Raspberry Pi 2 now out

[Mark Hammer]

1Gig RAM, 6x CPU speed increase, 4 USB ports, MS offering Windows 10 free download for it.

Same $35 price. What's not to love?

[big_teee]

So I presume you have a processor and ram built on the board?
Where do you put a hard drive, and how would you power it.
By the time you do a display, a hard drive, power supply, You will be up to cheap laptop prices.
I read on the raspberry blog that Win 10 free to Makers?
Not sure what that means, and who qualifies as a Maker?
I would stick to Debian, or a Ubuntu product.
T

[Mark Hammer]

It is a surprisingly complete system. It uses a flashdrive as a solid-state HDD. I have a 32G stick in my model B. You are correct in that the user requires an external power supply, a keyboard/input device of some type, and a screen, but it does provide HDMI and composite video out, as well as multi-channel audio out. Think of the unit as a very good open-source expandable tablet. There is a s**tload of 3rd-party peripherals for it (check out Sparkfun for some examples), and it has a nicely developed I/O bus that permits addons of all sorts. Converses very hospitably with Arduinos and the like.

Believe me, it's a LOT of computer for $35.

Runs a variety of scaled-down Linux releases. Here a bit about the free Win 10 thing. http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/796...-pi-windows-10 The "Maker" reference is to the spinoff community from MAKE magazine.

[big_teee]

I agree it has a lot on it, and it has the minature SD Card slot that could be used for a HD.
Beyond that, it looks like you could spend a lot of money making it usable.
In a classroom environment, it might be neat, cause the whole class could take turns using the same monitor, and keyboard.
It has no sound either.
For my money, I'll stick with cheap laptops.
T

[The Dude]

Just "thinking out loud": This might be a cheap platform for building software driven effects and modeling?

[dwmorrin]

Just "thinking out loud": This might be a cheap platform for building software driven effects and modeling?

Here's your answer: Raspberry Pi becomes a guitar effects processor | Hackaday

[The Dude]

Hey, thanks for the link dwmorrin! That's kind of what I was thinking. Reading some of the comments, it seems latency was a bit of an issue. With the newer/better/faster Pi 2, maybe not so much.

[The Dude]

After a bit of Google searching, I see I'm not even close to the first one to think of this. There are quite a few links that come up. Here's another demo.

[Mark Hammer]

The latency issue likely results from the fact that he's getting the CPU to do all the work. I would imagine that if some of the labour was farmed out to a DSP chip, or even an Arduino, the latency might be reduced. And, as you rightly note, the faster processor and greater RAM will likely help a lot.

It could make a helluva drum machine, though, or a very smart looper.

[dwmorrin]

There's a least one plug and play board for better audio performance for the first Pi:
Wolfson Audio Card ID: 1761 - $34.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
Appears to have your basic set of digital effects built in (EQ and such... see datasheet)
Seems like you should be able to tinker with the code, but I know little about these things.
Probably we'll see more things like this crop up for DIY digital audio.

[big_teee]

So how does the raspberry handle a bios?
How do you boot and load an OS?

[dwmorrin]

Here you go: FAQs | Raspberry Pi

[Mark Hammer]

Gotta love the question there: Does it fit in an Altoids tin?