Raspbery Pi
Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:00 pm
Have you seen the Raspberry Pi? For $35, you get a credit card sized computer. It's really bare bones, you need to supply an SD card for memory, USB powersource, keyboard, and monitor/TV - but many people have those lying around. It doesn't even have a case. Only 256 mb ram. But it apparently has twice the performance of most smart phones for most computing tasks. Of course, it's designed for Linux or the operating system would cost more than it.
The intent was to make computers more widely available so that kids can learn programming by actually screwing around nstead of just in classes. In that regard, the impact might be greater outside the U.S. as most kids with an environment to encourage programming already have some kind of computer. But for most Americans, it's semi-disposable so you could try things you wouldn't with a thousand dollar machine.
But I'm curious how this will impact computing and smart systems in general. How much does it cost to develop and manufacture specialized circuit boards? It might be cheaper to buy a few thousand of these for some devices and adapt them. Woudln't it be cool if most smart devices had the exact same guts running them? Adapting and combining would be much simpler.
There's already a huge backlog of orders but I'll probably order one in a few months if they don't turn out to be all flash and no substance. I hope their plan pans out.
Here's their faq:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs
The intent was to make computers more widely available so that kids can learn programming by actually screwing around nstead of just in classes. In that regard, the impact might be greater outside the U.S. as most kids with an environment to encourage programming already have some kind of computer. But for most Americans, it's semi-disposable so you could try things you wouldn't with a thousand dollar machine.
But I'm curious how this will impact computing and smart systems in general. How much does it cost to develop and manufacture specialized circuit boards? It might be cheaper to buy a few thousand of these for some devices and adapt them. Woudln't it be cool if most smart devices had the exact same guts running them? Adapting and combining would be much simpler.
There's already a huge backlog of orders but I'll probably order one in a few months if they don't turn out to be all flash and no substance. I hope their plan pans out.
Here's their faq:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs