Raspberry Pi - Who's gonna have a dabble?

[Otispunkmeyer]

This is a tiny little SoC computer (system on a chip, much like what powers smart phones) developed and produced by a group of guys from cambridge with the view to making hobbyist computer programming and learning about computer programming much more accessible. (not just software programming, but actual machine programming). This in a bid to get peoples skills and experience up before coming to university as they mention that since computers got more complex and more locked down, applicants to computer courses are arriving sans any programming skills whatsoever.

Its basically a little board with a Broadcom ARM based SoC, some inputs and some outputs. You can connect keyboards, ethernet and HDMI devices and using a linux distro, have a functioning computer that will let you browse the web or watch HD video. You can then tinker and program to your hearts content!

The best bit is there are 2 models, costing $25 and $35. Thats it!

Linky: http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/raspberry-p...

and a link to someone with a Beta board who's programmed it to work with AirPlay. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v6FOji3lq8

[Otispunkmeyer]

onomatopoeia said:

There's another topic on here somewhere which is several pages long, but I'm going to be joining the scramble to order from the first batch when it arrives.

Supposedly these will be up for purchase (direct from them) in the next week or so (limited to 1 per person). I cant wait to see what people can do with these things.

[Otispunkmeyer]

rst99 said:

I registered with RS at 6am and finally got onto Farnell after lunch and got a delivery date of 16/4/12.

The launch was a total shambles.

It sort of is a shambles, but at the same time it just goes to show the creators have had a great idea and people want it. Put it this way, you'd rather your suppliers servers burnt to the ground with people tripping over each other to get one than stamping out 10k units and having nobody buy them.

Seems they just massively underestimated the desire for these things.

Good job we didnt need to order stuff from Farnell today (we order lots of components from them for various experiments)!

[Otispunkmeyer]

Bought a pi today

Set up raspbmc as a first sort of thing to play about with. Only issue is I can't get airplay to run smooth.

As I see it, the pi is connected to my router via wifi with the ip 192.168.1.79. All is well there. However in the raspbmc settings program there is the network mode option between wired and wireless and from what I can gather, the pi itself is also broadcasting its own wifi? I assume this is needed for AirPlay (ie a direct link between ipad and pi, that doesn't go via the router).?

If I turn that off and switched to wired, the airplay plays a lot better, though will still buffer, just not every 2 seconds.

So what I'm asking is what are those network settings for? I don't seem to need it set to wifi. I used the network manager add on to set my wifi up. Was this wrong?

[Otispunkmeyer]

Was about to come back and say the wifi dongle was just in the box with the kit I bought so its probably ste. Shame my home plug setup died, I don't really want a cat 5 draped across the living room!

[Otispunkmeyer]

Also cec isn't working. I know my tv supports it because it works with my PS3.

Although as that is still plugged in perhaps the tv can only support one cec device at a time. The ps3 is listed on the sources menu on the telly but the pi is not.

[Otispunkmeyer]

tank slapper said:

I've been using mine with Raspbmc and wifi since I've had it and haven't had any problems with it, and that includes playing 1080p films via NFS. It is possible that the radio signal is not the problem, but the wifi adaptor driver. Which one have you tried?

How do you alter the driver ? I just used the network manager add on. Works perfectly except for AirPlay.

[Otispunkmeyer]

ok so progressing with this media center thing

I have my Pi set up as I want ( I think ) so I guess now I just need media

I assume I can either have a hard disk wired to the USB port which means if I want to add anything new I have to remove the drive to a computer or perhaps utilise the uTorrent client to save direct to the HDD without going near a PC.

Or

I can have a central HDD on my network with my films and music on which the Pi can access and index.

For the former I reckon I can just use a 500 GB 2.5" portable drive I have lying around. Tape the HDD to the top of the Pi box and done! Or for the latter I have one of these lying around:

http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/opinion/iomega-500gb

I have the 1 TB version of that and I think, but am not sure it is capable of using the network file system. Is there anywhere I can read up on what SMB, NFS are and how to set them up? Will I be able to access the drive with my Mac? Confusingly this HDD came with some software which I pressumed you needed to access the drive because it provided a front end to control everything. However I think if you just plug it in it pops up as a share drive automatically. I had an old Freecom HDD that was a pseudo NAS... you could connect it via ethernet to a router but you needed freecoms software to actually access it as it wasnt a proper NAS drive. I think they called it D-NAS or something.


After that... what the hell am I gonna use to manage all my media because as it is, its a jumble sale of folders and wonky names.

[Otispunkmeyer]

ok ill have a stab at that

but before I got back to this thread I tried using TheRenamer and downloading fanart and stuff from TVDB.

But when I plug the HDD back to the Pi, I have to drill down throw all the folders to find the files is that right? (videos -> HDD - > TV show -> Season -> Episode) and the fanart looks ste, super low res but that maybe because the default skin doesnt support the various things.

[Otispunkmeyer]

Ok getting there.... It looks like Raspbmc will actually do most of the leg work for you? I loaded some renamed files on (used the Renamer) and then the Pi did its own search and renamed everything again and downloaded better artworks. Seems like you can just hoy a load of films in a folder and so long as they have sensible names xmbc will sort you out.

Tried the Media Elch and ViMediaManager.... they seem a bit obtuse to me. Media Elch decides to only find some movies, then you have to search the title of each one individually to get the data, then you have to press save before pressing rename. I am probably doing it wrong but that is a gigantic faff about. ViMedia seems even harder ..... Perhaps ill come back to it tomorrow when I am not so tired.

The renamer is working the best so far... just a bit of a fanny with that because I have to fire up parallels to make it work.

[Otispunkmeyer]

Lately rasp BMC seems to be forgoing finding cover art and fan art for things. So all newly added stuff doesn't get a picture beyond a thumbnail taken from the video file itself. Have they broken something?

[Otispunkmeyer]

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/the-original-ra...

A side discussion, but worth a chuckle because it really does sum the government up with respect to these kinds of things.