Raspberry Pi: How a $25 Computer Could Spark a Computing Revolution

[Darla Ken Pearce]

Takeaway: Ultra-cheap computers like the Raspberry Pi could usher in a new wave of pervasive computing

By Nick Heath
February 9, 2012, 6:08 AM PST

My Note: This is the first sign, I've seen of the suppressed technology beginning to dribble out and come forth. Its a very positive sign and will open the floodgates to benefit all of us. Talk about giving TPTW ~ the Raspberry! Woo Woo!

* * * * * * *

In the last 60 years the computer has evolved from a machine that filled an entire room to a device that can fit in your pocket. And just as the electronics have shrunk, so has the price – opening up the prospect of cheap and pervasive computing.

One of the machines at the vanguard of the low-cost computing revolution is the Raspberry Pi, a $25 Linux box that will go on sale before the end of February.

Despite its budget price the Raspberry Pi still packs a punch, with the multi-media capabilities of an original Xbox console, 1080p video playback, and general processing power of a Pentium II/III.

Specs-wise the credit card-sized computer is powered by a 700MHz ARM chip inside a Broadcom BCM2835 has a single USB port and 128MB of memory, with an additional $10 buying a souped-up version with two USB ports, 10/100 ethernet and 256MB of memory.

Eben Upton, director of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the Cambridge-based charitable body set up to produce the machine, predicts that Raspberry Pi will be the first of many $25 machines.

”In a year’s time everybody will be doing this. It’s not loss making, there’s money in it. I think there’s enough value that once we’ve proven that it’s doable a lot of people are going to jump in,” he told TechRepublic.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation hopes to speed the shift towards low-cost computing along by encouraging other manufacturers and hobbyist computer makers to make their own low-cost computers by open sourcing the design of the Raspberry Pi board in future.

”People often say ‘Don’t you worry that somebody is going to steal your idea?’ but to be honest, deep down, I’ve always hoped that somebody would,” Upton said.

The shift to ultra-low cost computing has become possible because computer chips with very low manufacturing costs now have the processing muscle to deliver what consumers want from their computing devices, Upton said.

”This is an inevitable trend if you look at direction of travel and the amount of performance you can get out of an Arm-based platform,” he said. Upton said that as bottom-end machines grow in power, consumers will become increasingly unwilling to pay top dollar for a premium device.

”People are increasingly going to be thinking about what they can put up with, rather than paying over the odds for that extra performance margin on the top.”

The trend towards consumers embracing cheap, “good enough” computing can already been seen today, in the market for dedicated graphics cards for PCs, Upton said. Whereas people were once willing to pay for dedicated graphics cards for desktop machines, graphic chips integrated into computer motherboards are now good enough to support 1080p video playback and the graphics needs of most consumers.

”Look at GPUs on PCs: hardly anyone buys a graphics card these days, people will put up with graphics from integrated chips. The embedded integrated chipsets are good enough for what they need, even for some games,” he said.

The shrinking price of information processing is making it economically viable to embed computers in devices where it would not have been possible in the past or to replace expensive bespoke computer platforms with arrays of these low-cost devices. Take the Raspberry Pi, one of the many uses planned for the machine is to place it on a satellite and see how well it functions in the harsh environment of space.

“There are some extreme automation plans out there,” said Upton.
The potential advantage of Raspberry Pi or other what Upton calls commercial off the shelf (COTS) devices, over traditional satellite computer platforms is that COTS devices are far cheaper than the existing satellite computing systems, which have to be customised to work in extremes of temperature and while being bombarded with cosmic radiation.

”You can send 100 COTS platforms into space for the price of one build-spec platform, and even if they don’t have good survivability you’re probably still left with 10 of that after a year,” said Upton.

Of course, people have already dreamt up an array of other uses for the Raspberry Pi: controlling robots, automation applications, running home media centres, running dev platforms or turning it into a Sinclair QL emulator. Not bad for a device built with the modest aim of encouraging kids to code, by providing a low-cost device that can boot into programming environments for computer languages such as Python or C.

The advent of cheap, pervasive computing is inevitable, said Upton, but he hopes that computing platforms will remain open, general purpose machines that can be tinkered with by anyone, rather than closed systems locked to a particular appliance or service.

”I think this is the future. The only question for me is when these cheap, low power computing platforms are going to be open and whether they are going to be based on open software or are going to be closed, appliance like devices. What we’re hoping to do is to influence the evolution of these devices so they end up open and not closed.”

I found this for you here: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/eur...23?tag=nl.e019

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[Operator]

Here's more direct news: http://www.raspberrypi.org/

I think it's no surprise .... computers, televisions, tablets, cell phones are all moving in the same direction.

I regard my HTC Hero more as a small computer rather than a phone ... and it's already 2 years old

[taurad]

it's a great little board, that puts to shame the closed-source of current computing, size-wise, price-wise and philosophy-wise!!!

if you go to their website, go visit the forum, and i found positively-humorous the talks of enthusiastic computer geeks of planing to contribute in "casing" ideas for this "naked" little board...

i bet u the casing will be more expensive than the board itself...

i'll be ordering mine shortly

support this project

for $25, you can donate it if not interested in using it...great for educational purposes for kids, schools also developers

cheers

[Kerrigan]

It will be on sale in September this year, yay!

[Ammit]

I love my psion 3A and all its very old capabilities, I should love this too. Being a confessed gadget man, its right up my street.

[meat suit]

Is anybody here up to speed with Raspberry Pi or using them?

I am looking into possibly replacing my smart phone with a Raspberry Pi so I can use Linux.
Thinking 7' touch screen with a 2m cable so that the processor and wifi radiation is at a distance.

Any advice or inspiration welcome.. thanks

[Casey Claar]

Posted by meat suit (here)
Is anybody here up to speed with Raspberry Pi or using them?

I am looking into possibly replacing my smart phone with a Raspberry Pi so I can use Linux.
Thinking 7' touch screen with a 2m cable so that the processor and wifi radiation is at a distance.

Any advice or inspiration welcome.. thanks

I had never even heard of it, had to look it up : Raspberry Pi : I look forward to hearing the responses to your question. I see the cost in now from $45. That's downright exceptional, it has been near 15 years from the original post on this subject. Wow.

[seehas]

Posted by meat suit (here)
Is anybody here up to speed with Raspberry Pi or using them?

I am looking into possibly replacing my smart phone with a Raspberry Pi so I can use Linux.
Thinking 7' touch screen with a 2m cable so that the processor and wifi radiation is at a distance.

Any advice or inspiration welcome.. thanks

Maybe i am the wrong person to answer your question as i am a computer scientist and have been working with linux systems for more than 20 years - mostly without any graphical user interface and only with the command line.

Ive had several raspberry pi boards over the years from the zero to the V2 and so on, but ive used them mainly without graphical operating system.

The graphical operating systems available for raspberry pi have certainly become more user-friendly over time, but you can't compare them with android - often you have to use the command line to solve problems or make devices work.

Would i recommend this to someone who sees it as a kind of cell phone replacement - no definitely not.

If you buy a raspberry pi you should be willing to learn more about linux since it is not as plug and play like a android phone for example.

[dim]

The Pi4 and Pi5 with 8gig ram are capable enough to run even more heavy duty Linux versions like Mint/Manjaro/Ubuntu along with special Android versions, and even Windows for Arm although still slow and unoptimized for Pi, and everyday applications like browsers and office apps as well as media, movies, etc decently, but no where near playing demanding games.


Replacing a smartphone is not possible as the Pi needs a non-portable power supply. But there are specialized Linux/Android distributions that bypass planned obsolescence, or if anyone needs to de-google/de-apple themselves, and make old phones work like brand new.
https://lineageos.org/

[Inversion]

Here's a brief explanation of the Raspberry Pi. No one has posted to this thread since 02/10/12.

timeanddate

From and including: Friday, February 10, 2012
To, but not including Saturday, May 24, 2025

Result: 4852 days
It is 4852 days from the start date to the end date, but not including the end date.

Or 13 years, 3 months, 14 days excluding the end date.

Or 159 months, 14 days excluding the end date.

01/20/21 (2:07)

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eZ74x6dVYes

[meat suit]

Many thanks for the interest and replies :-)
It seems there are people achieving 4g mobile connectivity with the Raspberry nowadays, I only had a brief search around so far..
Spotted a £35 touch screen for Raspberry on ebay too.

Mobile power cant be difficult with batteries, what does it need? 12v and 5v dc?

I have Linux mint on a laptop and it does what I need mostly. Had Ubuntu years ago too and liked it.
So if the Rapberry can run one of those with signal, wattsapp and firefox browser then I am sorted.

Not too bothered about normal phone calls and texts, but I would keep my android going as is so I can cover that.

I have looked into de-googled phones, but somebody close to me has just bollo###ed up his fairphone trying to put Linux on there, so I cant risk that..

Ideally I would buy or get somebody to build the setup as I cant see myself understanding how to do it.
I think there would be a real market for this.. unless there is a Linux touch screen pad out there with a sim slot..?

[meat suit]

I should emphasize that one of the main reasons for all this is that I want to get a physical distance between me and my phone.
This is to get away from the radiation mainly and secondly I need a bigger touch screen as I have trouble typing on my phone. ( You will notice my constant typos)

I had a look around for touch screens that I could plug into my phone via usb but no luck so far.