Hardware

We are a secondary school wanting to buy about 10 Pi's to use as a club but our techys tell us the additional cabling and monitors etc will cost £130 each?

This seems steep - how has everyone else managed to work around this?

Thanks for any advice
H

Well , there are cheap Adapters , so you can use old monitors.

http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals - you'll have to scroll down.

Furthermore , ask them if they deem a "headless" setup possible , connecting the Pis to existing computers
( called VNC).

ghans

I don't think that should be the case. Get your techies to check if there is a DV-in port on 10 of your monitors and then you just need a HDMI to DVI cable. About £3.00

You also need a power supply - about 5 or 6 quid and you should be able to use your existing mice and keyboards.

Cheapest DVI monitors go for around 75 EUR here. Assuming you have similar pricing in the UK that would be +/- 60 GBP.

Would still need to add DVI<->HDMI adapter, power supply, keyboard, mouse and SD card though.
(and optionally cases, network cables, network switch)

I bought my dvi monitor for £12 secondhand and use a £3 hdmi to dvi adapter - are schools allowed to buy second-hand clobber?

The idea is that schools would use existing equipment so the cost would be minimal.
Apart from a power supply I bought with the Pi, my only essential purchase was an HDMI/DVI cable from Amazon for just over £2.
If setting up the Pi is costing a lot of money you need to look at the whole thing again.
Surely a school will be awash with keyboards, mice and monitors.

bet all those monitors are vga though!

And a plethora of PS/2 mice and keyboards. The mice will probably have those dinky rubber balls in them too!

More seriously though, how about the composite output and an old TV. There could be several TVs floating about that are no use for receiving broadcasts any more.

I use a ps2 keyboard and ps2 mouse with my pi via a £1 chinese active ps2 to usb adaptor off ebay

Absolutely. All the old junk I have is PS/2. It is all completely indestructible.
I also have the Y shaped PS/2 - USB connector, leaving a USB slot free for a memory stick.
When new kit comes in all the old stuff gets thrown out but it all still works.
All my PCs are at least 8 years old. They all work fine with Ubuntu.

[jamesh]

My company throws away a lot of working USB keyboards and mice - every time a new system comes in the old bits get scrapped.

I've asked if I can have them. Depending on the answer, I'll be giving them away once I've cleaned them up a bit (if necessary). I'm hoping I get enough to be able to fill any gaps local school may have.

Anyone else work for a company that does this? Seems like a terrible waste to me. Well worth asking around.

My company throws away a lot of working USB keyboards and mice - every time a new system comes in the old bits get scrapped.

I've asked if I can have them. Depending on the answer, I'll be giving them away once I've cleaned them up a bit (if necessary). I'm hoping I get enough to be able to fill any gaps local school may have.

Anyone else work for a company that does this? Seems like a terrible waste to me. Well worth asking around.

Hey I use a keyboard from 1993 as our main keyboard - and IBM Model M. I recently bought a rather nice Filco mechanical keyboard to use on my laptop and my RaspPi. Cost far more than the RaspPi. Not quite as nice as the old Model M, the action is a bit light for my taste, but still quite nice. So when I get new machines the new keyboards are the ones that get dumped. I can't remember the last computer that came with a nice keyboard.

I bought a VGA to HDMI adapter from Amazon for £14.03 and a Nokia power supply for £3.30 - both work fine.

So the actual additional cost can be less than £20.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neewer-Black-Ad ... B007KEIRNG
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nokia-N97-Mains ... B0021DXU38

In this modern world.....

There is a slight problem with your order. (See below.)
....
We're sorry. This item can't be shipped to your selected destination.

.... can't we just get worldwide shipping? Bah.

STUPID amazon. They KNOW who you are, and advertize in big letters "free shipping available for this product" and then it turns out only for US customers. Here: the same, they know that they won't be able to ship it to me and then let me go through checkout almost all the way before telling me.

[update} Ah! look. They are available on ebay with worldwide (free) shipping! I got one.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0933917146

I bought a VGA to HDMI adapter from Amazon for £14.03 and a Nokia power supply for £3.30 - both work fine.

So the actual additional cost can be less than £20.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neewer-Black-Ad ... B007KEIRNG
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nokia-N97-Mains ... B0021DXU38

Bought the same Neewer adapter and it shorted out the D2 diode on my Pi. Would not recommend this product! Having messed things up once I would strongly advise anyone who wants to convert HDMI to VGA to bite the bullet and pay for one of the adapters that have been reported as definitely working on the wiki.

I bought a VGA to HDMI adapter from Amazon for £14.03 and a Nokia power supply for £3.30 - both work fine.

So the actual additional cost can be less than £20.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Neewer-Black-Ad ... B007KEIRNG
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nokia-N97-Mains ... B0021DXU38

Bought the same Neewer adapter and it shorted out the D2 diode on my Pi. Would not recommend this product! Having messed things up once I would strongly advise anyone who wants to convert HDMI to VGA to bite the bullet and pay for one of the adapters that have been reported as definitely working on the wiki.

Leaving aside that I didn't have this problem, when it comes to 'DEFINITELY WORKING' the phrase YMMV comes to mind and this adapter was recommended by and is used by asb as per posting here.

Who's he you ask? One of the Foundation team that's been working on this since before we heard of it. So as recommendations goes I shall leave our listeners to make up their own mind.

Bought the same Neewer adapter and it shorted out the D2 diode on my Pi. Would not recommend this product! Having messed things up once I would strongly advise anyone who wants to convert HDMI to VGA to bite the bullet and pay for one of the adapters that have been reported as definitely working on the wiki.

Bought what looks to be the same adapter (except in white) from eBay, and it does work fine for me.

Did your Pi work before, or was this the first time it was hooked up to any display?

Thanks everyone really helpful!