Raspberry Pi - $35 Linux computer

  • Thread starter Thread starter daz
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been goggling for ideas but the only thing at the moment is a Cloud server other than that its not grabbing me

What about learning to code?

No idea where to start with that, I used to code in html at school back in the days ...lol about it.
 
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If you want to play about with some code then maybe just stick a normal distro on there, Debian wheezy I think or Raspbian are the common build for the pi, and then play about with making some python scripts

Of course it's always a little tricky to just "learn to code" without having a sort of goal in mind - hence why something like a webserver or similar can give you something to work towards

Or just work through some of the examples on the dive-into-python site?
 
Really struggling trying to get any decent speeds through my pi using a RT5370 wifi adapter. Wireless-power is off, I've just gone out and bought a powered usb hub but I'm still only seeing ~1MB/s through the thing which is no different to what I was getting without the powered usb hub.

Code: 
xsignal level: -53 dBm (5.01 nW)
xmode: Managed,  access point: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx                                                                                                                      
xfreq: 2.437 GHz, channel: 6,  bitrate: 54 Mbit/s                                                                                                                     
xpower mgt: off,  tx-power: 20 dBm (100.00 mW)                                                                                                                         
xretry: long limit 7,  rts/cts: off,  frag: off                                                                                        
xencryption: n/a (requires CAP_NET_ADMIN permissions)

Short of buying a new adapter, does anyone have any wonderful ideas that I have possibly missed?
 
I don't want to put a downer on things for you, but I have never had a lot of luck with wireless adapters + Linux... Sometimes the speeds are okay but you get irritating connection drops... Sometimes the speed is just absolutely terrible... Wired connection or failing that a set of powerlines is always much much better by comparison (if it's an option)
 
Well, mine B is now attached to my TV, 3 SD cards, 1 x Linux Distro (going to play around until i find one I like), 1 x EmulationStation and 1 x OpenElec for media.

Got to tweak some bits on each, things like the screen out put being slighter larger than the actual TV, a few scripts not running here and there on the emulator and getting some controllers. OpenElec has only just been used today so I need to play around with it and learn how to use it, I found it to be a little laggy when browsing my movies but it outputs fine.

Very impressed and once I get up to speed with everything it will be project time :D

I wonder if the rasp should have its own subforum so we can easily discuss all the different options you can do with it because reading all through one massive thread is a pain :p
 
Just finished revamping a 1961 Roberts radio to be a squeezebox powered by a Pi. It features an Adafruit LCD and two rotary encoders for volume and menu selection.

It was a great project for learning Python and many other random bits and pieces :)

siODLs8l.jpg


Full project log available at http://plentyofgin.blogspot.co.uk

/Markwombat
 
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Im having a problem with my SD cards. They have images on them but I now cant mount them on my PC to wipe them/put new images on them. They show up when I run dmesg and appear in /dev however any attemt to mount them, or even dd, gives me "No medium detected". Now before on Windows I just used BootICE to wipe the cards but thats no longer possible. Any ideas where to go from here?

Note: these cards still work fine in the Pi so its not the cards that are broken.
 
gropingmantis said:
Im having a problem with my SD cards. They have images on them but I now cant mount them on my PC to wipe them/put new images on them. They show up when I run dmesg and appear in /dev however any attemt to mount them, or even dd, gives me "No medium detected". Now before on Windows I just used BootICE to wipe the cards but thats no longer possible. Any ideas where to go from here?

Note: these cards still work fine in the Pi so its not the cards that are broken.
Click to expand...

Download, install and start a Write test after selecting the SD card / USB pen, abort after a few sectors and the device should now be select-able in disk management.

http://www.vconsole.com/Flash_Drive_Tester_v114.exe
 
I have a quick beginners question before I purchase and set up a Pi to run OpenElec XBMC on. My reason for playing around with an XBMC was that I have a 2tb GRAID drive doing absolutely nothing. Now, a friend of mine at work has offered to get me going with 'some test media' so I'm going to give him the drive to copy all that media over to first. Will I encounter any issues by doing this, and then just plugging it into my Pi? Is there any specific way the drive should be formatted or organised? Or is it all metadata driven anyway? I think it's just formatted NTFS at the moment... Essentially I don't want him to spendages copying iover all this media, then me having to reformat it to work on the Pi! Thanks.
 
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Hen I suppose. Some of the guides for mounting drives appear to talk about formatting and partitioning the drive through the Pi though..?
 
Scam said:
Hen I suppose. Some of the guides for mounting drives appear to talk about formatting and partitioning the drive through the Pi though..?
Click to expand...

If you're just looking to access the media on a drive then there's no real need to do any partitioning... The only reason I can think of that you might wish to mess with the drive in that sense would be if the drive was formatted with a file-system type that the pi wouldn't be able to read (or would read but not very fast).

NTFS isn't the absolute fastest performing filesystem for a linux based OS to read (ext3 or ext4 are probably better) but over a USB drive connection I doubt it would make much odds. Furthermore it has the advantage that the NTFS drive would also be readable in Windows should you ever need to unplug it to copy more stuff over or do anything from a Windows machine (whereas some of the linux native filesystems don't play well with Windows)
 
Thanks for the input there. Doing a bit more research into NTFS versus ext3/4, not sure where to go with that one. It would be useful to be able to 'hot swap' back and forth with NTFS, but then again I'll be networking it up anyway so could just do all that wirelessly..

So, how does this look for a shopping list? To run OpenElec :)

- Raspberry Pi Model B (512MB RAM, UK Model)
- TRIXES Raspberry PI Rpi Clear Case Enclosure Protector and Computer housing Box
- Plugable 7 Port High Speed USB 2.0 Hub (With 3A Power Adapter for UK Mains)
- Edimax EW-7811UN 150Mbps Wireless Nano USB Adapter
- Duronic ST12B 2m 12 Way Surge Tower Extension Lead Socket

I've been doing a fair amount of reading up on the wifi adapter and USB hub -- they seem to be the main points where people can have issues. It appears that the USB hub can actually power the Pi (hence no separate power supply on my list) which sounds great.

I've got some 2GB SD cards kicking around to use, and I'll be plugging in a 2TB GRAID with it's own power supply.

Any thoughts?
 
Probably been asked a billion times but what does everyone prefer? OpenElec or RaspBMC?

Just put RaspBMC on and it's a bit sluggish but I need an install that is wife friendly i.e. pretty pictures and a nice interface :)
 
Longbow said:
OpenELEC seems to perform better, the downside is that it's locked down so you can't shell in and run other programs.
Click to expand...

Raspbmc works great for me and unlike OpenElec looks great as you can remove the GUI res limitation which makes OpenElec look nasty imho!
However my Pi is heavily overclocked (1.1GHz CPU / 500MHz GPU, RAM, PIPE ..etc) and I'm also running XBMC off a 16Gb Corsair GT USB 2 pen which actually runs faster than a quicker (Spec. wise) Kingston Performance SD card.
 
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