New article in The Register

28th of November 2011 by liz

I don’t usually post links to media stories about Raspberry Pi here, but today’s article in The Register was so good and so informative that I thought it’d be a shame to leave it hidden away in the news section of the forums.

We’re getting lots of email today, having been on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme (audio link at top right) and mentioned in the Next Gen report this morning. Things are moving very fast here at Raspberry Towers; this looks like being an interesting week!

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drgeoff, 4 minutes ago: Troubleshooting • Re: Act and per light only
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting is a good place to start.
pbill, 5 minutes ago: CSI camera module • Re: Encoding Video & Taking Stills
After applying and compiling the "no preview" patch, here is what I've found.Both the still image and video applications work great. I'm able to capture video or still images.However, when the video grabber is running and I try to execute…
alexeames, 10 minutes ago: General discussion • Re: Sending a message to Pi via bluetooth
What sort of message? You can get a bluetooth serial adaptor that plugs into the UARTs and allows a console login, or you can use a bluetooth USB dongle for full-on bluetooth.
zog, 12 minutes ago: Other languages • Flumoxed - C To Pascal code conversion
Hi, I am trying to write directly to the hardware registers on the pi using free pascal without using wiringpi. I am using a Gert board to test the code. The code is a conversion from Gert Van Loo's gb_common.c.…
plugwash, 12 minutes ago: Raspbian • Re: udev and USB NIC problem
DivBy0 wrote:Raspian specifically excludeAfaict this is a characteristic of the raspberry pi foundation raspbian image not of raspbian in general.

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45 comments

Robert Hedges on
November 28, 2011 at 12:11 pm said:

This is what I have been looking for as a gift for my child. I am a child of the BBC modle B erea and feel this will introduce my son to computer like my feeble attempts of 8 bit programming did for me. Dispite being an Engineer now and nothing to do with software, I do feel my grasp of computers is better from my informative years….

Comment ↓
Montekuri on
November 28, 2011 at 12:22 pm said:

Everything is well written, but one point took my attention:
“But the ARM side is a standard v7 core…”.
As I knew, the R-Pi is an ARMv6 device.

Comment ↓
ktiernan on
November 28, 2011 at 12:27 pm said:

Hi
I am an ICT teacher in a middle school in Cranfield (MK43) and I would like to run a project with my year 8s. Our school does an option (one hour a week) and this would be ideal to get my students into computer science. I could do with some help too.
Would it not be great if there was ascheme of work to give to schools so that the intergration did not have to rely on IT teacher’s professional (or lack of) knowledge.
I am very happy to assist in any way.

Comment ↓
- liz on
  November 28, 2011 at 12:31 pm said:
  
  Small world – I did my GCSEs at Wootton Upper, which I think yours is a feeder school for.
  
  The good news is that the Computing at School folks are working with us to write materials for teachers and students who are new to this sort of thing; we don’t expect teachers without programming experience to be thrown right in the deep end! It should be ready some time in the first half of 2012. If you head over to http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/ you can see more about what they’re up to in a more general sense. They rely on volunteers, and the learning materials are very much a group project; I hope you can get involved!
  
  Comment ↓
  - roobarb! on
    November 29, 2011 at 11:21 pm said:
    
    Fantastic. The device is one thing, but awesome docs will be the making of it.
    
    Comment ↓
    - Vince on
      December 1, 2011 at 5:38 pm said:
      
      Hello RP team
      
      did you see “Alice 3D” tool for teaching kids about
      Object orientated programming…it’s free. It uses
      animation and perhaps the RP is capable enough
      
      thanks. You could wrap it up (Alice) in your eductional
      packs.
      
      http://www.alice.org/
      
      Vince.
      
      Comment ↓
      - Andy Bowes on
        December 2, 2011 at 9:45 am said:
        
        Hi Vince
        
        Alice looks really interesting but I am not sure it is really suitable for Raspberry Pi as Alice is only available for Windows & Macs and not Linux.
        
        Andy
      - LaeMing on
        December 13, 2011 at 2:06 am said:
        
        Site says Win, Mac, Lin. Their intro video said Mac and Lin soon.
Richie on
November 28, 2011 at 1:18 pm said:

If you are interested in this project then maybe you should head here and sign the following e-petition: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/15081

“Start teaching coding as a part of the curriculum in Yr 5. If it can be introduced as a part of the central curriculum in Year 5, then by the time those kids are drawn up through the education system, there would be far less of a disparity between the sexes – and maybe even an increased number of young people with an ability to manipulate open data, relate to code and challenge each other to design and build the digital products that we have not even begun to imagine. Year 8 is too late, we are losing the female coders and we need this generation to help us code a better country”

Comment ↓
- Scribe on
  November 28, 2011 at 9:47 pm said:
  
  Signed!
  
  Comment ↓
pauldow on
November 28, 2011 at 2:27 pm said:

Good article. It should cut way down on the repetitive questions that Liz gets, since it explains so many things about the project.

Ha! I crack me up!
I assume there’s already a keyboard macro set to “That information is in the FAQ.” on Liz’s computer.

Comment ↓
Gert on
November 28, 2011 at 2:28 pm said:

Best article I have seen thus far!

Comment ↓
JanW on
November 28, 2011 at 2:40 pm said:

“Things are moving very fast here at Raspberry Towers; this looks like being an interesting week!”

Now you got me excited! Things certainly seem to have been accelerating over the past few days. Am I reading correctly between the lines that we may expect more news this week?

Comment ↓
- Mehmet on
  November 29, 2011 at 12:12 am said:
  
  That statement also took my attention.
  
  Can we expect a release date announcement (or even release) this week?
  
  Comment ↓
  - liz on
    November 29, 2011 at 12:13 am said:
    
    No, but I applaud your enthusiasm.
    
    Comment ↓
jamesh on
November 28, 2011 at 2:49 pm said:

Writer of the articles certainly seems to have read through the forum posts!

Comment ↓
Lobster on
November 28, 2011 at 3:08 pm said:

Professional and informed article. Enjoyed reading.
. . . meanwhile in Puppy Linux land . . . our forum is back and everyone in the kennels (our name for the Puppyverse) has been issued with extra doggy biscuits to celebrate.
Puppy developers and testers are readying Woof 2, Saluki and Slacko. We are going to have that Puppy on board. Booting faster. Running at full frisk and herding deer at Richmond Park before you can say ‘Fenton’.

Comment ↓
Robert on
November 28, 2011 at 3:30 pm said:

is the article offline? Or have anybody a text backup. Thx.

Comment ↓
cnxsoft on
November 28, 2011 at 3:30 pm said:

This should be a required read before posting in the forum

Comment ↓
colecoman1982 on
November 28, 2011 at 6:55 pm said:

Hi,

I tried posting this in the last update (about the GPIO pins) but I keep getting an error every time I try to post. Thank you for posting the GPIO info, I’d been looking all over for it. I was wondering if anyone could tell me that the theoretical maximum data input speed is for those pins. Are they running at the same frequency as the processor core, or at some other frequency. Sorry, if this question doesn’t make sense for some reason. I’m a little new to this low level of hardware interfacing.

Thanks.

Comment ↓
npo4 on
November 28, 2011 at 9:02 pm said:

I read the The Register regularly and I liked the article,

I’m just wondering though, the article mentioned a model coming with a case next year, will you also be selling the cases separately for early buyers? Thanks

Comment ↓
- liz on
  November 28, 2011 at 9:04 pm said:
  
  We won’t be producing cases until early next year, but when we do, we’ll be selling them separately, yes. We’ll continue selling boards both bare and cased; we’re aware that different people have different needs from them and some will want to build their own casing or to modify the naked board.
  
  Comment ↓
  - npo4 on
    November 29, 2011 at 11:59 pm said:
    
    Thanks, that’s good to know as I want to buy one as soon as it’s out, but would still want a case for when I’m taking it with me.
    
    Do you have any idea of the price of the case?
    
    Comment ↓
- Montekuri on
  November 28, 2011 at 9:10 pm said:
  
  Yes, they will sell cases separately (I think).
  
  And you can create your own case. See this topic:
  http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=134
  
  Comment ↓
Marcus Trent on
November 28, 2011 at 10:22 pm said:

Enough now. I command thee to release these treats.

Comment ↓
- hamjudo on
  November 29, 2011 at 2:01 am said:
  
  I think I speak for the majority of eager customers. Finish the test run. Make sure those work. Then do the 10k run.
  
  We’re mature. We can wait. If the test run doesn’t work, then fix the design and try again.
  
  Nobody wants a half baked raspberry pi.
  
  Comment ↓
pomiloup on
November 29, 2011 at 1:10 am said:

Great Article! I would like to get in touch with Liz and Eben regarding using the Rasberry Pi in a school project in Bangladesh with NGO Rotary International as we already are using computers but would love to use the Rasberry Pi! Let me know the best way to get in touch! Kind regards, Genevieve (@pomiloup on twitter or skype)

Comment ↓
wrhii on
November 29, 2011 at 2:43 am said:

Looking at the pictures in the article, verses what we’ve seen on the front page, I see some discrepancies. Were the ones in the article old versions, and so were part of the ‘design phase’, and not final product?

Comment ↓
- Jordan Reese on
  November 29, 2011 at 8:15 am said:
  
  Correct, the photos of actual boards in the article are the alpha boards that were used for testing.
  
  Comment ↓
A Ross on
November 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm said:

The Register article was a great reminder for me to join the mailing list – after reading about this project earlier this year -
I would love to get two for Christmas – one for my 11 year old and one for me!
Keep up with the good work.

Comment ↓
@Storris on
November 29, 2011 at 1:20 pm said:

I’ve got to tell you guys at the Raspberry, 10,000 is nowhere near enough. I’m going to be needing 3 of those Model Bs, one each for my kids and one for their dad. Learning how to code at the same time should be fun.

I’m also going to be looking at ways to raise funds to purchase enough for both of their schools.

The next 10 years look like they may be a lot of fun.

Thanks to everyone at R-Pi

Comment ↓
- jamesh on
  November 29, 2011 at 2:00 pm said:
  
  10k is just the first batch – more batches to be produced as required, and they are on a fairly short timescale as well once the production process is sorted out.
  
  Comment ↓
  - Montekuri on
    November 29, 2011 at 3:08 pm said:
    
    And this first batch (and just only this first batch) will have order limit.
    So, one individual will not be able to buy a lot of R-Pi’s at a time.
    The order limit (for this first batch) is to give opportunity to everyone “take a byte” in one R-Pi at least.
    Read more in this topic:
    http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=1106.1
    
    Comment ↓
Fruit Lover on
November 29, 2011 at 3:54 pm said:

Where is it? It’s nearly December and still not able to buy one

Pleeeease release them soon.

Comment ↓
SeanD on
November 29, 2011 at 7:18 pm said:

Yes it was a good article and I circulated links to it around interested parties here in Silicon Valley. The effect that the BBC and ZX81/Spectrum had is still felt fairly strongly here on the other side of the world and there is an expectation that this type of IT education innovation is somehow a natural product of the UK.

For me the real indicator of success will come if the Maker community here adopt the RaspberryPi in the same way that they have the Arduino, or perhaps the two together. The Maker movements driven by Tim O’Reilly and Co. is getting technology into classrooms and on to kitchen tables by enabling adults to have the skills to start the process of enabling kids to teach themselves tech.

Comment ↓
Gary on
November 29, 2011 at 9:24 pm said:

Keep up the great posts! I’m curious about whether you are planning to do any U.S.-based distribution of these with the first big batch perhaps to lower shipping for those of us across the pond?

Comment ↓
- liz on
  November 29, 2011 at 11:32 pm said:
  
  Not for the first batch, but we hope to be bringing in US distribution in the next few months, depending on demand.
  
  Comment ↓
Ronny W on
November 29, 2011 at 10:05 pm said:

ooh man reading that article got me really going now..
I so want the device to be out soon have tons of project going on in my head for it.

Comment ↓
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Silvereyes on
November 30, 2011 at 8:49 pm said:

A good article.

It’s just a pity the Reg seems to let the comments descend into a free-for-all between the OSS Nazis, the Anti-Broadcom League and the Gimmies

Comment ↓
- jamesh on
  December 1, 2011 at 12:16 pm said:
  
  All part of the fun!
  
  Comment ↓
jose cerrejon on
December 1, 2011 at 7:40 am said:

I’m afraid our Rasp. units are in dangerous and we are going to wait a long time to get one because all this public events

Comment ↓
- jamesh on
  December 1, 2011 at 9:15 am said:
  
  Yes, going to be a rush when they launch!
  
  Comment ↓
Silvereyes on
December 1, 2011 at 10:33 am said:

That’s one hell of an understatement there James

Comment ↓
shebaw on
December 6, 2011 at 8:13 am said:

Respect from Ethiopia!

Comment ↓

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