5 ms·

Raspberry Pi computer review

45 points by ahjones 14y ago

tdr 14y ago
> The website where it was offered for sale crashed Still can't order in certain countries And is it me or why didn't they put the links to buy? http://www.farnell.com/ http://www.farnell.com/ http://uk.rs-online.com/web/ http://uk.rs-online.com/web/
- mattmanser 14y ago
  It's the BBC, they're explicitly not allowed to by their charter.
unwind 14y ago
I didn't know the Pi ships with the Blender Foundation's awesome animated cartoon Big Buck Bunny (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/ http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/) on the SD card. Cool! It makes me wonder how well it would actually run Blender though, and if there are ARM binaries available? The latest builds listing at http://builder.blender.org/download/ http://builder.blender.org/download/ doesn't include any.
- pmjordan 14y ago
  There are blender packages in the ARM debian repository, so you should be able to get it to build on Fedora, too. Another issue is whether it'll run: I think Blender uses OpenGL/GLX for rendering, and I don't know if that works on the RPi. OpenGL ES 2.0 is supposedly supported by the hardware, but I don't know if and how that is supported in Linux userspace, particularly as OpenGL ES is mostly a subset of OpenGL. Software rendering might suffice though.
  - burgerbrain 14y ago
    > "Software rendering might suffice though." If I understand correctly, if it's using Mesa it should software render what it has to and hardware render the rest, without needing to change the program itself?
    - pmjordan 14y ago
      Yes, unless it makes specific demands on the OpenGL implementation which Mesa's software renderer can't meet. By "suffice" I was mainly thinking of performance. I don't know if Mesa is optimised for ARMv6 at all, and how demanding Blender is in this regard.
- asb 14y ago
  See the very impressive work on BlenderPocket by Salvatore Russo a number of years ago http://www.blender.org/community/blender-conference/blender-conference-2006/proceedings/salvatore-russo/ http://www.blender.org/community/blender-conference/blender-... That's proof it can be done! I did drop him an email to see if he was still active in this area and interested in updating his work for the Pi. He sadly doesn't have time, but is happy to give advice or pointers as he is able to. I also see there's a GSoC project regarding blender and GL ES, but I think it's targeted at the game engine rather than the actual creation tools. If you know anyone interested, do get in touch.
  - unwind 14y ago
    D'oh! I had forgotten about BlenderPocket, thanks for reminding me.
alexchamberlain 14y ago
Only 2 programming languages installed? I doubt it!
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  They're the two that make the most sense to expose the most, given their mission. I'd be surprised if it didn't also have gcc at a minimum.
  - alexchamberlain 14y ago
    I'd also be very surprised if gcc wasn't there. I'd like to think people are taught what pointers are and how they can be used to make data structures. Educate people about the dangers, but don't be scared!
kmf 14y ago
This would make an interesting little server if has the processing power for that. Maybe with a big SD card, it could be a little portable Git server?
- jgoewert 14y ago
  It has more than enough power for home server level tasks. I was fast, lucky, and able to wake up at 0-dark-30 in the morning to order and I currently have it running ArchLinux and using 4 USB webcams to detect motion and lock in to take facial-area screenshots using both Motion and OpenCV+Python. This weekend, I plan on testing out the Kinect libraries. I have a 7000maH battery on order from Amazon to be able to make it portable and easily chargeable which I hope to get 8 hours of off the grid battery life out of. If you don't need the video, audio, GPIO, or the long wait time for the batches to fill current orders, a comparable product at low cost would be the PogoPlug. http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/pogoplug-provideov3 http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/pogoplug-provideov3
  - pm90 14y ago
    This is pretty amazing stuff! Do you have a blog where you post the details?

45 points by ahjones 14y ago

tdr 14y ago

> The website where it was offered for sale crashed Still can't order in certain countries And is it me or why didn't they put the links to buy? http://www.farnell.com/ http://www.farnell.com/ http://uk.rs-online.com/web/ http://uk.rs-online.com/web/

mattmanser 14y ago
It's the BBC, they're explicitly not allowed to by their charter.

unwind 14y ago

I didn't know the Pi ships with the Blender Foundation's awesome animated cartoon Big Buck Bunny (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/ http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/) on the SD card. Cool! It makes me wonder how well it would actually run Blender though, and if there are ARM binaries available? The latest builds listing at http://builder.blender.org/download/ http://builder.blender.org/download/ doesn't include any.

pmjordan 14y ago
There are blender packages in the ARM debian repository, so you should be able to get it to build on Fedora, too. Another issue is whether it'll run: I think Blender uses OpenGL/GLX for rendering, and I don't know if that works on the RPi. OpenGL ES 2.0 is supposedly supported by the hardware, but I don't know if and how that is supported in Linux userspace, particularly as OpenGL ES is mostly a subset of OpenGL. Software rendering might suffice though.
- burgerbrain 14y ago
  > "Software rendering might suffice though." If I understand correctly, if it's using Mesa it should software render what it has to and hardware render the rest, without needing to change the program itself?
  - pmjordan 14y ago
    Yes, unless it makes specific demands on the OpenGL implementation which Mesa's software renderer can't meet. By "suffice" I was mainly thinking of performance. I don't know if Mesa is optimised for ARMv6 at all, and how demanding Blender is in this regard.
asb 14y ago
See the very impressive work on BlenderPocket by Salvatore Russo a number of years ago http://www.blender.org/community/blender-conference/blender-conference-2006/proceedings/salvatore-russo/ http://www.blender.org/community/blender-conference/blender-... That's proof it can be done! I did drop him an email to see if he was still active in this area and interested in updating his work for the Pi. He sadly doesn't have time, but is happy to give advice or pointers as he is able to. I also see there's a GSoC project regarding blender and GL ES, but I think it's targeted at the game engine rather than the actual creation tools. If you know anyone interested, do get in touch.
- unwind 14y ago
  D'oh! I had forgotten about BlenderPocket, thanks for reminding me.

alexchamberlain 14y ago

Only 2 programming languages installed? I doubt it!

ConstantineXVI 14y ago
They're the two that make the most sense to expose the most, given their mission. I'd be surprised if it didn't also have gcc at a minimum.
- alexchamberlain 14y ago
  I'd also be very surprised if gcc wasn't there. I'd like to think people are taught what pointers are and how they can be used to make data structures. Educate people about the dangers, but don't be scared!

kmf 14y ago

This would make an interesting little server if has the processing power for that. Maybe with a big SD card, it could be a little portable Git server?

jgoewert 14y ago
It has more than enough power for home server level tasks. I was fast, lucky, and able to wake up at 0-dark-30 in the morning to order and I currently have it running ArchLinux and using 4 USB webcams to detect motion and lock in to take facial-area screenshots using both Motion and OpenCV+Python. This weekend, I plan on testing out the Kinect libraries. I have a 7000maH battery on order from Amazon to be able to make it portable and easily chargeable which I hope to get 8 hours of off the grid battery life out of. If you don't need the video, audio, GPIO, or the long wait time for the batches to fill current orders, a comparable product at low cost would be the PogoPlug. http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/pogoplug-provideov3 http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/pogoplug-provideov3
- pm90 14y ago
  This is pretty amazing stuff! Do you have a blog where you post the details?