Raspberry Pi - $35 Linux computer

Man of Honour
Joined
30 Jun 2005
Posts
9,515
Location
London Town!
anyone doing anything different with their pi?

I've had one for quite a while now, model B and other than a basic games emulator and openelec i've not really done a lot with it and looking for a little inspiration to start tinkering. Need a decent USB wifi adapter, the one I have is old and a little pants!

depends where your interests are really, one of the advantages of the Pi is the GPIO in my view, but to get into that you need some interest in code really. I hooked up a relay board to the GPIO on mine, then with the aid of some googling around model rockets I managed to trigger some fireworks via it. It's on my list to hack together an app to trigger that from my phone or something.

More mundane uses includes reading in temperature and other sensors and graphing stuff...
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Mar 2008
Posts
10,078
Location
Stoke area
Really just looking for something that I can get my teeth into, help me learn etc.

thinking of creating a CCTV camera with it that uses facial recognition/number plate recognition, and then can transmit alerts to phones or other units when it recognises people. If that works, I may look at seeing if I can make each one an encrypted wifi relay so I can use the signal of one to bounce to another. Not overly complicated I don't think :)
 
Associate
Joined
29 Sep 2003
Posts
593
Location
Stoke-on-Trent
Hey all. First time pi user here with many questions so please be gentle with me.

I downloaded NOOBS from raspberrypi.org but when I booted the only option it gave me was to install Raspbian.Was this because I didn't have the ethernet cable plugged in at the time?

Also, is there a way to improve the web browsing experience? The default browser seems a bit slow especially on Youtube and videos don't seem to have the option to choose what resolution to play videos at, and playing one at fullscreen turns it into a bit of a slideshow.
Is it even possible to play Youtube vids at 1080p on Raspberry Pi?
 
Soldato
Joined
14 Apr 2009
Posts
4,329
Location
Location: Location
We use Chromium on ours in work but it doesn't play YouTube vids smooth at hi res. From what I can gather most software doesn't take full advantage of the GPU and you get stuttering video at high resolution. You need to play videos using omxplayer or xbmc (which are specifically written for the gpu). You can downloaf videos from YouTube pretty easily with youtube-dl then play with omxplayer.
 

maj

maj

Soldato
Joined
19 Jul 2010
Posts
2,602
Location
Durham
I've set up an SMB to a share on my computer but when I refresh my TV Show library the share isn't appearing. If I browse through the file system to the share the files play. What am I doing wrong? The SMB share has been added as a source to that folder. Is it something to do with the filename(s)?

edit: probably wrong thread. Have asked in the Kodi thread.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
24 Apr 2013
Posts
3,067
does this auto update through openelec?

Just done a manual update check and it says 6.0 is available :D
Downloading/installing now through OpenELEC, if you don't hear back from me in 5mins, your guinea pig has ruined his install and is spending some time chucking his telly and Pi around the room.....

Edit - Auto updates through OpenELEC with no drama at all, now on version 6 yo!
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
11 Aug 2012
Posts
2,592
Location
Scotland
Just done a manual update check and it says 6.0 is available :D
Downloading/installing now through OpenELEC, if you don't hear back from me in 5mins, your guinea pig has ruined his install and is spending some time chucking his telly and Pi around the room.....

Edit - Auto updates through OpenELEC with no drama at all, now on version 6 yo!

Where is the update check in openelec? I have a custom build installed and can't for the life of me find it.
 
Soldato
Joined
5 Feb 2009
Posts
3,824
My eldest (8 1/2 yrs) has just started coding club at his school and is keen on tinkering around with a Raspberry Pi, which they've been talking about in the club meetings.

I've not been really keeping up with news about these little systems, though. Could anyone give any pointers on everything I'd need to arrive at a situation when I could just let the lad loose on it?
 
Soldato
Joined
21 Jul 2005
Posts
20,059
Location
Officially least sunny location -Ronskistats
Could anyone give any pointers on everything I'd need to arrive at a situation when I could just let the lad loose on it?

This is vague from the angle of when I read "everything" so I am not sure what you mean.

It is meant to be a tinker and discovery unit so as long as you do not physically abuse the thing, the SD cards can be wiped and played with many times over.
 
Associate
Joined
23 Mar 2006
Posts
1,739
My eldest (8 1/2 yrs) has just started coding club at his school and is keen on tinkering around with a Raspberry Pi, which they've been talking about in the club meetings.

I've not been really keeping up with news about these little systems, though. Could anyone give any pointers on everything I'd need to arrive at a situation when I could just let the lad loose on it?

Give it to him unopened and point him at the internet. Let him figure out how to set it up himself.
 
Soldato
Joined
11 May 2014
Posts
5,472
Location
Edinburgh
My eldest (8 1/2 yrs) has just started coding club at his school and is keen on tinkering around with a Raspberry Pi, which they've been talking about in the club meetings.

I've not been really keeping up with news about these little systems, though. Could anyone give any pointers on everything I'd need to arrive at a situation when I could just let the lad loose on it?

That is great!! :) Have you bought it yet? there are great little kits on amazon that include everything you will need to get started.

Then I would say point him to the raspberrypi documentation page and see how he gets on :)


Just spent the afternoon setting up my pi2 with Kodi on openelec. Very impressed so far.

I have just finished setting up the PVR part for live TV - simple and very quick and now Im going to try and move onto Netflix. A lot of addons are for bypassing login it seems but I just want a Netflix addon for the account I actually pay for.

Next thing that will be done relies on me ordering my NAS.

I would love to install my SoftEther VPN on it again though but not sure how to do that on OpenElec without a terminal. :(

Does anyone use OpenElec and have anything additional installed like VNC or something?
 
Soldato
Joined
10 Mar 2013
Posts
7,906
Location
Rotherham
That is great!! :) Have you bought it yet? there are great little kits on amazon that include everything you will need to get started.

Then I would say point him to the raspberrypi documentation page and see how he gets on :)


Just spent the afternoon setting up my pi2 with Kodi on openelec. Very impressed so far.

I have just finished setting up the PVR part for live TV - simple and very quick and now Im going to try and move onto Netflix. A lot of addons are for bypassing login it seems but I just want a Netflix addon for the account I actually pay for.

Next thing that will be done relies on me ordering my NAS.

I would love to install my SoftEther VPN on it again though but not sure how to do that on OpenElec without a terminal. :(

Does anyone use OpenElec and have anything additional installed like VNC or something?
What addon is the live tv please? if you cant say here please message in trust :)
 
Back
Top Bottom