>>915621
https://youtu.be/Jj4pjfU_-jo

Video is kinda outdated since the B+ but still, my point is, you can learn a lot about the Raspberry Pi and really anything else on youtube. Youtube is great for this sort of thing, search around on there.

Also check this out right now,

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

>>915626
Thanks, I'm checking this out !

I've already bought this bundle, that's what made me curious about all of this and made me visit this board ! I haven't read all of these magazines yet though but I feel that I need the very basics before continuing reading them. (and your video seems to be able to help me)

>>915621
Honestly, I would say the RPi is more /g/ than /diy/. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of cool embedded projects you could do with it, but you have to understand that it's an actual computer and not just a microprocessor, and is therefore more suited towards such high-level tasks (for instance, hosting your own web server or doing graphical processing).
>>915626
That's not even a B+, that's a B.

RPI has GPIO pins that are extremely useful for electronics projects: drive motors with an H-bridge, control LED strips, read an SPI compass sensor, or anything else you can think of. This isn't something you can easily do with a computer that's only got USB and Ethernet ports.

If you only want to get into software there's not much reason to use an RPI. It's just a computer with specs like a desktop from the year 2000. It's no easier to learn programming with it than the computer you already own.

With a raspberry PI you're working on top of a Linux OS that provides a file system, tcp/ip stack, multithreading, etc. If your project doesn't need any of that or a "powerful" CPU you're better off using an Arduino or any other microcontroller. That way you don't have to spend hours getting the OS setup and learning how to use Linux or Windows IOT just to write some code to blink an LED.

>>915713
>It's no easier to learn programming with it than the computer you already own.
Well... if you fuck up bad with an RPi, starting from scratch with a fresh Raspbian install is no big deal. If you fuck up bad enough with your own computer, you have a lot more to lose. Though I suppose you can cover your ass by booting to a small throwaway disk partition or an external drive.

Actually, I've built a pretty decent robot with a pi. The book is by Wolfram Donat. Yes that name is real. lol There's a metric fuckton of books out there with different projects.. Either go to amazon, or if you are a cheap bastard, kickass.

>>915955
BTW, if you build the bot, don't use the kid's toy wheels, and seriously consider going to 4 motors. The two he specced burn up your battery charge in no time flat. That and they aren't designed for continuous use. I used rubber hand truck wheels with the bearings locked, and ended up using 4 cheap cordless screwdrivers for motion. Fucker will spin all 4 wheels now if it's pulling something or climbing uphill.

I'm using a Pi 2 as a media player/server, OSMC makes that task dirt simple.

im using my pi2 as desktop replacement until my new power supply comes friday. I normally use it as a media player.

>>915980
If you only need web browsing, raspbian will do.

>>915992
yes thats basically all it will do, i got the printer to work lastnight, no youtube or webm support kind of sucks. i dual boot raspnbian and osmc.

>>915621

The two big microprocessors on the market right now are the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino. They take very different approaches.

Raspberry Pi:
+ Runs full Linux (fully interactive computer with a graphical display)
+ Native programming environment
+ Very powerful for a small computer (RPI 2 is a 900MHz 4-core ARM processor)

- Relatively few electrical I/O connections
- Relatively expensive (~$70 for a standard kit)


Arduino:
+ Lots and lots of electrical connections
+ Relatively cheap
+ Small, power efficient

- No native display, can only communicate to an attached computer over serial USB
- Requires a dedicated cross-compiler environment
- Less powerful processor (but still plenty powerful for many common tasks)


Both types of devices are designed so that you can place lots of computing in your environment cheaply. People have done home automation, ran LED light strips or LED billboards, body-centric sensing and automation, etc. with both kinds of products. You can also use something like a Raspberry Pi to prototype functionality quickly and easily, and then port it to a much cheaper setup (Arduino Nano or Raspberry Pi Zero, for example) if you wanted to sell products that contained microprocessors.

Pretty much the sky is the limit. If you can do it on a full computer, you can stick it in a little box and do it with a micro-computer.

>>915996

The Rasperry Pi is capable of doing anything that regular Linux is capable of doing. Lots of people have gotten Youtube to work for them.

The only limitation of a Rasperry Pi vs. a standard computer is that standard computers tend to be x86 instead of ARM- if you want to use proprietary software that doesn't provide ARM packages (like Steam, for example) then you're out of luck.

Raspberry Pi Foundation makes a big deal out of the fact that you can play Minecraft on it. A little while ago someone got Quake 3 working on it as well.

I have two Pi's setup at home to run XBMC (now known as Kodi) that stream media from my home server.

They have low power use and can be left on all the time (compared to a laptop or TV for example).

I have implemented a RFID door lock with a Pi for my house.

I am in the process of getting a receipt printer to work with a Pi, taking inputs from buttons and lights to determine the printout.

I have an old laptop screen linked to a Pi that is going to be a home 'info' display board - weather, torrents, internet speed etc.

You need to come up with an idea or solution to a problem, then ask yourself "Can I do this with a Pi (or Arduino/PIC/etc)?"

>>916033

>ha ha time to nitpick

Neither the Raspberry Pi nor Arduino are microprocessors. The first is a microcomputer, more-or-less ready to go, built around a Broadcom SoC. The second is a development environment based around some of Atmel's chips, or a range of dev boards built around the same.

They aren't really interchangeable.

The RPi is very much marketed as a microcomputer. It has FAR more processing power than any chip in the ATmega line, and, as such, can handle what would be expected of such a device. That is to say, you can use it as a rather underpowered PC, some sort of small server, or really any task you would want out of a (mostly) embedded system. Sort of in between a programmable microcontroller and a full-on PC (although I'm using the term pretty loosely there).

The Arduino (or, rather, any microcontroller) is almost always geared toward simpler, more low-level tasks, often making use of the integrated peripherals on the chip. Interfacing with sensors and manipulating the data from them is a big one, one way or another. Light controllers, some kind of fancy thermostat, maybe. Stuff you'd expect to interface with through a segment or character display, assuming you'd be interfacing with it at all. It CAN pull off some more impressive stuff with some extra hardware and clever programming, but, at a maximum of...what does the 328 do? Like 20MIPS? It simply doesn't have anywhere near the necessary computational power to handle what a Pi can, but it isn't meant to. Even though there's a bit of crossover, it's not a solution to the same set of problems.

>>916068
Atmel does have some ARM cores, and I thought a few oddball 32bit avr variants. You can get arduinos with some of those.

anyone ever hear of a way to use these to convert raw hdmi so its in an alterred state for vr(oculus dk2)

>>916206
Are you asking for a program that can take a video frame then compute what it would look like filmed half a foot to the right so your VR headset produces a 3D effect? That's not really possible.

>>915621
its a computer.
it has input and output pins on it

so you can: do computer stuff for cheap.
write a program in your favorite language to control pins.

RPI is great for noobs since the community is huge. theres better hardware out there for the same price though. i would recommend rpi for your first pc/microcontroller project for that reason

>>916033
>Pi
>Relatively expensive
>Arduino
>Relatively cheap
A Pi Zero costs less than an Arduino mini. An Arduino Mega costs more than a Pi 2 Model B. For what you get, I'd say that the Arduino is really more expensive.

>>916230
I've yet to see a PI Zero available for the advertised $5, and it needs an SD card too.

The Italian Arduinos are around $30, but Chinese clones are under $4.

>>916226
there are already programs that work on normal pc's to change image but are you saying mirco computers cant run them? not enough power or something?

>>916436
not enough power, but you can if you run it at 260V and 50A

>>916040
>you can play Minecraft
pi minecraft a shit
no sounds and only about half of the blocks that pocket edition has

>>916033
The arduino isn't a microprocessor you !@#$ing retard. It's a microcontroller.
They're entirely different. They literally serve two separate but compatible functions.

> but, Anon, since I can alter the voltage and use simple scripts for my arduino it's practically a microprocessor, right?
Learn shit before you speak shit, they're different. They serve different purposes.

As for OP, if you don't know what a product is, don't be a pig and shill out and buy something you won't use.
>>915621
It's a microprocessor, think of it as... the processor of a tablet, but instead of being bound to a touch screen (digitizer) it can accept different kinds of input for different objectives. If you're new to programming then don't waste your time shelling out money for a raspberry pi.

>>916542
>The arduino isn't a microprocessor you !@#$ing retard. It's a microcontroller.
>They're entirely different. They literally serve two separate but compatible functions.

Don't be a dipshit anon. A microcontroller and a microcomputer are essentially the same machines, and what's more is that people use them in the same way: for fast prototyping.

The Raspberry Pi can do some things that an Arduino is never going to do (like be a media server) but that's a function of processor speed and hardware resources, not because they're fundamentally different machines.

Case in point: there are Linux ports to Amtel processors:

http://www.uclinux.org/index.html

You can run a full-featured operating system on an Arduino... it's just not something you'd ever want to do.

>>915621
Even though they're cool and cheap I learned the hard way that if you don't already have something in mind and buy one then it goes in a drawer/box and by the time you want to use it there will be a new better model