A couple of months back, I got my hands on a Raspberry Pi, a tiny development board that can run a full copy of Linux, has an HDMI port, a couple of USB ports, Ethernet and a few other little bits and pieces. The full specs, from the Wikipedia Article, are as follows:
- Operating system: Linux (Debian GNU/Linux, Fedora, and Arch Linux ARM)
- Power: 2.5 W (model A), 3.5 W (model B)
- CPU: ARM1176JZF-S (armv6k) 700 MHz
- Storage capacity: SD card slot (SD or SDHC card)
- Memory: 256 MByte
- Graphics: Broadcom VideoCore IV
There have been a few things i have wanted to play with it for but have not implemented all of them yet… still learning… but some interesting projects have come to my attention… here they are, in no particular order:
- Raspberry Pi embedded into a Canon 5D MKII Battery Grip: The idea of this is epic! the possibilities are endless… GPS, Wifi, FTP, Processing RAW images (ok, maybe not with a 700Mhz processor…), auto upload to the internet, auto add watermark, resize images before upload, send to iPad… I could go on and on…. 🙂
- Embedding a Raspberry Pi into a Keyboard: this is pretty cool too…
- Quick setup of a Web Server on the Raspberry PI: Install Apache, SSH, PHP, MySQL and an FTP server, all on your Pi!
In all fairness, the Pi makes a lot of ideas possible. with such a small size, and such a cheap price ($25-35), you are only limited by your imagination… Wonder if could i get Windows 8 installed on one of these…
there are also a few interesting things that may make the Pi work more portable…
- LiPo Rider Pro: takes input from Batteries and Solar Panels and outputs as USB 5V. should run the Pi off solar and batteries for a while… 🙂
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