Pi to Go: Hot Raspberry Pi DIY Mini Desktop PC Project 134
MojoKid writes "Hot Hardware recently set out to design a custom mini desktop system with the popular Raspberry Pi single board computer. People have configured the device for a variety of applications, from micro-servers to low cost media players. Basically, the goal was to turn what is currently one of the cheapest bare-bones computer boards into a fully enclosed mini desktop computer that could be taken anywhere without the need for cabling or setup. This small DIY project is just one of many examples of the flexibility of the Raspberry Pi's open architecture. And to think you can even run Quake and Minecraft on it."
Not the right tool for the job... (Score:5, Interesting)
Beaglebone Black is more powerful, for similar amount of money.
Re:Not the right tool for the job... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You're kidding me, right?!?!??! (Score:5, Interesting)
I put my Raspberry Pi in a box [hylobatidae.org] and it appeared on national radio. :-(
(Full documentation here [hylobatidae.org]. It's a 1970s transistor radio with WiFi, streaming Radio 4 over a SSH tunnel to the UK, time-delaying audio playback by eight hours or so, in order that everything gets played back at the correct local time in Seattle.)
Re:To: the critics, (Score:2, Interesting)
You are perfectly correct: we should discourage people from entering the field of electronics by focussing upon advanced projects
Of course not. However only small children manage to achieve some trivial feat and then run to their mommy and daddy to show what they did. We accept that because for those children it is a good achievement. But we do not go to the national TV to announce that little Johnny figured out, all on his own, how to open a car door. From the inside.
This project is good as an educational tool. However it does not represent any particular challenge for somewhat more experienced audience, at Slashdot or elsewhere. It is not newsworthy, and it does not prompt (me, at least) to copy it.
Here is something that I would copy in an instant. R-Pi supports cameras. Take a camera, attach it to the R-Pi, find or write the software that encodes the video into industry-standard streaming formats (H.264, MPEG4, MJPEG), add audio, add motion detection, integrate with some DVR software (best if open source) - THAT would be EXCELLENT. Those cameras cost ARM9 and a leg today, about $500-600 (ACTi ACM-1231, for example.) It would be not easy to do, but you don't need to do it all in one sitting. I contemplated the project myself, but I'm too busy to do anything about it.
So buy a low-end tablet (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want a generic portable computer with an ARM CPU, buy an Allwinner-based tablet. [amazon.com] Those use the Allwinnner system on a chip, which has an ARM core and costs about $7 in quantity. They're under $70 in the US, around $30 in Shenzhen.
Re:Pi Madness (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention a chance of finding some interesting data on those discarded harddrives.