To me, the RasPI just the latest embedded Linux board, but this time at an incredible price. It is running the latest Arm Cortex SOC with the SDRAM sandwiched in the same package, but even that isn't unique. It does have HDMI out which is fairly distinctive, but there are others (http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ cotton_candy.jpg)
The price US$35 really is difficult to believe, but possible since Broadcomm is probably giving away the chip at near cost for marketing purposes. The fact that they'll be building them in China in 20k unit batches doesn't hurt either. (The RasPI organizer's day job is working for Broadcomm). The fact that RasPI is organized as an not-for-profit educational trust also has something to do with the incredible low cost. The hardware is currently NOT open source, BTW. You have to sign an NDA with Broadcomm to find anything out about the processor. That kind a urked me from the get-go. What remains to be seen is how much software is ported that will make it easier to program for people. The really exciting thing I see about this and the BeagleBone are getting a massive audience exposed to Embedded Linux. Linux/UNIX Rocks, but I've been doing it for 30+ years, and coding in C/C++ for UNIX does have a bit of a curve to it. That said, the true power of embedded Linux is the *immense* installed base of code you can (potentially) get running. Python programmers will be able to code for it, as well as php, ruby, processing, sql- lite, perl, bash, basic, Name your poison. Still, you will need know one of those languages and some basic Linux sysadmin skills to get started. Regarding Educational, there's something called 'Kids Ruby' which'll supposedly run on the RasPI which looks cool - http://kidsruby.com/ Someone asked can Linux reliably capture 1ms events ? Answer: Yes, but; You would have to write a kernel module to reliably collect the data at that rate. You could get finer granularity, but you'd need to muck with the scheduler. Not bunny hill stuff. ..c www.cogwheel.com www.cogwheelcircuitworks.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/neonixie-l?hl=en-GB.
