Raspberry Pi - $35 Linux computer

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xibinim said:
much difference between Open ELEC and Raspbmc?
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Not really. Biggest difference is the graphical installer and auto updater for RaspBMC, but that has caused issues for some people. I prefer OpenELEC as I can see the fixes going into each build and update when desirable improvements are available.

xibinim said:
Network performance isn't great
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If you can, avoid using Samba. It's just a bit too much overhead for the RPi to cope with acceptably.

xibinim said:
Is it worth overclocking? I have the revision B model.
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I do a minor overclock on mine (no overvolt though). It does improve the smoothness in XBMC enough to make it a more pleasant experience.

xibinim said:
Can any one recommend a skin?
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The default Confluence lite skin used by OpenELEC and RaspBMC is probably the best you'll get based upon performance/features (make sure you turn off the RSS feeds). You can get better performance if you turn off the thumbnails, but I prefer having them over a text based interface.

Daveangle said:
My current thoughts are on Raspbian I can install wGet which seems to be the standard download manager for linux based systems and I think it is compatible with Debian.
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wget is a downloader and not a download manager, per se. You may find a few Linux download mangers that have a custom interface, but in fact use wget for all of the data transfers.

Daveangle said:
I found http://exir.ru/wget4web/ which I plan to use as well but I will also need a lightweight web server, they recommend Apache. Is there anything better?
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Apache is a heavyweight web server. If you want a lightweight, but well featured, alternative then try lighthttpd or nginx.
http://www.jeremymorgan.com/blog/programming/raspberry-pi-web-server-comparison/

Daveangle said:
I haven't gone to far with my Pi yet but is Raspbian the best O/S to use currently?, I have installed it with the GUI interface however it is extremely slow and TBH I mainly just use Putty command line anyway. Looking at what I am going to do with the system would anyone recommend another distro?
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As masterluke said, just disable/remove all the GUI stuff and it'll perform a lot better.
 
Thanks for the advice, I won't be moving large files around just more as an available store on a network to stream content to my other computers.

I have received my hard drive (Brilliant service as always OverClockers) so I will definitely give it a play this weekend, I think I will re install Raspbian without the GUI as I won't ever use it.

Will let you know how I get on over the weekend :)
 
I unwrapped my Pi at christmas and stuffed in a card loaded with Raspbmc just to try it out. Couldn't do much else as i was at my parents, and i mistakenly assumed they would have a usb keyboard in the house... they do not.

Now i'm home, i have no screen to plug it into as the tv is packed away while we refurb downstairs, so i'm just thinking about what route to take with it.

I'll want to use XBMC and use it for streaming films etc to the tv from my server, but i'd like to be able to browse the web on it with a bluetooth mouse and keyboard. I remember reading that raspbmc won't run a web browser, but if i used openELEC would i be able to run a browser also?

And finally, has anyone else installed Arch on their Pi? I use Arch+openbox on my desktop and was wondering weather the ARM6 arch distro with openbox would work well on the Pi?...
 
Alright dudes,

If, like me, you have been struggling to play super high bitrate media using Raspbmc then read on.

Yesterday I watched the entire movie, Pastebin'd Media Info, without a problem.
No stuttering or buffering :D

I am passing the DTS to my a/v receiver to sort out.
RaspBMC boots from a 4GB Transcend Class 6 SDCard and is installed to a USB stick (4gb SanDisk Cruzer) hooked in through a Belkin F5U231 actively powered 4-port USB hub.
The hub is the only USB device which is directly plugged into the R-Pi.
Connected to the network over Ethernet.
I do have heatsinks and a small fan on the R-Pi, some might argue they aren't needed though.
The fan is powered by the Belkin hub.

My config, set through the config add-on, is:-
Code: 
arm_freq=1000
core_freq=500
gpu_freq=500
sdram_freq=500
over_voltage=6
disable_overscan=1
gpu_mem_256=128
gpu_mem_512=256

I did notice that if there was an active ssh session that can cause a brief micro-stutter, but not buffering.

I hope this helps someone.
 
bledd. said:
Are these 100% ready now to work as a media pc? Want to get one for the kitchen
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Objectively I'd say it depends upon 2 things:
1) How you connect it to your media
2) The format of your media


For best performance in regards to 1, then local media (on SD card, USB stick or USD HDD) is best but not very practical. For better practicality the a network connection can be used, but make sure it is over NFS as the overhead for Samba is too much.

As far as media formats go then video streams are OK, it the audio streams that can cause issues. If your TV supports AC3 and DTS then the Pi will be fine as it can just pass through the streams to the TV.
If the Pi has to down sample the audio before sending to the TV then performance starts to get marginal. A minor over clock can give enough performance for acceptable playback, as long your media hasn't got multiple audio streams.
 
CaNsA said:
Alright dudes,

If, like me, you have been struggling to play super high bitrate media using Raspbmc then read on.

Yesterday I watched the entire movie, Pastebin'd Media Info, without a problem.
No stuttering or buffering :D

I am passing the DTS to my a/v receiver to sort out.
RaspBMC boots from a 4GB Transcend Class 6 SDCard and is installed to a USB stick (4gb SanDisk Cruzer) hooked in through a Belkin F5U231 actively powered 4-port USB hub.
The hub is the only USB device which is directly plugged into the R-Pi.
Connected to the network over Ethernet.
I do have heatsinks and a small fan on the R-Pi, some might argue they aren't needed though.
The fan is powered by the Belkin hub.

My config, set through the config add-on, is:-
Code: 
arm_freq=1000
core_freq=500
gpu_freq=500
sdram_freq=500
over_voltage=6
disable_overscan=1
gpu_mem_256=128
gpu_mem_512=256

I did notice that if there was an active ssh session that can cause a brief micro-stutter, but not buffering.

I hope this helps someone.
Click to expand...

Useful, thanks. I don't know the stock values, what % overclock is this? I have a few issues on some straight Blu Ray rips, which I think is a combination of a few things: I didn't realise the VC-1 codec is the same Blu Ray VC1 codec (so AVC is fine, Handbrake'd H.264 is fine, VC-1 Blu ray rip is stuttery until I get the license) so I may have to get that in addition the Mpeg2 license.

I'm currently over the network via SMB but need to change to NFS.

I also have a whole load of rips with DTS-HD MA in the stream, which I hoped could by LPCM'ed by the Pi, but licensing issues aside I'm not sure it would have the guts to do it!

My fallback (next to try) is a Proliant N40L......
 
Evilpaul said:
Objectively I'd say it depends upon 2 things:
1) How you connect it to your media
2) The format of your media


For best performance in regards to 1, then local media (on SD card, USB stick or USD HDD) is best but not very practical. For better practicality the a network connection can be used, but make sure it is over NFS as the overhead for Samba is too much.

As far as media formats go then video streams are OK, it the audio streams that can cause issues. If your TV supports AC3 and DTS then the Pi will be fine as it can just pass through the streams to the TV.
If the Pi has to down sample the audio before sending to the TV then performance starts to get marginal. A minor over clock can give enough performance for acceptable playback, as long your media hasn't got multiple audio streams.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick response
 
not used mine for a very long time now, i was using it for a bouncer(IRC) no idea what to use it for.

whats the best format to rip/dvd with so i can use xmbc and run direct off hdd?

Edit

Q:Is the NewTrent battery pack worth getting? (any other options?)

Q: What Wifi dongles is everyone using?

Q: Is it worth selling the 1st batch PI and get a 512 one? :D
 
Last edited:
Hey guys, a project I'm working on involves a lot of programming with python and wrapping c code. I was thinking of one of these as id be able to carry it around and therefore take my project with me, as opposed to worrying about whether or not different computers have the right stuff installed.

Has anyone used it for this purpose? This may be a silly question but since its not a X86 processor do the programming languages compile and run the same as on a X86 pc? cheers
 
I fancy boys said:
This may be a silly question but since its not a X86 processor do the programming languages compile and run the same as on a X86 pc? cheers
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For the most part it'll be exactly the same. You may need to take care with endianness though, especially if you are doing any comms.

As long as you don't need massive amounts of processing power then the RPi is a nice little demo machine.
 
You can use NFS.. with Microsoft Windows Services for Unix you can use Windows as both an NFS client and an NFS server.

For a more realistic idea, try Expandrive [1]. It allows you to mount SFTP, FTP(S), Amazon S3 and Strongspace (their online storage) as effectively windows mapped network drives, but they show as removable drives.

If you've got SSH installed, SFTP should work fine with the same credentials.

Well worth the money if you do this sort of thing a lot.


[1] http://www.expandrive.com/expandrive
 
Finished setting up my Pi, still got a few more little bit but for the most part it is working really well.

Managed to get web4wget working on lighttpd as I couldn't get nginx to work well with cgi, I altered the code so it can download from my usenet site straight on my external hdd. I got Samba running fine on the Pi and I haven't noticed any speed issues with it, I can browse to the shares from the Nexus 7 and play content directly from it :) As well as my Windows 7 computers (Which was a right pain in the arse, I had to remove a windows update to allow me access).

I've still got some more things to do, proper folder permissions and inheritance, I was also wondering whether there is a web interface that will allow me to move around my files that I download into different folders, otherwise I will have to do it manually each time through the command line, not a huge problem but it would be nice.

Really enjoying the Pi, I might consider another one for my upstairs TV running XBMC.
 
Setup my pi, its now my local web server :) next step is to get git setup so I can use either of my computers to work on a project.

May look into hosting an application server too so I can have a proper play with Ruby on Rails.

and as the pi is so minimal on power I don't mind leaving it on 24/7
 
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