Working with Pi

Few months ago, i bought Raspberry pi (mini computer without limbs :) ).

With lot of struggle, especially in Chennai ( i stay in Chennai), where there is no proper internet connection, difficult to get needful accessories, finally made some thing work using this tiny device.

Although the intent is nice, but in reality the accessories and availability in India is very difficult, also very pricey.

This tiny device is a mini computer + micro controller with no real time clock.

Primary information:

1. Raspberry Pi Model B 512MB RAM. Costs 2750/- from Element 14

2. The device has only two USB ports and can not drive external devices (except keyboard and mice) - so one has to buy a Powered USB hub, costs Rs 1000+.

3. The device clocks at 700MHz and ram is very little 512MB/256MB. So processing power especially browsing and playing multimedia files (of course the purpose is not do this) is very slow. On top of that Memory read/write speed is less, it will be very much sluggish to use. So again with a good reading speeds, one has to shell out some Rs. 500 -1000.

4. Now, if some body wants to use with the device with wi-fi, (very few devices are recommended) again one more thousand is required to buy a working wi-fi adapter. I have purchased Dlink DWA-131 (recommended to use even without using Powered USB hub). Also, i have tested with my Belkin Wireless G adapter with powered hub, it works.

Al-together atleast INR 7000/- is required to get started working on it. Of course this can be minimized if people are available to work in groups!  ( i did not mention about the display).

Now coming to the main part, most of the communities are targeting for multimedia & programming, but again some are focusing on education and the projects with raspberry pi are very nice . I am trying to build some interesting things which stimulate children.

How nasty it is !

Some thing to chill out !

without much delay, i received raspberry pi today (ordered few more). I failed to do much with beagle boards as they demand specific display (dvi-d), but not keeping them dead. But i wanted to do some interesting good things with raspberry pi instead of focusing on robotics.

The other good thing is my motorola defy power adapter is best suitable to power-up the raspberry pi. Specs say the laptop USB cannot drive (500mA) the pi as it needs relatively higher current (700-1200 mA).  That is good. Every time i used to buy power adapter for every board.


btw, i almost ready to buy raspberry pi boards on ebay. But waiting for couple of days gave me a big price saving. Element14 charged 3k including tax and shipping charges.

will have to see how long my interest sustains on this. :)

/Srinivas

Mistakes

I keep seeing people either doing things manually (or repeating the process from scratch again & again) or doing semi-automated.

This process is very tedious to make sure every thing goes right. Recently, at a fruit shop store-keeper is billing using a semi-automated machine for billing the fruits. He presses some code based on the item and the bill automatically generates based on the weight and the code. Because of the huge rush at stalls these days, it is very difficult for him to remember the codes. So, by mistake the store-keeper pressed the code incorrectly for apples (usually a Kg of apples cost around 150) and because of the wrong code the bill shows only 24 rupees.

A huge loss for him. The hard earned money for him just goes away by simple mistakes and unnoticed some times.    For these they should trust technology (like bar-codes) even though it is costly but at the end of the day we will live with 0 mistakes. Make NO Mistake.


/Srinivas