tez77]

You do know that there is a completly free version of MS SQL Server, the express edition.
It is completly enough for most cases.
The adminstrative tools as well are free today.

Indeed I do knoton but the last time I checked it would only support 4gb databases and only utilized 1gb ram and a single cpu so really depends on the scale of infrastructure you're looking at.  At my previous employers we had well over 250 SQL servers dotted around the globe (which was just replication hell at times  ) so no choice really other than license SQL server (on top of windows sever!). In all fairness though it was a monster infrastructure, in fact when we looked to be outgrowing MSSQL and started looking at a DB2 implementation to replace it, microsoft sent some chaps with clipboards over from Richmond, they spent two weeks with us and went away scratching their heads as they weren't quite sure how we'd managed to make it work as well as it was (not that I can take any credit for that, we had some pretty amazing dba's)

SQL Express has its uses without a doubt but at heart I am an open source man (in case you hadn't guessed it already ) so will always opt for linux + mysql wherever feasible

[jediknight129]

all I want to do it run a hard drive of films and music on my network that my pc can access so I can play music over the network.

[tez77]

all I want to do it run a hard drive of films and music on my network that my pc can access so I can play music over the network.

Sounds like you ought to invest in a cheap NAS box (you'd benefit from some fault tolerance from a raid setup too). Then you could add a pi with XBMC as a media player as Knoton wants to do.

Something like a Netgear ReadyNAS or if you want to get down and dirty you could build your own... check out http://www.freenas.org/

If you want to go all out and do it all youself, slap debian onto a box, setup mdadm & cifs/nfs, thats pretty much what you get inside a readynas but it requires manual configuration. Thats the setup I use on a HP microserver which cost me around £120 (+ disks)

[jediknight129]

i was wondering could the pi be used to run a wireless card setting the hdd as a shared drive?

[tez77]

i was wondering could the pi be used to run a wireless card setting the hdd as a shared drive?

Sure you *could* do that but its certainly not the most efficient way of delivering media. Heck you could even setup raid using two drives over usb but again its not the right solution. Also depending on the bitrates of your content I would advise a wired connection.

If you just want to do it because you can that's cool, I get you   but if you want to do it right then a NAS box is the solution.

[RichJr]

CLOUD?

[tez77]

CLOUD?

Sure that's another possibility but not for me, I have a 4tb RAID array at over 50% usage right now and I can access that whenever and wherever I want so in essence have my own personal cloud storage

IIRC Dropbox are charging around £12 a month for 100GB storage and call me paranoid (i am) but I'd rather keep my own personal data on my own hardware at my own premises thanks Sure you can get cheaper, you can even get free but you get what you pay for... Just look at what happened with Backify & Livedrive last year 

[jediknight129]

mainly coz I can and its cheap

[tez77]

mainly coz I can and its cheap

Well music wouldn't be a problem, what kind of video content are you trying to serve?

[jediknight129]

just use the pi as a way to connect my drive to the network so I can play files off it on my laptop.