I have been on a sub micro computer writing binge in my postings here. I have always liked playing with the tiny electronic beasts as they are a throw back to my first ventures into digital electronics. There are many very popular variations other than those produced by Parallax There is one micro computer in particular that has grabbed my attention because of its intended application. It’s the title of this post, the Raspberry Pi.
Here is a web URL to go check out this tiny computer: http://www.raspberrypi.org/. Better yet, go read this and find out why this machine was created: http://www.raspberrypi.org/about.
In its most basic form which the creators call their educational version, the cost is a whopping $25.00 US. There is a slightly more advanced version with a little more memory (512MB up from 256MB) and some added ports priced at $35.00 US.
Currently the Raspberry Pi is in high demand world wide. Some sites like Amazon have it in stock and are offering it at 2X the regular price. Other vendors have a huge waiting list at the regular price.
“Raspberry Pi is a small, powerful computer and development board to help educate a new generation of programmers and electronic engineers. Developed by the Raspberry PI foundation the Raspberry Pi computer is a miniature ARM based PC which can do many of the things a desktop PC can do like word-processing, games or playing back High-Definition video.” I pulled this quote from a vendor site.
Raspberry Pi can be operated as a standard full featured, Internet connected computer with a rather impressive video display. There are a number of flavours of operating system that can be installed, all of the Linux variety, and could operate standard programs like spreadsheets and graphic editing. However, the intention is that it be used to encourage writing software. It’s Linux based because powerful “real” programming languages such as (various) C, Pearl, Ruby, and Python are available free.
You have to add the keyboard, mouse, video display, power supply, SD Card (for booting and storage), etc. It doesn’t have a case and doesn’t actually need one but there are many cases available from others.
This is definitely a Linux hackers machine, but its intention is for it to be a cheap software development platform for educational use. I think it is about the closest thing to almost free hardware to go with a free OS and extremely powerful software choices.
I would like to have one to play with….