Hasta La Gadget!

The Raspberry Pi faithful have been looking forward to the Gertboard almost as much as the main device itself: Gert van Loo’s I/O extender promises to flash lights, spin motors and otherwise take on the tasks that the Raspberry Pi doesn’t directly manage on its own. While we’ve seen work on the project since late 2011, the expansion now looks to be closer to reality following a fresh teaser. The refined design’s biggest tweak is replacing its original PIC controller with an Arduino-powered chip — an element no doubt familiar to the crowd that would already be looking at a very hackable, miniature Linux computer. Most everything else is a refinement, although Gert has brought in three physical buttons and two-channel analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. We’ll learn the full story later this week, and until then we’ll be dreaming of all the off-kilter Arduino projects that might be made better with a little Raspberry Pi companionship.

Update: The wait turned out to be short, and interested parties ready to do some soldering of their own can pre-order the Gertboard for £30 at element14 now. Check the Raspberry Pi blog (2) for more info, or check out a video interview with Mr. van Loo himself embedded after the break.

Continue reading Raspberry Pi teases finished Gertboard I/O extender, revs creative engines (Update: pre-orders open now, video)

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Peripherals

Raspberry Pi teases finished Gertboard I/O extender, revs creative engines (Update: pre-orders open now, video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Aug 2012 18:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One of the coolest things about the Raspberry Pi computer is its dirt cheap price of $35(USD). The little computer is certainly no speed demon. You won’t be playing high-end video games on it, but it is more than capable of being a very low cost and small HTPC. One of the biggest downside to the Android-powered device was that it launched with Android 2.3.

Fans of Android always want the latest operating system on their devices. Android 4.0 may not be the latest version of Google’s operating system anymore, as Jelly Bean (4.1) is now available, but Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) is a major upgrade to what the Raspberry Pi came with. Raspberry Pi has announced that an official Android 4.0 version is in the works for the little computer.

According to the blog entry, the operating system is functional on the cheap computer already and the only thing keeping it from being finished is support for AudioFlinger. Raspberry Pi also notes that it is investigating the feasibility of converging its own Android 4.0 implementation and one that is available on GitHub.

Tinker-friendly developer gadget Raspberry Pi has received a jolt of Android, with a functional – though incomplete – port of Ice Cream Sandwich for the super-cheap computer. A work in progress for some time, according to the Raspberry Pi team, but kept quiet because the build isn’t quite what you’d find publicly available, the Android 4.0 port could well turn the $35 PC into your perfect TV companion.

Right now, the team has hardware-accelerated graphics and video up and running with the Raspberry Pi’s VideoCore IV GPU. Currently, AudioFlinger support is the only main thing absent, though that’s still being worked on.

The end result will be a tiny computer that can put all your favorite Android apps and streaming content onto a TV, via HDMI connection and with full internet access. We’ve already seen that the board can squash the iPhone 4S and Tegra 2 in graphics crunching, as well as being capable of 1080p HD video.

There’s no public release of the Android port so far, though since shipping of the Raspberry Pi itself is backlogged between 12 and 17 weeks depending on which country you’re ordering from, you’re in for a wait anyway. Meanwhile, alternatives like the Gooseberry continue to sneak out of the woodwork, with Android baked in from the outset.

Raspberry Pi gets Ice Cream Sandwich is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Raspberry Pi is one tiny computer that has since taken the developer world by storm ever since it was introduced to the masses earlier this year, and for good reason, too. Enthusiasts need not fork out too much money, and with enough creativity and skill, they are able to build their very own working computer to look just like how they want it to be. Well, popular ChromiumOS developer Hexxeh has spent his fair share of time with the Raspberry Pi, where his most recent experiment would be a beta version of the Chromium browser that is said to be able to run on Raspbian images. Do bear in mind that this is not the full Chromium OS as that is still under the purview of the development phase, it ought to make life easier if one wants to browse through the treasure trove of information that we call the Internet on a $35 computer. You might want to consider overclocking your Raspberry Pi to get this up and running though without tearing your hair out while waiting.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Raspberry Pi support arrives for Chromium OS, Raspberry Pi launched into earth’s atmosphere and takes images from near-space,

The Rapsberry Pi is an impressive mini-computer we saw launch recently, and it’s already won the hearts of many. An individual from the UK named Dave Akerman was apparently looking to have a real adventure with his new Pi, so he strapped the gadget to a weather balloon for it to be sent up into Earth’s atmosphere to take pictures from near-space. And it actually did quite well. The photos can be viewed on Akerman’s Flickr account.

Akerman saw that the Pi had had a USB port offering fast and easy access to a webcam, so he could obtain live images sent down to him from the payload. Dubbed the “Raspberry Pi In The Sky” project, the weather balloon reached about 40 kilometers before bursting, which is not bad since most balloons carrying small loads like tracking devices or sensors for temperature and pressure can reach altitudes of about 30 kilometers or so.

Akerman admitted that there were a lot of challenges faced along the way, including the obviously harsh environment from reaching near-space, which has less than one percent atmosphere with temperatures dropping down to -50 degrees Celsius. The Pi itself also had its own set of challenges to work with, which included an SD card, power requirements and operating system.

You can check out Akerman’s launch video below and his blog post here.

[via WebProNews]

Raspberry Pi gets launched into atmosphere to take near-space pictures is written by Elise Moreau & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.