The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard, it is a very cheap: only $35
It seems designed for set top box applications.
The SoC is a Broadcom BCM2835. This contains an ARM1176JZFS, with floating
point, running at 700Mhz, and a Videocore 4 GPU. The GPU is capable of
BluRay quality playback, using H.264 at 40MBits/s. It has a fast 3D core
accessed using the supplied OpenGL ES2.0 and OpenVG libraries.The GPU
provides Open GL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264
high-profile decode.
The GPU is capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24 GFLOPs of general
purpose compute and features a bunch of texture filtering and DMA
infrastructure.
That is, graphics capabilities are roughly equivalent to Xbox 1 level of
performance.
RPI include GPIO: General purpose input/output. A pin that can be programmed to do stuff.
Raspberry PI is really small, silent and really low power consumption (5V, 700 mA)
It is good to learn Linux and for home server.
Raspberry PI boot from SD card.
Many Linux distro are available: Debian, Arch Linux, Fedora, Puppy ecc...
You can install in the SD card the distro you prefer and boot.
Xbmc too is already available for RPI.
Of course you can compile and run oscam.
You can easly recompile the kernel for all what you need.
Kernel sources and a cross-compiling toolchain for use on an x86 Linux PC are available at https://github.com/raspberrypi.
Example code for OpenGL ES, OpenMAX and other multimedia APIs is available in the directory /opt/vc/src/hello_pi.
What you need ?
To connect your RPI to your tv or Pc monitor you need an HDMI cable
To power your RPI you can use a power supply: 5V dc, 700-1200mA connected to the mini-usb port (many cellular power supply are compatible.
Peripherals
You have 2 Usb ports available in your RPI.
Maybe once you have set it up you will not need more keyboard or mouse and you will control it via ssh.
But in the meanwhile you need direct access to it we can think you want to use keyboard-mouse, wifi dongles, Usb devices and external usb hdd.
But you have to consider that raspberry PI was designed only for <100mA USB devices! That is because the PI's PSU was chosen with a power budget of 700mA in mind of which 200mA were assigned to the two USB ports, so the raspberry PI's (poly)fuses were designed only for <100mA devices, and typical 140mA polyfuses will have as much as 0.6 volt across them when drawing currents near the 100mA limit. As a consequence the USB ports are only directly suitable for "single current unit" USB devices which according to USB specifications are designed to work with just 4.4 Volt. Not only do non single current unit devices draw more current, (causing greater Voltage drops, and greater stress on the fuses) they also might require 4.75 Volt to work. Therefore any non single current unit devices will only work when powered from a powered hub.
So maybe the best idea is to use a powered hub and a wireless keyboard-touchpad.
In my opinion a good choice is:
Keyboard:
- Logitech K400 wireless keyboard with touchpad
Powered Hub:
- Eminent EM1107. 7 Port USB 2.0 Hub with 2A power adapter. That it's able to power the RPi, external HDD and other peripherals.
In any case it is a good idea to look at the list of RPI verified Peripherals before to buy something:
http://elinux.org/RP...fiedPeripherals
Happy Raspberry !!
