101–110 of 116 posts
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Hilarious - i was just thinking it was overpowered! It depends on your use case. If you are thinking of this for industrial controls, its overpowered. If you are thinking of this for mining bitcoins, it is underpowered.
(FYI mining Bitcoin can only be reasonably done using custom ASIC hardware these days)
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It depends what you want to use it for. I'm imagining this being used in small embedded projects where the physical size of the current Pi is undesirable.
But there are plenty of SODIMM-sized ARM embedded modules with much more compute power than the Pi already.
It kind of bothers me that the Raspberry Pi Foundation is supposed to an educational charity, yet they are devoting resources towards developing products aimed business and industrial users. It doesn't seem aligned with their stated mission.
"We are also aware that there are a very significant number of users out there who are embedding the Raspberry Pi into systems and even commercial products. We think there needs to be a better way to allow people to get their hands on this great technology in a more flexible form factor, but still keep things at a sensible price."
"The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity, and as with everything we make here, all profits are pushed straight back into educating kids in computing."
In other words, they found a need, they're filling it, and all the profits from filling that need will be plowed back into their primary mission. More money = more kids educated in computing = Good.
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You can setup the SD card to run read only, and use a external usb hard drive when you need to write.
Correct me if I am wrong but it is my understanding that you can still have read problems on an RO SD card. In fact I was recently reading a Micron Application note that explained that the mere act of reading it could cause bit-flips.
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You really see these being sold in Radio Shack? With Pis, all the average person needed was a regular keyboard, mouse & monitor to plug in. That's why it worked. That's all been thrown out here.
I think you're gravely misunderstanding the intended goal and target user for this device. It's not "for consumers" but a path for hardware developers to prototype with a full Pi and then ship with a custom unit that's been configured as needed - without having to modify your code.
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You really see these being sold in Radio Shack? With Pis, all the average person needed was a regular keyboard, mouse & monitor to plug in. That's why it worked. That's all been thrown out here.
Nope, I don't see these being sold in Radio Shack. The world of electronics distribution reaches way beyond Radio Shack. I mean: Before the Raspberry Pi, there were Linux-capable ARM Dev Boards, but the vast majority of them were niche items, over $150, and you had to call up the manufacturer and convince them to sell you one. (oh, and don't you dare use this in production without securing a larger purchase agreement…
If anything started this it was the BeagleBoard released by TI well before the Pi. You can get a feel for how much influence it had from the fact that half the boards released these days are named *Board in a similar way. MinnowBoard, CubieBoard, DragonBoard, OwlBoard, MarsBoard, Arndale Board, PandaBoard, CosmicBoard... I could go on...
I'm no Raspberry Pi hater, but let's just not go all history-revisionism here.
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But there are plenty of SODIMM-sized ARM embedded modules with much more compute power than the Pi already.
How do they rate against Videocore IV? AFAIK, ARM core represents only about 2-5% of total computing power in RPi. And can you provide some links, please?
Links? This is turning into a let-me-google-that-for-you, but they appear very regularly on http://linuxgizmos.com
Isn't the Pi incredibly underpowered for use as a compute node?
For standard 'computing', yes. However, I have several that I use for single-purpose tasks and it excels at this. I have one Pi in my office that runs tmux/mutt/irssi, so I can easily access email and our internal chat server from any computer in the building. I have another hooked up to a TV that acts as digital signage, showing uptimes and other system info. Pretty neat stuff, but it's painfully slow for GUI tasks
As a system-on-module, it's aimed more at embedded engineers than first time hobbyists, and embedded engineers already have many much better solutions like this.
Isn't the Pi incredibly underpowered for use as a compute node?
Hilarious - i was just thinking it was overpowered! It depends on your use case. If you are thinking of this for industrial controls, its overpowered. If you are thinking of this for mining bitcoins, it is underpowered.