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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Raspberry from a windows guy POV
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vasi Guru  Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
Well, I had a lot of fun watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=t1EYwO68wLY&feature=ends creen Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3801 |
I couldn't figure out why he bought it... but I expect lots of other people will have bought one for the same (non-)reason. Still, at least (hopefully) they won't be buying 'mites! John |
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MicroBlocks Guru Joined: 12/05/2012 Location: ThailandPosts: 2209 |
I looked at the raspberry pi too. I figured it could be nice to to use. But of course when you switch it on it does nothing, you have to load a bunch of open source stuff on a closed source broadcom chip. In my view it is a complete failure. It addresses the goal they want to reach on a wrong level. A maximite would fulfill that goal so much better. You switch it on, it works, ready to program. Now kids get different linux versions one working worse than the other, it all has to be configured, updated, etc. A lot of time is wasted getting the thing up and running and keep it running. You can screw up the configuration etc. All that time could be spend programming. I was active in their forum trying to push the idea of a maximite style computer while i did not know about a maximite. :) I grew up with home computers and they had one thing in common. You switched them on and they worked. You programmed something and you were certain it would work on someone else system too because it was exactly the same. Now it depends on what you have loaded and configured. If you screwed up, you pressed reset and it worked again. Maybe someone can port a basic or other language to a raspberry pi in flash, then it would be a nice thing to have. I could use lots of those for projects. Microblocks. Build with logic. |
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djuqa Guru Joined: 23/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 447 |
I think in 12 months time we will see a lot of rPI's installed in the bottom of the cupboard. VK4MU MicroController Units |
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CircuitGizmos Guru Joined: 08/09/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 1425 |
Hopefully the Maximites will rise to the top! Micromites and Maximites! - Beginning Maximite |
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| djuqa Guru Joined: 23/11/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 447 |
Already are in my mind. I have seen lots of articles and posts asking what actually can a rPI be used for. No such problem with the MaxiMite boards. No shortage of applications, projects and Gizmos' already being used & developed. rPI owner == Wannabe Pseudo-Geek 'Mite owner == Legendary Real-Geek VK4MU MicroController Units |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3801 |
To be fair, with so many bought by people who never thought through why they were buying, you'd expect to see lots of posts asking what to do with them! It would happen with 'mites if they sold in similar numbers to people who just bought without any real thought. (Must have more money than sense?) Also to be fair, it's easy to write software that just works on any Linux and it would be especially easy to write software that just works on any rPi. The rPi booting via SD card doesn't seem bad to me. Plenty of projects in effect use a mite the same way (autorun). I suppose the bootstrap in the rPi could be replaced by - for example - a BASIC interpreter if someone wanted to do that. I'm unsure such a person exists. I was somewhat amused that the guy in the video gives up on Linux and then uses xbmc... I found him refreshingly honest about his interests, skills etc. I guess he bought the rPi out of curiosity and that's not so bad a thing especially when it's so cheap to get one. I wonder if they're going to be sold off used very cheaply on ebay shortly, in which case I just need to figure out something to do with a very cheap used one LOL John |
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| jdh2550 Regular Member  Joined: 16/07/2012 Location: United StatesPosts: 62 |
@JohnS - I think you nailed it. Also, FWIW, the "marketing" of the 'mite and the RPi seem different to me. The RPi is "new" and the 'mites are "retro". BTW - I say this based on perception not on a comparison of the technology... |
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| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
- it can be a good off-grid computer, for home/farm automation and data analysis but I guess the same is true for olinuxino. Anyway, if it can handle a gcc compilation, then I know at what is useful. At least, JALv2 compiler with Geany IDE will transform the rPI in a PIC development workstation. But a netbook will do a better job anytime. If you compare it with $100 computer project, we have a winner. I remember when Asus come with EeePC netbooks, it had a linux distro with anything needed for a nice web experience. The Ubuntu did a nice Linux Remix for it. With the required applications to use it as... netbook. This is what rPI is missing IMHO ... an identity (if you target children or students, your Linux O.S. and graphical interface must reflect that first). As a general computer will not do much and will fade away. Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
About Maximite, a romanian friend of mine said something about "the fresh air of youth" ... Now, how someone can be convinced to switch to a Maximite from an rPI, and to which age segment you think you can be the most successful (I have a bad feeling that I can be wrongly understood on this phrase  )? Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3801 |
I thought rPi was meant for school kids doing computing (*). Post-GCSE, I think, so roughly age 16+, max 18ish, since otherwise all they seem to be taught here is M$ stuff (Windoze, Orifice, Exploder etc). Seriously, for a moment, no-one should be taught M$ stuff except as "how not to do it". In that context the rPi looks a huge step forward. (I don't know why they wanted it so small and awkward.) (*) for the stupidest (and I really do mean stupidest) of reasons it's called ICT in education here, though everyone else says IT John |
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mariae71 Regular Member Joined: 22/08/2012 Location: SwedenPosts: 43 |
I'm a subscriber to his channel and I pretty sure he mentioned in an earlier video that the Raspberry Pi was donated to him. 2 x DuinoMite Mega 1 x DuinoMite eMega |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3801 |
Donated! hmm, can I get one the same way? John |
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powerednut Senior Member  Joined: 09/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 221 |
They are only $38 bucks or so for the Model Bs (512mb ram, ethernet, 2xusb). I've got one and its really easy to use. I'm used to Debian though, so your mileage may vary. Updating it is really simple too. I really like having the language choices available to me too. For most of my programming needs its got c and c++ with the standard operating system image. Python is built in if I just want something knocked up quickly. Java is there if I want something slow and painful. Bash scripting is available for my simplifying any admin tasks. Having a proper GUI interface helps too. If I need to look something up while coding on it I just fire up the browser and google it. When I've found what I'm looking for I switch back to my coding window. Can you do that with your Maxs? If I want to code on my other computers then I can do that too, and just transfer the files to it via scp. If I wanted to I could set up a network file share and access files on my RPi directly. I'm not sure what screen resolution is like on Maximites, but my RPi is coasting along nicely at 1280x720x24. I got mine to experiment with and see what I can do with it. At the moment I've got it imaging a hard drive for me. Sure I could do that with a real pc, but this way I don't have anything important tied up shifting data around. I love my RPi. You'd have to work awfully hard to convince me a Maximite is value for money by comparison. *edit* total time getting it up and running was just over 1 hour, and almost all of that was downloading the system image. Once the image is downloaded, you transfer it to an SD Card, plug it into the RPi and away you go. A couple of questions appear the first time you run it (very easy to answer) and then your up and running with a full GUI desktop. |
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| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
BASIC language computer for programing microcontrollers. This is where the roads are departing. Maximite is a very pleasant way to program a microcontroller. It beats a PICAXE hands down. Here, a Raspberry PIC is viewed from this perspective. And is the zone where Maximite beats a rPI - using actuators and sensors in seconds. Maximite is not a computer in the common sense, you can't compare it with the modern micro/mini/normal PCs... Is just not the case - we know already. But... rPI is trying also to be "microcontroller wise" ... and that is the case  Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| jdh2550 Regular Member Joined: 16/07/2012 Location: United StatesPosts: 62 |
@powerednut - how easy is it to access the GPIO, A/D, SPI, I2C etc from the installed languages? This is genuine curiosity - I'm not trying to say "a is better than b". As vasi says - the beauty of the 'mites is their ability to quickly interface to other hardware. I see the 'mite as a rapid prototyping system for microcontroller type projects whereas from your description of the rPI it seems to be an extremely inexpensive personal computer (nothing wrong with that!). However, if the rPI can easily access these peripherals (without having to write scads of Linux driver code first) then it would certainly be an interesting tool I'd like to add to my toolbox... BTW the 'mites are amazing value for money for getting into CAN development. About 1/4 the price of the Arduino (because you need to add can + vga + sd card). Adding CAN hardware to the rPI would cost about the same as adding it to the 'duino - but then it becomes a matter of how much time needs to be invested in the software? Still lovin' my 'mite - but would also get a kick out of an rPI (I'm sure I'll get one sooner or later) |
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| powerednut Senior Member Joined: 09/12/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 221 |
GPIO is really straight forward. i2c and spi both seem straight forward (havn't tried anything other than toggling pins yet myself), and there are plenty of tutorials on it. You can play with the GPIO port straight from a bash shell (command prompt) too if you want - you don't even need to write code. Thats pretty handy for stuffing around with. The weak point is the ADC. the RPi doesn't include a hardware ADC, so if you want it, you'd be forced to use an external chip, and then interface it somehow (i.e via spi or i2c). That means your going to have to buy or make a circuit to handle that. Oh, and I think there is only 1 hardware PWM pin in the GPIO as well.... Both of those problems could limit its usefulness for electronics experimenting, depending on what your trying to do with it. If you want BASIC then apparantly you can download and install Sinclair Basic (get it here ). Anyway, I know you guys here love your Max's, and they seem like really cool little devices. I just think you get more bang for your buck with a RPi. I think part of my anti-max attitude is I'm a language snob, and BASIC is waaaaay down the list of laungauges that I'd like to program in. |
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| aargee Senior Member Joined: 21/08/2008 Location: AustraliaPosts: 255 |
... I think that's fine. This is a Microcontroller forum, not just MM. I have two MM Originals, One UBW32 with Mick's board behaving as a colour MM, another UBW32 with 3.x MM, numerous Picaxes, a couple of Basic Stamps, quite a few raw PICs and now a R Pi playing in Python. - Rob. Oh.. and I'm about play with programming an Atmel device in a 9 channel RC transmitter. For crying out loud, all I wanted to do was flash this blasted LED. |
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| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
I find programming AVRs (apart from "the fuses thing" and the fact that avr-gcc compiler does not have bit support) a little easier than Microchips... and this was a surprise to me... Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
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| JakeStew Newbie  Joined: 02/12/2012 Location: United StatesPosts: 11 |
Wow! A lot of RPi bashing here. Just kinda struck me as funny. I'm new so don't rip into me too hard. I don't use either system as I have no need for either but... The RPi was built for people who want some real power for a good price and like to write in a real programming language. It seems to me that the MM doesn't have any of that. The MM seems like a weak processor that people are writing programs for in a funky language. I don't see how there's any real comparison between the two. |
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