First Steps with the Raspberry Pi: Introduction First Steps with the Raspberry Pi Introduction / Hardware The Raspberry Pi received an extraordinary amount of pre-launch coverage. It truly went viral with major news corporations such as the BBC giving extensive coverage. There are two editions of the Raspberry Pi, the Model B which we have, and the Model A which is identical except that it loses the ethernet port and one of the USB slots. The first thing to surprise you about the Raspberry Pi is the size. The Raspberry Pi's creators, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, want to spark children's interest in computer programming and encourage students to apply for computing degrees. The Raspberry Pi has more in common with smartphones and set top boxes than it does with desktop machines. - Raspberry Pi developer board - T-Shirt - XL size (editor: too many pork pies being the likely reason) - Compliance and safety sheet - Despatch note The Hanes 100% cotton T-shirt was included as a nice gesture from Farnell for people who placed an early order.
Raspberry Pi Review & Initial How-To Setup Guide - TechSpot Reviews Six years ago, Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton set out to reignite programming in schools with a cheap, compact computing platform. Despite targeting students, his foundation's $35 computer captured the imaginations of tinkers worldwide, resulting in overwhelming demand. Interest was so high, that distributors Premier Farnell and RS buckled under the strain of preorders in February. The former outfit later said demand was 20 times greater than its supply, with orders hitting 700 a second at one point. When the first 10,000 devices shipped in mid-April, the organization graciously sent us a sample for coverage. We received a Model B ($35), which is powered by a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC that includes a 700MHz ARM1176JZF-S CPU core, 256MB of RAM and a Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU with OpenGL ES 2.0 that supports 1080p at 30FPS as well as H.264 and MPEG-4 high-profile decoding for smooth Blu-ray playback. As indicated, the Raspberry Pi uses an SD card for storage.
Proof-Of-Concept The Concept. Use the Raspberry Pi bare bones computer to guide & control an autonomous solar powered surface vehicle. The Proof-Of-Concept. To demonstrate that the RPi can support the multiple systems needed to maintain long-term autonomous operations on water. The Vehicle. The Proof-Of-Concept Vehicle (POCV) will be battery powered, and only run the bare essentials needed to navigate the craft on a small body of water, a lake for example. The Hardware List for the POCV. The FishPi Wiki (link) has a section devoted to the Proof-Of-Concept Vehicle.
Brian's Life: Wii Controller + Raspberry Pi + Python = Awesome!! UPDATE 1/2/2013: -Corrected button numbers -Bluetooth commands So this is going to be a many part series for a robot project i'm working on. This first one covers writing a program that runs on the Raspberry Pi. This program is going to connect through bluetooth to a Nintendo Wii controller and allow you to control the data via Python. Cool I know! So what I did first was familiarize myself with connecting my Wii controller to my PC (virtual desktop running Ubuntu) and using Cwiid as a module I was able to write a small program to grab the data. Parts list: Raspberry Pibluetooth USB dongle - I bought this one SABRENT at Frys Electronics for $10Wii Remote - BlackStandard Raspberry Pi cables (power, keyboard, monitor) Make sure you first have debian installed and up to date on your Raspberry Pi. sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade This could take hours depending... Installing the Bluetooth Dongle and drivers sudo apt-get install bluetooth sudo service bluetooth status hcitool dev hcitool scan
Raspberry Pi and Motorola Lapdock Here's some info for those interested in setting up a Motorola Lapdock to work with the Raspberry Pi. This is extremely easy to set up and should work without the need for any hardware modifications. I used the Atrix Lapdock, which can be found between $50 and $100 on various websites. I used the Debian Squeeze image from the Raspberry Pi downloads section. Parts List ~Raspberry Pi ~Motorola Lapdock (Atrix works) ~1 USB Male to Micro USB Male cable (Standard cell phone cable) ~1 USB 2.0 A female to Micro USB B female adapter cable FF ~1 Micro HDMI Type D Female to Micro HDMI Type D ~Female Connector Adapter Gold ~1 USB Male to USB Male cable*You will need to open this cable and cut the red 5 volt wire* ~1 MICRO HDMI to HDMI cable *Please note, my Micro USB and Micro HDMI ports are reversed on my Lapdock due to a previous modification unrelated to the Raspberry Pi. Sound through HDMI Credit veryevil from RaspberryPi forum Wifi Useful Links
View topic - I made a Raspberry PI Laptop I've just ordered a 0.5m Micro HDMI to HDMI cable for it which should remove a massive amount of cable. The Atrix Lapdock has a MALE Micro HDMI and a MALE Micro USB connector I use a FEMALE Micro HDMI to FEMALE Micro HDMI adapter I also Bought this FEMALE Micro USB to FEMALE USB A adapter cable I Cut off the USB A FEMALE end and also cut a standard Micro USB cable in half. This means the the 5v + GND lines from the lapdock usb goes to the micro usb connector and powers the Pi and the Data and ground lines go to the USB A Male like any USB peripheral and connect to the PI USB port to connect the keyboard and the trackpad. This allows the Lapdock to power the PI from its battery / mains adapter and gives me an 11.6" screen , a keyboard and trackpad. The screen is crystal clear and very bright. This would have been 3 weeks ago but the adapters (linked to above) took 3 weeks to arrive!
Raspberry Pi laptop My last post showed how I assembled a portable Pi using a 3.5" composite LCD. Well, I've got a better option this time around, the Motorola Atrix lapdock! The Atrix lapdock was originally intended for Motorola's Atrix Android smartphone. It didn't sell very well for it's original purpose, so you can pick one up for around to $50 to $100 on eBay and Amazon. I recommend checking out this insightful blog which details how to use it with the Pi: Raspberry Pi and Atrix Lapdock. However, the USB cabling described in the above blog and video is only needed for Raspberry Pi's that have F1/F2 polyfuses. With those polyfuses gone, the Pi can be powered via it's USB host ports as an alternative to the micro USB jack. A close-up of the back of the lapdock with micro HDMI on the right and micro USB on the left: My cables and connectors (from left to right): I highly recommend buying an Atrix lapdock while they are still available for cheap. [UPDATE: check out Raspberry Pi lapdock tricks] Cheers, Drew
Upcoming board revision Update: Added locations of mounting holes. Fixed minor error in I2C paragraph. Clarified expected use of P5 connector. Update: A lot of people are asking when revision 2.0 boards will appear in the wild. They’ll be filtering out over the next month as the last stocks of the revision 1.0 at each distributor and in each geography are exhausted. I’m aware of at least one person who has received a revision 2.0 board already (from Farnell, in the UK). We don’t believe that the changes are large enough to make it worth “holding on” for revision 2.0, unless you have a specific requirement to add an audio codec or you need mounting holes for some industrial application. In the six months since we launched Raspberry Pi, we’ve received a lot of feedback about the original board design. There has been a small change to the GPIO pin out of revision 2.0, to add ARM JTAG support and to present a different I2C peripheral from that which is (heavily) used on the camera interface. Reset USB Output Power
DaveDen | Dave's musings on programming, parenting, the Gospel, video games, music, movies, etc. Raspberry Pi laptop My last post showed how I assembled a portable Pi using a 3.5" composite LCD. Well, I've got a better option this time around, the Motorola Atrix lapdock! I recommend checking out this insightful blog which details how to use it with the Pi: Raspberry Pi and Atrix Lapdock . Adafruit also has a helpful video from Becky Stern on how to hack together an appropriate USB cable: With those , the Pi can be powered via it's USB host ports as an alternative to the micro USB jack. A close-up of the back of the lapdock with micro HDMI on the right and micro USB on the left: male micro to full-size male HDMI cable female micro type B to female USB type A USB cable male Type A to male Type A USB cable {*style:<i> </i>*} I highly recommend buying an Atrix lapdock while they are still available for cheap. {*style:<i> </i>*} {*style:<i> Cheers, Drew
How to connect your Motorola Lapdock to your Rapsberry Pi | DaveDen Over at the Raspberry Pi forums, a lot of people have come up with a lot of great ideas for connecting the Pi to a Motorola Lapdock. There are so many ways to do this, in fact, that I found it really difficult to figure out which one I should go with. I couldn’t even keep all the parts straight in my head, so I made a diagram: EDIT 9/28/2012: If your Pi is model B revision 1.0 + ECN0001 or revision 2.0, then you don’t need connections 3, 4 or 5. It’s a little bit confusing so I’ll explain what the various lines mean: The letter M (for male) denotes a connector on the Pi or Lapdock, whereas the letter F (for female) denotes a port.The Pi (upper) has three ports that must be connected: a HDMI port for the display, a USB port for the keyboard/trackpad input, and a micro USB port for power.The Lapdock (lower) must connect to the Pi’s display port via a micro HDMI connector. Once I had a diagram, I set out looking for the parts. Note: Some of the parts described below have multiple names.
Raspberry Pi Lapdock HDMI cable work-around Abstract: I recently acquired a Motorola Atrix Lapdock and tried to get it working with my RasPi. Unfortunately, something was wrong with the micro HDMI cable, specifically some cheap HDMI cables do not implement the individual ground lines. I came up with a temporary work-around. I thought people might be interested in the combination of detective work and exploration that got me to the solution. Also, some of the Lapdock analysis I did may be useful to others. I first read about the Motorola Atrix Lapdock quite a few months ago. I had thought of using Lapdock for RasPi, but I couldn't find enough technical information to tell if it was possible and I wasn't willing to fork over US$100 for something that might have been impossible to interface. So I ordered a Lapdock along with the cables and adapters that Drew recommended, including a short USB A male to A male adapter as in Update #2. I was very impressed by Lapdock when it arrived. So where to begin? 1 HDMI A19/D1 = hot plug