Raspberry pi anyone?

Got mine the other day. Don't think it will cut it running XBMC unless they can get some real good optimisations in.

Going to probably set mine up as a portable HD media player for travelling as most places have a HDMI equipped TV these days.
 
mid_gen said:
Don't think it will cut it running XBMC unless they can get some real good optimisations in.
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Have to say that was my suspicion. The thing about xbmc is it plays anything.... I think there will be too many compromises with things like codecs (DTS for example) not working - at least in the short to medium term.
 
You have a shipment being sent from RS COMPONENTS LTD that is due to be despatched on 30/05/2012 using our Express 24 service....

Typical! I'm out at work all day tomorrow but woot! anyway :)
 
The pi does have a separate graphics processor in order to play a lot of the blu-ray formats for example. I expect some formats will play fine but if it's one the hardware cannot decode itself then it will be very stuttery.
 
gblades said:
The pi does have a separate graphics processor in order to play a lot of the blu-ray formats for example.
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Yes, it has the Broadcom video processing engine. I just worry that support won't be there for ALL the formats as Broadcom are aimed mainly at the broadcast market. I'n just concerned that if there are any issues in the drivers, it will be like trying to get support from ATI on Linux - non-existent (even though B/Com develop all their s/w on Linux) as their main customers are STB makers...
 
As far as I know, at the moment the graphics processor is not supported (fully?) by the software, it's something that they are working on.
 
Raspbmc is the best xmbc build available at the moment.

The Broadcom GPU will decode h264 (most HD stuff) in hardware, but won't accelerate MPEG2 based video. Neither will it decode HD audio streams in hardware, the CPU has to (struggle) to do it.

The GPU will physically decode almost any video format thrown at it, but it's only licensed for h264. It's next to impossible to unlock the other format decoders, unless Broadcom do it, which doesn't seem likely.
 
mid_gen said:
The Broadcom GPU will decode h264 (most HD stuff) in hardware, but won't accelerate MPEG2 based video. Neither will it decode HD audio streams in hardware, the CPU has to (struggle) to do it.

The GPU will physically decode almost any video format thrown at it, but it's only licensed for h264. It's next to impossible to unlock the other format decoders, unless Broadcom do it, which doesn't seem likely.
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I'm not following xbmc on the Pi (I have 3 dedicated xbmc systems as it is...) and that's exactly the sort of problems I'd expect to run into. In fact, you could see xbmc as a competitor to Broadcoms normal customers who include numerous pay TV operators around the world. The crippling of the software could well be intentional.
 
arad85 said:
I'm not following xbmc on the Pi (I have 3 dedicated xbmc systems as it is...) and that's exactly the sort of problems I'd expect to run into. In fact, you could see xbmc as a competitor to Broadcoms normal customers who include numerous pay TV operators around the world. The crippling of the software could well be intentional.
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I'm not using mine for xbmc for the reason that it is rather underpowered.

My main focus is the GPIO pins, using python to make it do funky stuff on my breadboard :)
 
Rob 80386 said:
I'm not using mine for xbmc for the reason that it is rather underpowered.

My main focus is the GPIO pins, using python to make it do funky stuff on my breadboard :)
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Yup. I can see it as a more powerful Arduino replacement. Internet connected toaster anyone :geek: :D
 
07:50 ding dong - "Pi sir?" "yes please" :D

Got it up and running and even the little 4.3" display looks reasonable now the config is set up. I'm hoping I can get video capture via web cam to work well enough with this display to be able to put together a portable astrocam outfit, but I'm off to work so no time to play for now.
 
Mine has been dispatched apparrently, hopefully it will turn up today. Set the OS download going before I left for work this morning, so my desktop computer will be torrenting all day.
 
onomatopoeia said:
Mine has been dispatched apparrently, hopefully it will turn up today. Set the OS download going before I left for work this morning, so my desktop computer will be torrenting all day.
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It's not that big, the download should take about 2 mins :)


On a side note, I've got RC servos and a motor speed controller working with the GPIO pins :)
 
20 minutes for 440MB of debian on my connection. I could get faster downloads if I turned Annex M off on my connection, but the main limit is distance from the exchange.

Anyway, no sign of parcelforce yet so their express 24 service probably won't arrive until Wednesday (a mere six days after dispatch) and I'm off work next week so I won't see it until the Monday after. Bah humbug!
 
onomatopoeia said:
20 minutes for 440MB of debian on my connection.
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Muhahahah... I downloaded all 760MBytes of LR4.1 yesterday in just over 1 minute :D

It's the first download that has fully saturated my 70Mbit down link....
 
arad85 said:
Muhahahah... I downloaded all 760MBytes of LR4.1 yesterday in just over 1 minute :D

It's the first download that has fully saturated my 70Mbit down link....
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Show off :D I'm lucky if I get 3.5 thanks to the joys of the country side...
 
dejongj said:
Show off :D I'm lucky if I get 3.5 thanks to the joys of the country side...
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I was on 4 before upgrading a couple of weeks back ;)

I built a VM with Fedora yesterday too... once booted, updates/installs were almost as quick as I was figuring out what I needed to do next...
 
What to do....I've written mine off as an XBMC client for now. It could do with an XBMC-lite version without the graphical fluff (and some audio codecs unlocked on the GPU). Fedora didn't want to play ball on mine but Debian seems fine.

PS 100 up, 100 down, I've forgotten what waiting for stuff is like, I could go for the 1000MB package but I struggle to justify it :)
 
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Arrived last week while I was off work, so have been playing with it this week. Squeeze is quite fussy about the SD cards it will boot from, but I got it up and running eventually. Had to manually configure the IP address into /etc/networks/interfaces I wanted as my router has a naff inbuilt DHCP server which only does "first come, first served", and since my IP addresses are all routeable (NAT is evil) and I want it to be reachable from the internet with its own DNS entry.


Now to start setting up the services. SSH is running already and I've enabled the root login, so I'll be able to do some tinkering at in my lunch hour from work. Can't be doing with typing sudo before 80% of the commands I issue, drives me nuts.

An MTA first, I think. qmail doesn't play nicely with debian unfortunately due to the restrictive licensing on distributing modified binaries (and it doesn't have AUTH SMTP by default without patching the source code) and exim has a configuration language like a dogs breakfast, so may be time to investigate postfix.
 
onomatopoeia said:
Can't be doing with typing sudo before 80% of the commands I issue, drives me nuts.
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I use it once...

sudo bash

(with -l if you want a login). Means you don't have to enable root logins directly.
 
Its arrived :-) just don't know what to do with it yet not even opened the box !!!
 
Getting very frustrated, the hardware works like a charm but trying to get the webcam to work in any of the current distros is like fighting your way through treacle blindfolded. That's the trouble with things like this when they are very new though.
 
Steep said:
Getting very frustrated, the hardware works like a charm but trying to get the webcam to work in any of the current distros is like fighting your way through treacle blindfolded. That's the trouble with things like this when they are very new though.
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No.. I think you'll find that's exactly like working with Linux when you want to do more than run OpenOffice ;)
 
lolol, I've used Linux on and off (mostly off) for years and agree totally.

You want to install this 300k program? no problem but you'll also need these 50 other files that it's dependent on, but a couple of those will break the dependencies of other programs, do you want to uninstall those programs? ok but if you uninstall this program, that program won't work and you need that program to allow the desktop to run the first program you first wanted to install...

I think I went wrong trying to cross compile the Jeffries tubes.
 
He he mine has arrived today. Haven't tried it yet, but did try on the included t-Shirt :)
 
You'll find the Tshirt won't fit properly unless you have installed libwXshortz2_12.4.6-7.dev_tools.armhf...
 
LOL Very good :)
 
Mine's mothballed for now, lack of drivers and the underpowered (at least for my needs) cpu means I just can't do what I wanted to do successfully. Maybe if/when they get Broadcom to come across with the graphics hardware drivers it will work better.

The RPi did it's job in so much as it's given me the idea of what I want to accomplish but for now I'm migrating upwards to a PandaBoard which I know can do the job.
 
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