Raspberry Pi

[FantaSauce]

Am gonna be getting one of these bad boys over the summer and was wondering what people had done with them so far.
What's the best OS you found for them so far?
What kinda applications do you use them for?

[Infidelitas]

We have one that we use to measure our solar power output - so we can remotely see how much electricity we're making.

[FantaSauce]

That's a pretty cool little system, Did you have to get some extra modules for it to do that?

[Infidelitas]

That's a pretty cool little system, Did you have to get some extra modules for it to do that?

There is a Wi-Fi dongle plugged into the inverter and the raspberry pi connects to it.

[FantaSauce]

Ah cool, Anyone else have any uses?
One of the cool ones i've seen is to get a battery set up for it and then you could use it as a GPS pretty easily, OR Video on a Bike :P

[Infidelitas]

Ah cool, Anyone else have any uses?
One of the cool ones i've seen is to get a battery set up for it and then you could use it as a GPS pretty easily, OR Video on a Bike :P

They're really cheap too.

[FantaSauce]

Yeah i was looking at one with everything that i'd need for it and it was like £40

[TheMatrix]

What can it do that I can't with a few RS-232 ports and some TTL chips?

[FantaSauce]

I am not that knowledgeable yet! Could you please put that in laymans? :P

[Fanta_Lover44]

Am gonna be getting one of these bad boys over the summer and was wondering what people had done with them so far.
What's the best OS you found for them so far?
What kinda applications do you use them for?

Xbmc, I use this OS for watching movies on the tv that ive missed as this is built for streaming, you can pick it up from there website and they don't charge anything. Theres tones to choose from!

[FantaSauce]

Haha COol thanks,

Btw the reason they don't charge is cause it's the GNU Convention that means that no one can charge for a linux distro if they have taken a kernel that was created under the GNU convention. So Most linux Distos are free because of that

[LunarScorpio]

Debian, that is the best OS

Yeah, I have had 5, broken 4 through hardware hacking. (and fixed some of them)

I now use it to annoy teachers and plug it in and do homework on it (openoffice by the way)

They are fab, get the model with 2 usbs and make sure to get a USB hub

[FantaSauce]

Yeah that's what i plan on doing.

[TheMatrix]

Btw the reason they don't charge is cause it's the GNU Convention that means that no one can charge for a linux distro if they have taken a kernel that was created under the GNU convention. So Most linux Distos are free because of that

Do you mean the GNU General Public License?

Nowhere does it say anything about it needing to be free(as in free beer, as Richard Stallman would say).
I can make a program, license it under GPL, and charge you $20 to get it. I would need to provide you the source, however. Huawei(as evil as they may be) does this, you can send them $20 and they will mail you a CD-ROM containing the source to their version of Android. Pretty reasonable, too!
Here is an excerpt that is from the third paragraph of the GPLv3 (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)'s Preamble:
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.

[FantaSauce]

Ah, Okay thanks for clearing that up. I was taught in University that there was something that was relating to the price of them? Not sure where but it's coming from a pretty credible source. I may have just misinterpretted what he was saying however.