This is a short walk-through on getting a switch/output working together on the PiFace expansion board for the Raspberry Pi. Useful if you (like the author) have just got your board.
Article on the Raspberry Jamboree
Interesting article and interview snippets about the partnership between Jamboree organiser Alan O’Donohoe and CPC/Farnell.
Openelec vs Raspbmc vs Xbian [reblog]
Interesting post from Vincenzo Ampolo about the three XBMC distributions currently available for the Pi.
Openelec vs Raspbmc vs Xbian « goshawk’s digital nest.
In short, he rates them in the following order:
- Xbian
- OpenElec
- RaspBmc (he really doesn’t like this one, and I can’t say I’m surprised!)
Good article this one with Xbian as the surprise winner.
RGB-LED Teaching Kit for the #RaspberryPi
Raspberry Pi enthusiast Meltwater has developed his second board kit for the Raspberry Pi. The first was the PSU Kit which was a voltage regulator board.
The new one, called the RGB-LED Teaching Kit (snappy name…) gives you a collection of 5 RGB LEDs that you can control over GPIO.
You can read more about the kit and find the link to buy one on Meltwater’s website. The kits are £14.49 each (which seems a lot for 5 LEDs, a few pins and a bit of board) but could be fun if used in education at the right learning stage.
Airtime – run a radio station from a #RaspberryPi
In this second article, Martin Konecny explores the performance issues of Sourcefabric’s open source Airtime sofware which provides management facilities for radio stations.
Read the article: Airtime and Raspberry Pi part 2: planning for peak performance.
This sounds a very promising project, especially as Martin works for Sourcefabric and therefore can tap into their development team and redevelop parts of the software specifically for the Pi.
One to keep an eye on.
Quick intro to BerryBoot on the #Raspberry Pi – boot multiple OSs – and opinion piece
I found a quick intro guide to using BerryBoot on the Pi. BerryBoot lets you choose which of the available images to install and boot from. You can choose at boot time which OS you want to run! Here’s a link to an article about it:
Raspberry Pi: Easily Boot Multiple Linux Distributions From The Same SD Card With BerryBoot
Or you can jump straight to BerryBoot itself and get started.
In my opinion, the best thing about BerryBoot is that you can choose to install and boot from a USB drive/stick. The SD card used in the Pi is easily swappable but that also makes it the weakest point in your set-up. Several times I’ve knocked the SD card, causing a fatal shut-down and corruption of the card. I’ve had to fix this using a method I previously documented. I’ve also heard stories of people dropping their Pi and damaging the SD card or the socket. Effectively booting and running from a much more robust pen drive seems like a great idea. Okay, you lose a USB socket, but that’s got to be better than losing all your data through damage to the delicate SD card. The main disadvantage to BerryBoot is that you need access to a keyboard/display to choose the boot image each time you start-up. No headless running with this method!