How would you use a Raspberry Pi device?

[eben]

How would you use a $25 Linux box? We've heard from people who want to put them in cars, balloons and sounding rockets, connect them to HAM radios or use them as NAS boxes and home media servers.

Can you think of something we've not seen yet?

[bircoe]

Streaming radio box
Webcam Server instead of $200 video baby monitor!
Vehicle Tracking
Vehicle Diagnostics, full OBDII logger with touch screen interface!
Simple Desktop Computer (Only switch on the main computer when it's grunty 4 cores are required for actual work instead of sitting around idle most the day)

I could go on forever!

[eben]

Quote from bircoe on July 27, 2011, 22:56
Streaming radio box
Webcam Server instead of $200 video baby monitor!
Vehicle Tracking
Vehicle Diagnostics, full OBDII logger with touch screen interface!
Simple Desktop Computer (Only switch on the main computer when it's grunty 4 cores are required for actual work instead of sitting around idle most the day)

I could go on forever!

Baby monitor. Now that's a thought. I couldn't believe how much those things cost.

[amiga65]

media server / receiver for each tv
kitchen puter with wifes recipe db and why not hulu and boxee
video chat from house to work shop
and if i can find a small enough touch screen my own homemade handheld that works the way i want

[pmcmorris]

I'd like to port the "love" lua scriptable game engine to the Pi. I think that it's a great tool for teaching kids to program. Putting that together with an affordable and portable platform will be magic.

[petek]

I'm tempted to stick one in my old dead ZX Spectrum's case!
Get it to run an emulator.
I can then take up from where my programming knowledge stopped!
Mind you I'll probably get frustrated and end up playing Sabre Wulf for hours instead.
You can probably add 8bit games machine to the list as well then!

[bircoe]

MINITURE ARCADE CABINETS!!!! OH YEAH PACMAN!!!!

[abishur]

NAS is more the direction of what I'm thinking. Depending on how much power I can get out of it, I'd like to have it running an apache server, proxy server, and possibly even providing some firewall action by placing it between my router and modem. Of course I'd want to add a second ethernet USB so I could have a dedicated WAN side and a dedicated LAN side.

Assuming it will be able to handle the larger SD cards in the end, there's quite a bit it would be able to without even having to add an external hard drive. Plus I always let it get real hot in my house when I'm not home in the summer to save some cash on AC, so the thought of having such a low power (and therefore low heat) device is very attractive!

[abishur]

I also like the thought of buying a couple of them and having them each be available for a specific task. I mean you could have a dozen of them and still be using less power than a traditional PC... though you would need a much larger network switch to handle all those CAT cables. I guess the point is there's a ton I'd love to do with these guys and I can't wait to get one so I can start testing for myself what these puppies can really do!

(Extremely Portable Media PC, Old Console Emulator, it goes on)

[ArturO]

Hi,
I want to use it as home/office monitor (like IP camera). With its cost it is perfect for this use. Also vehicle tracking with recording the road on SD card.

[Aurele]

Hi
Why not in a drone (quadricopter)

[eben]

Quote from bircoe on July 28, 2011, 05:09
MINITURE ARCADE CABINETS!!!! OH YEAH PACMAN!!!!

You've seen this right

http://www.thinkgeek.com/elect.....ming/e762/

[abishur]

Another thing the Raspberry would be very usefully for is inventory tracking. At the last place I worked I had to set up an inventory tracking for our IT department. I used a free piece of software called tracmor (http://www.tracmor.com/). I had to lug around a laptop since a portable scanner with wifi connectivity that could view a website built on Ajax just isn't cost effective. But a low cost tiny screen and a usb scanner with the raspberry, instant low cost portable inventory tracking system.

[AVee]

I think you could (with a proper case) there could be outdoor uses for this as well. With a bit of IO and say a smartcardreader it could do access control, run alarm systems, control your garden lightning etc. For those kind of applications a version without HDMI (but with means to control small lcd displays) could also be usefull. If the power requirements are low enough (e.g. run for years of a few batteries when mostly idle) I might even know a commercial use...

[bircoe]

Quote from eben on July 28, 2011, 11:38
Quote from bircoe on July 28, 2011, 05:09
MINITURE ARCADE CABINETS!!!! OH YEAH PACMAN!!!!

You've seen this right

http://www.thinkgeek.com/elect.....ming/e762/

I have indeed however on their site is this lovely little snippet:

"Shipping restrictions: We cannot ship this item outside of the U.S. and Canada"

Sadly Australia is outside of the USA, and I've not been able to locate an AU stockist or another way to have them shipped to Aus (even emailed Thinkgeek and their answer was no... they seem to not like making money? and most of the geek's live in USA right?), besides, for $100 I could buy 4 Raspberry Pi's!

[phaedrusnz]

I could see this being part of a beer brewing system... something that can monitor a temperature sensor, and turn on/off heating or cooling devices to keep fermentation temperatures exactly as i want them

[MDC]

I have been thinking what I would do for hours. I think I would see about making a fully working laptop the size of a mid to large mobile phone. No idea how I would do it though.

[hardcore]

It just has to be a wearable computer.
But a bit disappointed you guys went "hardwired", WIFI would have been better, would have allowed wearable networking devices, plus it would be easier to use in education.
Currently the students would be tied to the LAN cables, kids and cables don't mix, with WIFI (without the need for a USB dongle), it would really open up the device.

HC

[liz]

@HC Initially, at least, onboard wifi is just prohibitively expensive, and will drive the price of the device to a point way above where we want it to be if we're actually going to get it into the hands of the people we want to see using it. Later iterations will, we hope, have wifi, because if we manage a decent number of sales it increases our bargaining power with chip manufacturers.

@phaedrusnz - I'm pleased to see you say that. I was planning on using one with a temperature sensor too, for sous vide cooking. Those things are an absurd price if you buy them as is, but I'm thinking that with a £5 immersion heater, a temperature sensor and a coolbox, I've probably got all I need!

[scottystreet]

I'd love to get 10 of these cross-computing... It's like a dream!! I could do what this device was born for: COMPUTE PI!

Anyway - enough of that. This would be great as a server... Continuing on from the wearable computer idea, I reckon it would be cool to sew this into a coat

[ktichenor]

Quote from phaedrusnz on July 28, 2011, 21:47
I could see this being part of a beer brewing system... something that can monitor a temperature sensor, and turn on/off heating or cooling devices to keep fermentation temperatures exactly as i want them

I use this. http://goo.gl/vrGeY
Works really well.
I have it hooked up to a large chest freezer that i use as a fermentation chamber for my lagers.
I'm sure you could build something quite a bit more complex with the Raspberry, but I think the Johnson does pretty much everything I need.

Now the idea of building small arcade units is quite a nice idea.
Ironically that was my first thought of what I would use a Raspberry for.

[Cephadai]

Mostly for programming.

[ukscone]

i'm thinking that porting blassic (and fixing/updating the graphics modes and adding more dialects too) would be kind of fun and at least minimally useful in a braindead way. other than that using it for emulators and running python, lua, euphoria interpreters could be nice too.

[Unnamed]

Good afternoon.
I would like to make the system was modular:
1. The possibility of Wi-Fi module
2. 3G/gsm module
3. SD card
4. GPS module

With this you can already do almost anything.

[Chris]

I am a web developer and I plan on purchasing 4 of these when they are available.

1) To hook to the Main TV for light browsing and basically HTPC
2) As a standalone almost localhost LAMP enviroment so I can access from all PC's not just my main PC
3) As a light weight PC in my Room, Next to the Powerful and Powerhungry one I have so I only use my Main PC when I need the power.
4) In my car for an on board car PC hooked up to a low power touch screen monitor ( if android is supported )