£16 credit-card sized computer. Raspberry Pi

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Created by David Braben, who us old geeks will remember as one 1 half of the team that wrote Elite back in the early 80's on the BBC computer.

Which may be why the new Pi has models A and B ;)

/Geek mode off

That was my first thought when I heard about these a while back. Cambridge, ARM based, Model A and B. There is a small part of me thinking about the good old days - which is what this is about.

I'm going to buy one. I don't know what for yet. I'd be interested in playing with one as a desktop just to see how well it performs. I do a bit of wildlife watching with a webcam and motion detection software. Currently I use a single old laptop, but this could be a good alternative.

In time, you will probably get cases, but the point of this project is to give someone the raw building blocks to let their imagination run wild. It is about computers not being a plug-in-box any more and to bring out that inventiveness again. I found some plastic 3.5" floppy disc boxes the other day that I didn't throw out wondering if they would be useful for anything. You could easily mount one in there. How about a fag packet? As a more practical application than just a silly case, these would be ideal for things like home energy monitoring systems.

I see what the creator is saying. I did a degree in computer science in 1995. Everyone on the course had done programming at home and had played with electronics and hardware to some extent. Pissing about time in the labs was spent doing various programming bits. I took an internet chat package (NUTS) and practically rewrote half of it myself. The main purpose was to chat to my mates at other Universities. The result was I learned C and a hell of a lot about text processing, networking and sockets.

I then went on to work in the same CS department and as the web had exploded by then, students spent their time web surfing. We found students would arrive who had never wrote a program before and would leave never having written anything outside the course labs. At times I feel like I'm the last generation of hardcore geek types.

Hopefully devices like this will bring some of that back to the next generations.
 


I can see why IT geeks might get one to play with, but I don't see why it keeps getting mentioned as a device that will kickstart a new craze in coding for kids?
 
I can see why IT geeks might get one to play with, but I don't see why it keeps getting mentioned as a device that will kickstart a new craze in coding for kids?

The idea is it becomes a toy. Something small you can hack about with and is only £16 if you break it. Got a radio controlled car? Why not fit one to the top with a webcam. Stick a solenoid on it pressing a water pistol trigger and use it to chase the neighbours cat.

My nephew has mentioned an interest in electronics. At that price, I'm thinking it could make a good Christmas present. Get him going something a little more intellectual, learn something and the potential to torture cats, it sounds great.
 
I can see why IT geeks might get one to play with, but I don't see why it keeps getting mentioned as a device that will kickstart a new craze in coding for kids?

The current generation are lost to that, it is the future generation that will be drawn into it, with the restructuring of how IT is to be taught in schools and with these being affordable for all. Then if the schools start using them and they are used in the National Curriculum, then it will undoubtedly increase the number of geeks.

I was lucky enough to be at schools when they had BBC Model B's being wheeled from Class to Class. Off the back of the use of the one at school we got an Acorn Electron and I learnt to program in Basic. This allowed me to get into the code and figure out how to complete Granny's Garden, etc.

I then learnt other programming languages and sparked an interest in programming and ultimately the decision to do IT at school and university and spark my current career.

If I had just been taught how to do Word Processing, Databases and Spreadsheets as part of my Curriculum then I am sure I wouldn't be doing what I do now and would have stuck to my Atari 2600.
 
Re: Raspberry Pi

Definitely

it's the Vic-20 of it's time

actually, more of a BBC Model B

Well the Vic never did me any good!

The young'un is doing his Duke of Edinburgh and this could be a good "skills" project for him to get into. He's got latent nerd tendencies anyway.
 
Re: Raspberry Pi

Well the Vic never did me any good!

The young'un is doing his Duke of Edinburgh and this could be a good "skills" project for him to get into. He's got latent nerd tendencies anyway.

It would be ideal for that, especially with the publicity it's getting now it's finally launched. On trend is the place to be
 
Re: Raspberry Pi

Sold out within minutes this morning and the websites have all but crashed. Should be able to boost production levels and drop the price even more shortly. A great idea by them to be fair.
 
Re: Raspberry Pi

Great to see such interest in something like this, the brainchild of a Brit as well
 
Re: Raspberry Pi

Sold out within minutes this morning and the websites have all but crashed. Should be able to boost production levels and drop the price even more shortly. A great idea by them to be fair.


Our company had over 1,000 phonecalls by 8am today of people enquiring about it and by 4pm we'd had over 75,000 registrations. People going bananas for it and demand far exceeds supply.
 
I took an internet chat package (NUTS) and practically rewrote half of it myself. The main purpose was to chat to my mates at other Universities.

You could be on to summink there mind, get all your mates at uni to chat to each other, mebbes put a page up saying what they're interested in, hoy a few photies up ... spread it round a few more unis, then it could go public, get businesses to advertise on it.

How man, it could be a canny little earner that ...

just needs a name, I'm thinking "book for faces" or something along those lines
 
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