Sep 11
Here’s something ultra-nerdy but incredibly fun: you can hack your Kindle to work as a display for a tiny portable computer like the Raspberry Pi. More »
Sep 06
Premier Farnell, Sony, team up to move Raspberry PI manufacturing to the UK
Posted in: Today's Chili 
One of the biggest holdups to owning a Raspberry Pi was its stuttering availability, so much so that it even prompted a few copycat boards. Creator Eben Upton and equipment makers Premier Farnell might have found the solution, teaming up with Sony to produce an initial run of 300,000 of the educational computers at the company’s UK Technology Center, in Pencoed, near Bridgend in Wales. Upton hopes to keep the cost at $25 and $35 for two boards, thanks to employing Sony’s “lean manufacturing techniques,” and the Japanese company has already spent £50,000 ($80,000) on new package-on-package assembly equipment — ensuring that we’ll all be able to get our hands on one soon enough.
Continue reading Premier Farnell, Sony, team up to move Raspberry PI manufacturing to the UK
Filed under: Desktops
Premier Farnell, Sony, team up to move Raspberry PI manufacturing to the UK originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sep 05
If you’re on the lookout for a cheap prototyping/testing/tinkering board, and Raspberry Pi and Arduino haven’t yet won your dollars, the $49 Cubieboard hopes it can win you over. Like the others, it’s a palm-sized board that’s fair bristling with connections, but it’s also capable of quite a turn of speed, using a 1GHz AllWinner A10 Coretex A8 processor and Mali-400 graphics.
They’re paired with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of onboard storage, while a MMC card slot can be used to add more. There’s also a SATA port, two USB Host ports, 10/100 ethernet, and an HDMI output capable of 1080p Full HD video for hooking up your display. Finally IR – handy for home entertainment center integration – and a full 96 extender pins are on offer.
That’s an impressive array of kit for $49, and there’s a range of OS support too: Android and Ubuntu get namechecked, but it shouldn’t be too tricky to get your own preferred flavor of Linux up and running. You can even overclock the processor to up to 1.5GHz.
According to the Cubieboard team, the first 100 boards were available at the start of this month, though supplies are still constrained. No word on when that might change.
[via Engadget]
Cubieboard blasts at Raspberry Pi with $49 power boost is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Sep 05
Cambridge University helps new Raspberry Pi users break the crust with free guide, tutorials
Posted in: Today's Chili 
It all looks so simple, doesn’t it? A little board, a cute name — why, you’ll be up and robot-ing in no time, right? Well, just ask one of our techiest editors, who tried to learn a similar product, the Arduino — and failed — boards like the Pi are not cake. So, to push you in the right direction, Cambridge University is offering a free guide to creating a simple OS for the device called “Baking Pi.” It’s part of a course for new students of the institution’s computer lab (who each get a Pi as part of their tuition), but the guide and a tutorial series are free to the public, as well. Programming experience is not required “if you are smart and persistent,” but it will certainly be easier if you have some, according to the Pi website. The campus, which is the seat of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, certainly has a vested interest in getting new coders to the board — not that they need to create any more demand. Check the source and coverage below for the guide and tutorials.
[Image credit: Mark Foss]
Filed under: Misc
Cambridge University helps new Raspberry Pi users break the crust with free guide, tutorials originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Sep 2012 02:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sep 04
When the Raspberry Pi was released earlier this year, the credit-card-sized Linux machine became an instant hit. The night it became available to order, both Premier Farnell/element14 and RS Components, the official distributors of the Pi project, exhibited the signs of a late ’90s Slashdot effect: you could barely even get the two sites to load. Fast forward to today, and you can finally get your hands on one within three weeks. The Raspberry Pi is truly the Linux device of the year, if not the past decade. Follow past the break and we’ll show you how to set yours up now that you’ve actually succeeded in snagging one.
Continue reading So you got a Raspberry Pi: now what?
Filed under: Desktops
So you got a Raspberry Pi: now what? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Sep 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Aug 26
Raspberry Pi lands MPEG-2 and VC-1 decoding through personal licenses, H.264 encoding and CEC tag along
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Making the Raspberry Pi affordable involved some tough calls, including the omission of MPEG-2 decoding. Licensing fees alone for the video software would have boosted the board’s price by approximately 10 percent. Now, after many have made media centers with the hardware, the foundation behind the project has whipped up a solution to add the missing codec. For $3.16, users can purchase an individual MPEG-2 license for each of their boards on the organization’s online store. Partial to Microsoft’s VC-1 standard? Rights to using Redmond’s codec can be purchased for $1.58. H.264 encoding is also in the cards since OpenMax components needed to develop applications with the functionality are now enabled by default in the device’s latest firmware. With CEC support thrown into the Raspbmc, XBian and OpenELEC operating systems, a single IR remote can control a Raspberry Pi, a TV and other connected gadgets. If you’re ready to load up your Pi with its newfound abilities, hit the source link below.
Update: The Raspberry Pi Foundation let us know that US customers won’t have to pay sales tax, which means patrons will only be set back $3.16 for MPEG-2 and $1.58 for VC-1 support, not $3.79 and $1.90 for the respective licenses. We’ve updated the post accordingly.
Filed under: Misc
Raspberry Pi lands MPEG-2 and VC-1 decoding through personal licenses, H.264 encoding and CEC tag along originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Aug 2012 07:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Aug 23
Game of Drones: The Dark Pi Rises
Posted in: Today's ChiliDrones seem to be everywhere these days, but in most cases they can get expensive and most remote spy planes are used overseas. Aerospace engineer algorhythmic decided to see what sort of vehicle he could cobble together on a limited budget.
The Xaver Mk.2., his remote-controlled, roving surveillance vehicle, doesn’t look very imposing, but its compact frame is packing a night vision camera and a Raspberry Pi. The drone was hacked together from bits and pieces, including a PlayStation 3 Eye camera as well as a Wi-Fi module. An Arduino controller directs a motor that allows the camera to move. It’s been configured to stream video from the camera via the Internet, and the whole rig is operated remotely by a PS3 controller.
Algorhythmic promises to create a series of videos on how to construct it and how he will tailor his prototype on his website.
[via Ubergizmo]
Aug 22
I am quite sure by now that you have watched The Dark Knight Rises, and the film should have left quite the impression on you. Hopefully, a good one at that, just like how the highly sought out Raspberry Pi mini computer has been transformed into what you see in the video above – The Dark Pi Rises. Aerospace engineer “algorhythmic” has cobbled together a remote controlled, roving surveillance vehicle that is equipped with a night-vision camera. Obviously, a Raspberry Pi mini computer runs at the heart of things to keep everything working fine and dandy.
Considering how the Raspberry Pi itself costs approximately $25, this surveillance drone hack will see bits and pieces from all over the place, including a PlayStation 3 Eye camera and a Wi-Fi module, which is hooked it up to a remote control car while the system has been specially configured to stream video from the camera over the Internet. An Arduino component also sees action to control a motor which enables the camera to move.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Raspberry Pi is at the heart of this BBC Micro-inspired keyboard , Royal Data Throne made out of printed circuit boards,
Aug 20
Do you use an extra battery grip for your DSLR? Since they can be kind of bulky anyhow, Irish photographer Dave Hunt managed to squeeze a fully-functioning Raspberry Pi SBC inside his detachable battery grip, and programmed it so that it would push the images he takes to his iPad for easy viewing. Sounds pretty awesome to me.
It’s very useful to have a general purpose computer attached to your digital camera. The pros do it all the time when they do shoots indoors. This setup allows you to check out the photos you have just taken on a portable high resolution screen, an iPad. Dave managed to get this working for his Canon 5D Mark II camera, using the Raspberry Pi, a Wi-Fi dongle and a Perl script to push the images.
In addition to sending images to the iPad, the on-board computer could be used for everything from remote operation, to rapid image format conversion, to automatically timing time-lapse sequences. If you’ve got the skills, and get your hands on a Raspberry Pi, then you can the mod for yourself. Dave explains in detail how he went about his hack on his blog.
[via Make:]
Aug 13
Adafruit builds Raspberry Pi-powered light painting rig, takes trippy photos
Posted in: Today's Chili 
Taking long exposure photographs at night and painting within them using an iPad may be old hat, but building your own light painting rig? That could earn you some serious geek cred, and according to Adafruit, it isn’t even all that hard. In a new walkthrough, the team fashioned such a contraption using a Raspberry Pi, a python script with under 60 lines of code, some open source software and a handful of electronic components. Not satisfied with the typical light wand, they decided to spice things up with a circular fixture built from PVC pipes and a hula hoop to hold the ribbon of LEDs. After being attached to a bike and paraded around at night, it created the 3D effect in the masterpiece above. If you’re itching to make your own works of art, check out Adafruit’s tutorial at the source link below.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Adafruit builds Raspberry Pi-powered light painting rig, takes trippy photos originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Aug 2012 03:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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