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Raspberry Pi Model A (the $25 one) finally on sale in US

arstechnica.com

11–20 of 24 posts

Re: Raspberry Pi Model A (the $25 one) finally on sale in US

#11
What I would like to see is something like a Raspberry pi, but without any of the video/usb outputs or GPU/Soundcard.

So just a tiny server running Linux with an ethernet port. I you can get the pi down to $25 you could probably get such a thing down to $15 or so.

Re: Raspberry Pi Model A (the $25 one) finally on sale in US

#12

What I would like to see is something like a Raspberry pi, but without any of the video/usb outputs or GPU/Soundcard. So just a tiny server running Linux with an ethernet port. I you can get the pi down to $25 you could probably get such a thing down to $15 or so.

Removing the ethernet port is one of the things they did to get the cost down to 25 dollars. The gfx/video you get for free with the CPU, so I dont think you're right.

The ethernet was expensive because it consisted of two components, an ethernet chip and a usb hub. A cool side effect of the hub not being in the A is that you can use it as a USB slave too. This is very handy if you want to use the Pi to make a pheripheral device.

Re: Raspberry Pi Model A (the $25 one) finally on sale in US

#13
post #10
post #5

I picked up a Model B from Amazon earlier this month, here in the US. I have been really impressed with it, even though I paid ~$48. Very impressive device in such a little package. I used mine to make a WiFi garage door opener with node.js backend and iOS app to open our garage doors from our phone. So many more projects in mind. Shameless plus as I just wrote a post about my project this weekend. http://itsbrent.ne…

Really cool. Could you point me towards any resources for learning the electronics side of this? I've had my pi for awhile and want to get into the hardware aspect of it more, but have zero experience.

I don't know too much about hardware, enough to solve simple issues like this. The relay simply closes the circuit as if I pressed the wall switch. The Pi has header pins with power, ground, and programmable pins. Check out the WiringPi page though. https://projects.drogon.net/raspberry-pi/wiringpi/

Re: Raspberry Pi Model A (the $25 one) finally on sale in US

#14
post #4

Model A is very restrictive than the B, if you are even slightly serious to do sth of little weight with it. I wonder if A can withstand always-on torrent and/or a connected hard disk which is constantly filled by CrashPlan or Time Machine. One USB port is another big restriction. Kills my idea of making it work with two hard disk(without using a hub). PS. It hurts to think that I am not buying it(B) because it costs…

The model B achieves the 2 usbs and an ethernet port by having a builtin hub this means your 2 hdd's compete both with eachother and with the network for bandwidth so your no hub constraint doesnt make sense.

Re: Raspberry Pi Model A (the $25 one) finally on sale in US

#15
post #12

What I would like to see is something like a Raspberry pi, but without any of the video/usb outputs or GPU/Soundcard. So just a tiny server running Linux with an ethernet port. I you can get the pi down to $25 you could probably get such a thing down to $15 or so.

Removing the ethernet port is one of the things they did to get the cost down to 25 dollars. The gfx/video you get for free with the CPU, so I dont think you're right. The ethernet was expensive because it consisted of two components, an ethernet chip and a usb hub. A cool side effect of the hub not being in the A is that you can use it as a USB slave too. This is very handy if you want to use the Pi to make a pherip…

I wonder if just providing a wireless chip would be cheaper than just providing ethernet?

There must be some cost saving in just removing the video connectors from the board, though I'm not sure if it's any cheaper to get an ARM CPU without an inbuilt GPU.

Re: Raspberry Pi Model A (the $25 one) finally on sale in US

#16
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing the ethernet port is one of the things they did to get the cost down to 25 dollars. The gfx/video you get for free with the CPU, so I dont think you're right. The ethernet was expensive because it consisted of two components, an ethernet chip and a usb hub. A cool side effect of the hub not being in the A is that you can use it as a USB slave too. This is very handy if you want to use the Pi to make a pherip…

I wonder if just providing a wireless chip would be cheaper than just providing ethernet? There must be some cost saving in just removing the video connectors from the board, though I'm not sure if it's any cheaper to get an ARM CPU without an inbuilt GPU.

I think the difference is that you perhaps pay 2cts for a video connector which is directly connected to an output your cpu has and a few euro for a networking chip that requires high quality crystals etc.

Re: Raspberry Pi Model A (the $25 one) finally on sale in US

#18
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing the ethernet port is one of the things they did to get the cost down to 25 dollars. The gfx/video you get for free with the CPU, so I dont think you're right. The ethernet was expensive because it consisted of two components, an ethernet chip and a usb hub. A cool side effect of the hub not being in the A is that you can use it as a USB slave too. This is very handy if you want to use the Pi to make a pherip…

I wonder if just providing a wireless chip would be cheaper than just providing ethernet? There must be some cost saving in just removing the video connectors from the board, though I'm not sure if it's any cheaper to get an ARM CPU without an inbuilt GPU.

Well wired Ethernet just works in far more cases than faffing around with Wifi - find a spare port and plug it in.

You would also have to add connectors for antennas.

Re: Raspberry Pi Model A (the $25 one) finally on sale in US

#19

What I would like to see is something like a Raspberry pi, but without any of the video/usb outputs or GPU/Soundcard. So just a tiny server running Linux with an ethernet port. I you can get the pi down to $25 you could probably get such a thing down to $15 or so.

If you don't want to run full up Linux you can do this with the ST Micro STM4F32, its Cortex-M4 chip with ethernet capability. At about the same price (in small quantities) you can use the Atmel SAM9 series, just chip, memory, ethernet MAC, and USB is about $25 in parts (single unit quantity) so if you made a bunch your cost would be closer to $15 but if you sell them you need to make some sort of profit to cover the cost of building them.

Close though, and I suspect we'll see SOC's that target this market soon enough. One workaround is a development environment that lets you compile a Linux application into something that can run on the hardware (just the kernel you need, and nothing extra :-) The uC Linux work is interesting in this regard.

Re: Raspberry Pi Model A (the $25 one) finally on sale in US

#20
post #10
post #5

I picked up a Model B from Amazon earlier this month, here in the US. I have been really impressed with it, even though I paid ~$48. Very impressive device in such a little package. I used mine to make a WiFi garage door opener with node.js backend and iOS app to open our garage doors from our phone. So many more projects in mind. Shameless plus as I just wrote a post about my project this weekend. http://itsbrent.ne…

Really cool. Could you point me towards any resources for learning the electronics side of this? I've had my pi for awhile and want to get into the hardware aspect of it more, but have zero experience.

Pick up some Forrest Mims books. You've probably seen them before.

http://www.amazon.com/s/url=search-alias%3Daps&field-key...

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