Raspberry Pi Ideas

So I'm sure most of you are aware of the Raspberry Pi (Raspberry Pi | An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte!) and I was wondering what kinds of ideas some of you have had for them?

My initial plan was to set up an emulator environment coupled with one of these: Retrode
Not sure of the legality of it all now though after a discussion on here yesterday...

[I was going to start this topic on their own forums but found people so rude over there I thought I'd just discuss it with you lot instead!]

I'll believe the price tag when you can actually purchase one.

Neat idea though. Im quite interested in the video playback capabilities(apparently it can playback full HD h264 and play quake 3), would make a nifty little media centre.

So far I have 3 plans. [2.5 really...]

1) Most awesome smartphone ever. Possibly combine 2 Pis together. [Pi are squared?]

One with the network connector, one without.


2) Miniaturized emulator for any/all games I own. Thus removing the need for squillions of consoles, but creating the problem of GNU/Linux compatability.

3) [See: 2] release configuration + setup onto the internet in the hopes of creating a generation of gamers who refuse to be bound by the foolish will of Video game companies.

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Originally Posted by X-13

So far I have 3 plans. [2.5 really...]

1) Most awesome smartphone ever. Possibly combine 2 Pis together. [Pi are squared?]

One with the network connector, one without.

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Interesting, but how would you mount them in a case and get them to talk to each other?

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Originally Posted by X-13

2) Miniaturized emulator for any/all games I own. Thus removing the need for squillions of consoles, but creating the problem of GNU/Linux compatability.

3) [See: 2] release configuration + setup onto the internet in the hopes of creating a generation of gamers who refuse to be bound by the foolish will of Video game companies.

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LOL @ 3, should be quite an easy one to accomplish though this, there are already emulator/mame setups based on Linux available and lots of open source emulators, would just be a case of finding emulators that can be compiled for ARM (they do exist, you can get them on Android...)


That brings me nicely on to another idea I had: compiling Android to run on the Raspberry Pi - you could make an awesome media centre based on Android I reckon...

On the subject of media centre's, I wonder if XBMC are planning an ARM release?

I really need to get in to Linux dev, quickly! Can see these things being a lot of fun to play with!

[and hopefully they'll have an impact on education too! :p]

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Originally Posted by LosOjos

Interesting, but how would you mount them in a case and get them to talk to each other

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As to that, I haven't a clue.

I'll probably end up just staring at the board in the hopes it sorts itself out.

Perhaps... wipe one and use it as external storage? Plus modify the board connections slightly so it's grabbing video from both? [RAID0 video?]

I dunno... I know what I want it to look like though...

I was thinking about it here.


I seem to be both smart and dumb.

LOL I suppose it's a case of getting your hands on one first... there is an emulator on the Raspberry Pi site someone set up, I'm going to install it on my machine tonight and see what I can do with it...

Links:
VirtualBox VM - Forum | » Raspberry Pi » Projects and collaboration: general » Virtualbox VM for the RaspberryPiRaspberry Pi
Qemu - Forum | » Raspberry Pi » Projects and collaboration: general » Simulator/Emulator for Raspberry Pi?Raspberry Pi
[the forum is ridiculously slow over there...]

I'm probably showing my dumb here... but how do you emulate hardware?

Or is it emulating the OS?


EDIT: finally got the R:Pi forums to load. It's OS emulation.

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Originally Posted by X-13

I'm probably showing my dumb here... but how do you emulate hardware?

Or is it emulating the OS?

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I suppose you can think of it as advanced frame rate limiting - the VM will basically only run ARM compiled software and limits the speed to that of a 700mhz processor, effectively emulating the real environment on a Raspberry Pi (at least that's my understanding of it)

Just think of it like a console emulator - they didn't have Intel processors in the SNES! :p

I was liking the idea of these to use with our digital signage and the Xibo python client.

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Originally Posted by ChrisH

I was liking the idea of these to use with our digital signage and the Xibo python client.

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That could be a great use for them actually, especially if they add PoE as they've mentioned they might do...

thin clients

From the looks of it, it has some I/O headers which just needs pins soldering on, so could be used for all sorts of stuff like robotics, climate monitoring etc.
This looks ideal for the 'networked kettle' mentioned in another thread. You could even have one strapped to ICT staff monitoring hydration, heart rate etc, so it automatically sticks the kettle on when we're getting dehydrated, or dispenses EduHobNobs when we show signs of stress:D

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Originally Posted by teejay

You could even have one strapped to ICT staff monitoring hydration, heart rate etc, so it automatically sticks the kettle on when we're getting dehydrated, or dispenses EduHobNobs when we show signs of stress:D

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Perhaps the first useful version of discrete computing; the Tech-Support :p

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Originally Posted by LosOjos

I wonder if XBMC are planning an ARM release?

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There's already an ARM version of XBMC, but a version specifically for the Raspberry Pi is in development apparently.

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Raspberry Pi community forum administrators have mentioned that XBMC developers are also in development of a port of XBMC media center software to Broadcom BCM2835 SoC based devices using the Raspberry Pi board as its reference platform. (Source)

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Is it just me though who thinks these are going to be rarer than rocking horse droppings if they're only making them in batches of 10,000? It could really do with a big company or 2 getting behind this project so they can fund bigger production runs.