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Introducing Raspberry Pi B+

raspberrypi.org

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Re: Introducing Raspberry Pi B+

#61

Post by 72deluxe »

middleclick wrote: post #19

Is anyone running a webserver or mailserver over the Pi? Curious to know how it holds up.

I am running a web server on mine using PipaOS and Lighttpd, but I rewrote my database system to SQLite instead of MySQL. Granted, this meant I had to reimplement some stored procedures that I had written in PHP instead (for parent/child page traversal and navigation building) but it returns pages much faster. I know that reading from a file all the time is likely to harm the attached USB drive's read count, but I'm not getting many hits!

I intend to rewrite the system using C++ instead (using an old Mongoose C++ web server edition) and load the SQLite database into SQLite :memory: (without a disk backup) instead, which means that it'll return pages much faster; it'll only touch the "disk" database on program startup.

I see from the others that they have put PHP and MySQL and a host of other things on theirs but for simple sites, that is probably somewhat overkill.

I also use mine as an SSH gateway.

Re: Introducing Raspberry Pi B+

#62

Post by 72deluxe »

nwh wrote: post #6
rebolek wrote: post #5

"moved composite video onto the 3.5mm jack" - can it output both composite video and sound at the same time?

Yes. Same as the iPod can have composite video and two audio channels. Three ring / four section plugs.

TRRS connectors. Tip Ring Ring Sleeve.

Re: Introducing Raspberry Pi B+

#63

Post by lmedinas »

Nux wrote: post #40

Oh man, I was really hoping for a better CPU. The current one is just so dang slow.

"This isn’t a “Raspberry Pi 2″, but rather the final evolution of the original Raspberry Pi. "[1]

I think we can interpret this as RPI 2 will be released soon with a new processor.

1 - http://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/#introducing-raspberry-pi-mo...

Re: Introducing Raspberry Pi B+

#64

Post by malaporte »

copperx wrote: post #35

I still can't see why would anyone buy one except as one of those toys that you buy and then gets tossed in the closet. 10 years ago I could see the appeal, but now? The robotics, home automation, and weekend project use cases seem like would be better served by a $5 microcontroller. Some projects, such as the weather station, justify the use of a full-fledged OS, but with the cost of buying an existing, proven, weat…

I've been using a Pi running XBMC for about a year. It's connected to a big hard drive. I can copy stuff there from my laptop (movies, music, etc.) It works pretty well; I don't remember having to "service" it in any way since I plugged it in.

It works fine to stream stuff from YouTube, too. Shows for kids, etc. The XBMC remote on my phone is pretty handy too.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it.

Re: Introducing Raspberry Pi B+

#65

Post by userbinator »

weland wrote: post #55
copperx wrote: post #35

I still can't see why would anyone buy one except as one of those toys that you buy and then gets tossed in the closet. 10 years ago I could see the appeal, but now? The robotics, home automation, and weekend project use cases seem like would be better served by a $5 microcontroller. Some projects, such as the weather station, justify the use of a full-fledged OS, but with the cost of buying an existing, proven, weat…

I don't have the Raspberry Pi, mainly because, since I develop embedded software for a living, I have an endless supply of development boards I can hack on at work and am free to take home (during those evenings when I am not so fucking tired of flipping bits that I don't even want to SEE C code!), but : * A platform with less legacy crap than x86 is wonderful for learning about OS development. I don't know how the P…

> A platform with less legacy crap than x86 is wonderful for learning about OS development. I don't know how the Pi fares for this, with Broadcom's chip and all, but if I had the free time to hack an OS in my spare time, not dealing with all the thirty year-old cruft nor shedding a gazillion EUR on a PowerPC system would be ideal.

Actually I'd say the x86/PC is probably one of the best-documented and most stable platforms out there to learn on at the moment, precisely because it has been around for so long. Largely due to Broadcom policy the Pi is notoriously closed and proprietary at the hardware level, and unless there is somehow a massive amount of reverse-engineering like what happened with early home computers (which were better documented so the process started more easily), or a datasheet leak, the situation is unlikely to change. Any of the other open ARM devboards in the same price range would also be good candidates for OS development, but not the Pi.

Re: Introducing Raspberry Pi B+

#66

Post by pja »

xorcist wrote: post #21

The Pi would be infititely more useful to me if the ethernet interface was attached to a "real" bus and not hung on USB. Here's to hoping that will be the next upgrade!

Which bus exactly? Reading the BCM2835 datasheet ( http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BCM283... ) the chip has a couple of UARTS, 2 SPI interfaces and a USB interface.

The only interface that can do DMA is the USB one. All the others have relatively small FIFO buffers and require the CPU to do all the I/O work. So you could attach an ethernet interface to one of the SPI buses, or bit bang a few GPIOs but surely the CPU load is going to be painful?

Edit: Oh wait, there's a main SPI bus that can do DMA as well. See page 148 on the doc linked above. If you can find a suitable chipset & driver then have at it :)

Re: Introducing Raspberry Pi B+

#67

Post by paulrov »

Nux wrote: post #40

Oh man, I was really hoping for a better CPU. The current one is just so dang slow.

They said they would rather people optimise for the current hardware than cause rifts between users.

The CPU really isn't that bad if you don't run that behemoth X11 on it.

Re: Introducing Raspberry Pi B+

#69

Post by mikehall314 »

copperx wrote: post #35

I still can't see why would anyone buy one except as one of those toys that you buy and then gets tossed in the closet. 10 years ago I could see the appeal, but now? The robotics, home automation, and weekend project use cases seem like would be better served by a $5 microcontroller. Some projects, such as the weather station, justify the use of a full-fledged OS, but with the cost of buying an existing, proven, weat…

I have one which I use as a VPN terminator for the office.

Re: Introducing Raspberry Pi B+

#70

Post by higherpurpose »

Please skip ARMv7 and jump straight to ARMv8 for Raspberry Pi 2. No need to force OS/app developers to support 3 different ISA's for years to come.

Ideally it would also be dual core and have a clock speed of at least 1.2 Ghz, since that's what most operating systems need these days to run reasonably well, but I guess that depends on your target price. 1 GB of (LP)DDR3(L) RAM should also be the minimum for the next one.

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