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Two million Raspberry Pi sold

raspberrypi.org

91–100 of 119 posts

Re: Two million Raspberry Pi sold

#91
post #17

Would I notice any performance gain from using a cheap pc over a pi for something like BT sync? The Pi's processor is equivalent to a 300MHz Pentium 2, and that's kinds scary.

you will notice a serious performance upgrade by switching to a BeagleBone black. IMHO the BBB is about twice as fast (or more) as the rPi.

The BBB is lacking in community support vs the rPi.

Re: Two million Raspberry Pi sold

#92

One of those two million is sat under my desk, collecting dust. I know a few others that are, and, I wonder what percentage of that 2 million are in the same situation? Because you need a few bits and bobs to get your pi working there is a major disincentive to complete and finish whatever that hobby project was to be. Hence the situation with my pi - the wait for bits and bobs, a small bout of illness and the initia…

I think they should have wifi on board, then it would be much more usable.

Re: Two million Raspberry Pi sold

#93
post #51

I am using two of those two million RPis with camera modules to record pollinators visiting flowers (backpackable; activated by motion; solar powered). I'm still ironing out some kinks with the software, but the quality of footage produce by the camera module, the low power requirements and the flexibility you get with the RPi are really pretty amazing considering the price.

Agreed about the camera module, with the important caveat that, like most of the rest of the Pi, the guts are proprietary Broadcom stuff. In particular, there are really basic camera settings (the light meter, white balance) that aren't accessible to the user. Want to maintain a consistent white balance or exposure between shots? Sorry, no can do. And since it's a proprietary blob, it's not something you can fix.

I know many people have a problem with the binary blobs, but even with its limitations, the camera module is also at least $1000 cheaper than building a system using something like a PointGrey Flea 3 and better than any consumer grade USB webcam currently on the market. Power consumption is low enough that solar power is a realistic option while keeping the system portable. JamesH has also been very responsive with adding new features to raspicam/raspistill such as the very useful signal mode. It WOULD be nicer without the binary blobs.

Re: Two million Raspberry Pi sold

#94
post #66

How reliable are they as always-on 'servers' wrt running off an sd card? Doesn't it wear out the card in a few months time if you consider all the writing to /var/log? Anyone had one running for close to the two year's it's been out now?

Mine has been running for a little over a year with no problems so far. It's not under very heavy load, though.

Re: Two million Raspberry Pi sold

#95
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed about the camera module, with the important caveat that, like most of the rest of the Pi, the guts are proprietary Broadcom stuff. In particular, there are really basic camera settings (the light meter, white balance) that aren't accessible to the user. Want to maintain a consistent white balance or exposure between shots? Sorry, no can do. And since it's a proprietary blob, it's not something you can fix.

I know many people have a problem with the binary blobs, but even with its limitations, the camera module is also at least $1000 cheaper than building a system using something like a PointGrey Flea 3 and better than any consumer grade USB webcam currently on the market. Power consumption is low enough that solar power is a realistic option while keeping the system portable. JamesH has also been very responsive with a…

Yeah, I agree that the camera module is really good for the price. It's just a bit frustrating not being able to fix things that I know that the hardware can do, because I don't have access to the source.

Re: Two million Raspberry Pi sold

#96
post #51

I am using two of those two million RPis with camera modules to record pollinators visiting flowers (backpackable; activated by motion; solar powered). I'm still ironing out some kinks with the software, but the quality of footage produce by the camera module, the low power requirements and the flexibility you get with the RPi are really pretty amazing considering the price.

Do you have any pictures or footage? I'd love to see.

I use a camera module to capture and catalog a daily timelapse video of the sky and weather above Boston: http://guipinto.com/skylapse

Re: Two million Raspberry Pi sold

#97

One of those two million is sat under my desk, collecting dust. I know a few others that are, and, I wonder what percentage of that 2 million are in the same situation? Because you need a few bits and bobs to get your pi working there is a major disincentive to complete and finish whatever that hobby project was to be. Hence the situation with my pi - the wait for bits and bobs, a small bout of illness and the initia…

That's the case with most people. I don't know any body around me who has gone anything beyond blinking LED's.

The main reason is any thing you can likely do on your RasPi you can also do on your Laptop. The need for a small form factor devices in production use cases always exists. But any kind of mass production requires serious application of effort to bring the price, stability and quality to a optimum point. And its an effort that spans months if you work full time.

That's too much for the ordinary web developers level of patience who expects to launch a fully functioning product over a weekend.

Re: Two million Raspberry Pi sold

#99

One of those two million is sat under my desk, collecting dust. I know a few others that are, and, I wonder what percentage of that 2 million are in the same situation? Because you need a few bits and bobs to get your pi working there is a major disincentive to complete and finish whatever that hobby project was to be. Hence the situation with my pi - the wait for bits and bobs, a small bout of illness and the initia…

I came here to say just that, I wonder how many are just inactive examples of western oppulence.

Mine were at first but now I have two that are both in active use, a surveillance camera and a deaddrop.

Re: Two million Raspberry Pi sold

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More cores, mostly. I tried using the Raspberry Pi with server software such as Owncloud or calendarserver. It just barely works, but it is still very slow. Like, response times upwards of four seconds. Recent smartphone processors have since about doubled their clock speed and quadrupled the processor count. Even half that would bring response times below a second, which would be much appreciated.

Its not really that slow; try different software. Low power means you need to be slightly efficient.

i used to run Owncloud (php), which was ok for CalDAV and CardDAV, but the web interface was terribly slow. Now I run calendarserver for CalDAV/CardDAV (Python), which is fast for CardDAV (few data) and slow for CalDAV (a lot of data). I am also running Bittorrent Sync (binary blob, fast), and Time Machine backups (fast).

My conclusion: The Raspi is slow for serving with dynamic languages. Compiled stuff is fine.

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