News Raspberry Pi computer, is it rational?

[Keatah]

29 February 2012:
The Raspberry Pi computer is just a small green circuit board about the size of a credit card - but it is hoped that it will get thousands of school children interested in programming.

I don't think school children are going to have the patience to do programming. Programming in primary and grade school is idealistic, what adults want.

Kids have too much social media these days that'll distract them from any serious computer learning.

 

[Notebook]

http://www.itpro.co.uk/desktop-hard...=email&utm_source=newsletter&tpid=25576321665

Quick article on the current state of the raspberry pi.

N.

 

[jedidia]

Not really about the pi, but a direct result of its legacy: We had two up-boards in the mail today. :stirpot:

 

[Notebook]

Interesting, what are you using them for?

N.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Qualification is that I have one!
Only HDMI telly is a 24" in the living room, my pc is vga only, rest are laptops.

There are VGA/HDMI converter cords available. This is how I use my RPis in my lab - disconnect the peripherals to the lab PCs and connect them to the RPi.

 

[Notebook]

Thanks, Thunder Chicken, didn't know about them. I basically didn't have a spare monitor then. I bought some recently for my flight-sim setup, so I now have a spare 19" vga. Got a use for it now!

N.

 

[Notebook]

http://www.esa.int/Education/Teachers_Corner/European_Astro_Pi_Challenge_Code_your_experiment

4 October 2016
ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet has the pleasure to announce a new challenge for students 16 years old and under from all ESA Member States*. Thomas is looking forward to his upcoming Proxima mission, but before flying to the International Space Station (ISS), he would like to invite you to take part in the 2016/2017 European Astro Pi Challenge. 

Sadly I'm about 50 years outside their age group, bummer!

N.

 

[jedidia]

Interesting, what are you using them for?

N.

Remote DSLR camera controll and image transportation.

 

[Enjo]

4 years later, i still haven't had a good use for any of these boards, of which i got 6 in total.

I tried making a cluster out of 4 of them, but it gets outclassed by a single second-hand PC cheaper than one Pi.

Was this cluster based on Pi 1? Because Pi 3 seems 10x faster for the same price. I wonder if you could say the same thing now.

---------- Post added at 09:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:21 PM ----------

Here are the benchmarks:

from:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/raspberry-pi-3-specs-benchmarks/

 

[Artlav]

Naturally. Only the original one existed 4 years ago.

Of the new ones all i know is that they cost money and i haven't figured out a use, therefore no buy.

 

[Enjo]

I'm planning to setup a Spotify rig:
https://eltechs.com/run-spotify-on-raspberry-pi/
This requires Pi 2 or 3 and this exagear (commercial) software, to be able to run x86 binaries on ARM.

I'm also expecting some distributed building help from the typically idle RPi3 that I'll buy. That's why I'm asking.

 

[Fabri91]

Possibly stupid question since I'm not an avid Spotify user, but couldn't you just access to the web version via the browser or similar without requiring the x86 binary?

 

[jedidia]

I wasn't even aware spotify had a webplayer until just now :embarrassed:

 

[Linguofreak]

I'm planning to setup a Spotify rig:
https://eltechs.com/run-spotify-on-raspberry-pi/
This requires Pi 2 or 3 and this exagear (commercial) software, to be able to run x86 binaries on ARM.

I'm also expecting some distributed building help from the typically idle RPi3 that I'll buy. That's why I'm asking.

Why does it need Exagear? Why not just use qemu userspace emulation?

 

[Enjo]

Possibly stupid question since I'm not an avid Spotify user, but couldn't you just access to the web version via the browser or similar without requiring the x86 binary?

You can't control the Web interface via a smartphone, but if this is not needed, then indeed, x86 binary is an overkill.

Why does it need Exagear? Why not just use qemu userspace emulation?

Do you mean that it's possible to run QEMU on a single binary, without the need of installing an entire system inside QEMU? If not, then it's a bit of a hassle, but possible.

 

[jedidia]

You can't control the Web interface via a smartphone, but if this is not needed, then indeed, x86 binary is an overkill.

The pi doesn't present itself as a mobile device in the net.

 

[Enjo]

The pi doesn't present itself as a mobile device in the net.

But you can control anything that runs Spotify App via another App, whatever the combination.

 

[Linguofreak]

Do you mean that it's possible to run QEMU on a single binary, without the need of installing an entire system inside QEMU? If not, then it's a bit of a hassle, but possible.

If it's statically linked, yes. If it's dynamically linked, you need to install its dependencies for the architecture in question as well, but QEMU will thunk system calla to the host kernel, so you don't need to emulate guest hardware and boot a guest kernel on it. I've not tried it myself, and apparently there's the caveat that some system calls aren't supported, but it seems the simplest solution for what you're trying to do.

See https://wiki.debian.org/QemuUserEmulation

Also see here for an example of running an x86-app on the Pi itself: http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2015/02/27/2210

 

[n122vu]

I bought a Pi3 earlier this year for my Stratux setup. Note - the article is a little dated. The current Vilros kit comes with the Pi3, which has onboard WiFi.

Literally the most difficult part of it was assembling the case. All I had to do was load the stratux build of the OS onto the microSD card and put it in the slot. Powered up the Pi and once it was booted, my iPad detected the stratux SSID, I connected, and ForeFlight was showing me ADS-B weather and traffic from my bedroom.

 

[Enjo]

Also see here for an example of running an x86-app on the Pi itself: http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2015/02/27/2210

I ended up with buying Exagear after all. Spotify did run through it, but since I used an USB 5.1 sound card and Spotify lacks option to select output device, it didn't play any tracks. What helped was Spotiamb app, which connects to Spotify account and streams tracks from there. It's a Windows app, but since I got Exagear, I could run it through Wine. I control the app through VNC.

The QEMU solution there is based on Ubuntu for RPi3, but this one failed to boot here.

[EDIT]
Ah yeah. In addition to the Exagear's tutorial, I needed also to download these:

sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins alsa-utils

where alsa-utils are for testing speakers (speaker-test app)
And here's a guide for the 5.1 Sound Blaster sound card:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Use-USB-Sound-Card-in-Raspberry-Pi/