I had to borrow an HDMI->DVI adaptor from work...

They [designers of that cheap board] claim that in the 90's most CS applicants had already started programming on something like C64 or Amiga and in 2012 CS departments only get kids who had done things like web design if at all and conclude that the resason is that computers are nowadays expensive.

I think they are in error. Nowadays much more powerful computers are in fact cheaper.

In 90's a kid would look at a computer game and think that he could do that simple thing himself and would start coding. A tetris clone is only a few days of work even for a kid.

Would a kid in 2012 look at a modern game and say the same thing? Not even a professional programmer can do that alone.

What a tetris clone? Or an Angry Birds clone? Or a tower defence clone?

Not all games are Call of Duty y'know. And not all programmers started with games. A significant point is, though, that your old home pcs came with a programming language right in your face. No OS, just a version of BASIC. They led people to programming. That's what this is intended to do.

You just have to look at the mindshare of the Arduino to realise that they're absolutely right.

And computers might be 'cheaper' these days, but they're not £25 cheap. Even a smartphone is ten times that.

Of course you're being quite selective in your presentation of their motive. They dont entirely focus on cost, in fact...

Hm, no audio input on the Raspberry Pi, so it would need an external digitizer hanging off the USB port to use it as an effects unit. Probably not terribly hard to add one, but...

[edited to say 'input' instead of 'in']
Last edited by Borogove on Fri Jun 29, 2012 2:55 pm; edited 1 time in total

Is there not audio in the HDMI output?

out yes - don't think HDMI is bidirectional..

Oh, sorry, didn't see the "in".

ya - the Pi interests me in some ways..
it is really for experimentation projects.. i thought - you could rig it to harvest media from cameras and clear them without any need for screen..
i got an email saying that they were ready for order the other day..

I just received my first Raspberry Pi as a Xmas gift from great friends who know me all too well! Wow, I feel like a little kid!

Now... how does one make these things ROCK?

Have you tried balancing it on a pencil and slightly poke it with a finger?

Chris

Ha, but please let us know how much extra kit you're going to need to buy just to get some kind of quality audio out of it. USB DAC?
I don't know if you can just send audio through the HDMI as it's lumped into the video drivers that appear to be licensed, and not editable or even view-able.

Have fun though and Merry Holidays!

Dave

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You can send audio thru HDMI with the RPi. At least mine does - every sound is reproduced by my tv's speakers. But I believe you can also use an USB interface.

Oh cool. It's been a while since I've followed the forums on it.

$25? Its £75 in Maplins

But you get the kit that comes with it, the basic PI is just the circuit board in the middle:



But, the idea is that you may have everything else already. I think I could find most of that lot in the stuff I've kept over the years.