It's been a little while - Raspberry Pi

Hi folks,

   It has been a little while since I have been here, but I now have more to share. I love to mess around with electronics about as much as computers in my spare time and have recently played around with Arduino, which I love. I built a self balancing bot, but I have been having a lot of difficulty with the programming of it. So I've taken a break from it for a while. I will post all the info when I pick it back up.

   In my boredom, I have recently found a micro sized computer called Raspberry Pi and have fallen in love with it. This computer which is roughly the size of a credit card is only $35 and packs a punch. It's not the fastest thing in the world, but it is capable of amazing things. I wont go into the details, but I will say that it is built around an ARM11 processor, has 256MB RAM, HDMI/Composite Out, audio, USB, Ethernet and is powered by only 5 volts through a micro USB cable.

   My co-worker and I both bought one of these and have tried out several operating systems including Debian Linux and XBMC. I have found out that some folks have even installed Android 4.0 ICS on the RPi (Raspberry Pi). My co-worker plans to use his for a carputer and I... Well, I'm not sure yet, but I will definitely install Android on mine because of the absurdly large Google Play Market chock full of software designed for the ARM processor and Android. Several thoughts I've had are: a micro HTPC (Home Theater Personal Computer), an extremely small computer for the kids and a refrigerator accessory to create a shopping list and allow me to scan the bar-code of exhausted food containers.

   Today I also found a couple of RPi cases that I really like. The Adafruit Pi Box and the Built-To-Spec RPi Enclosure Kit which I bought and found that the case schematics were open source, which is always a plus for me.

   There are a large number of accessories available for the RPi also.
Here are some of the many sites that stock them.

• mcm-electronics.com
• newark.com
• thepihut.com
• adafruit.com

   If you would like to share your info about your RPi or have questions, post a comment below.

Update: For those of you interested in getting a Raspberry Pi, now is the time. The Raspberry Pi model B is now being shipped with 512MB of RAM instead of 256MB.This should facilitate the issues with the Android builds.

- Jacob -