What are the civilian applications
Where are the weapon mounts? No hellfire missiles?
Spoilsports...
Raspberry Pi 3: Four days old and already flying
The Raspberry Pi 3 is only four days old, but it can already fly, thanks to Spanish outfit Erle Robotics and its PXFmini autopilot shield. The diminutive €69 PXFmini - 31mm by 73mm and weighing just 15g - is specifically designed for use with the Pi Zero, in those cases where a seriously compact and light Linux autopilot is …
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 16:04 GMT Aqua Marina
Re: What are the civilian applications
Your comment triggerred a memory of a guy about a decade ago in New Zealand who was bankrupted by his government, when he tried to demonstrate how easy it would be to build a self-guided model aircraft, in the shape of a cruise missile, using off the shelf hardware for approx $5000.
I'm now wondering how much that $5K has come down by in the last decade.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 16:15 GMT Robert Moore
Re: What are the civilian applications
> I'm now wondering how much that $5K has come down by in the last decade.
Large RC glider kit, $150
4 micro Servos $100
PI 3 $35 (Less if you can find a PI Zero)
USB GPS $10
Gas motor $100 (Large, and over powered)
This drone board. $75 (Assuming it can be adapted to fixed wing flight)
Assorted misc pieces $150
Total $620
I am sure you could do cheaper if you shopped around.
What you use this drone for is none of my business.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 16:56 GMT Rich 11
Re: What are the civilian applications
It looks like there are already civilian counter-applications.
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Sunday 6th March 2016 14:38 GMT Vic
Re: What are the civilian applications
Your comment triggerred a memory of a guy about a decade ago in New Zealand who was bankrupted by his government, when he tried to demonstrate how easy it would be to build a self-guided model aircraft
Bruce Simpson. The way he was treated was shameful.
That said, if his interaction with the government was anything like his interaction[1] with me when I tried to buy his book, I'm not really surprised...
Vic.
[1] Or lack of it, to be more accurate.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 17:34 GMT Oh Homer
Great if we can ever actually buy one
Unlike the Pi Zero, which is fast approaching four months old, yet is still unavailable.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 18:29 GMT MrT
Re: Great if we can ever actually buy one
According to this article in MagPi #43, the RasPi Foundation is aiming for a steady 50k units per month for Pi Zero very soon...
The hen's teeth status is explained thus:
But, given the tradition for new Pi models to sell out at launch, why is it taking so long to ramp up production on the Zero? The answer lies in the board’s unique position, Eben reveals. “This isn’t quite the same as the other Pis, because the other Pis are made by RS and Farnell. We make these Pis, so you’re actually looking at a small company trying to scale.”
Well, that and eBay scalpers clearing the newsagents of MagPi #40. Subscribe to the treeware version and that issue is still available with the Pi Zero as a covermount .
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 19:07 GMT werdsmith
Availability of Zeros.
Keep an ear open for when the two UK stockists are getting stock (they tweet it and they will email you if you sign up).
When they go on sale they don't crash websites and sell out in seconds like Glastonbury tickets, they have shopify behind them and you can log on and buy one in leisurely fashion, it takes quite a while for the stock of the cheapest ones to sell out. Maybe 3 hours or so.
They've had four such occasions in the last 2 weeks when stock was available. In the UK it's really not hard to get one. Or 2 or 3.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 19:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "We make these Pis"
"I find it barely credibly that a company like Sony cannot manage even one substantial run of Pi Zeros in over three months."
Maybe you're already aware, but the factory has been building nothing but Pi 3 (top secretly) for several months. And (for better or worse) it still hasn't kept up with Pi 3 demand yet. Take your pick as to which one is more upsetting? Or are there better options?
Bummer, especially for the impatient.
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Friday 4th March 2016 01:12 GMT Oh Homer
Re: Sony "building nothing but Pi 3"
Yes, that does seem to be the answer.
It's just a pity that the RPi Foundation felt the need to lie about the true circumstances. Yet again.
Arguably worse than the lie is the fact that they introduced a product knowing full well that they had no intentions of meeting demand for it, but instead chose to favour another, more expensive product that hadn't even been announced.
That's bordering on a bait and switch scam. It's also a huge disappointment for the Pi Zero's primary demographic (school children), who've apparently been cast aside in favour of "consumers" building HTPCs and the like.
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Friday 4th March 2016 07:36 GMT James Hughes 1
Re: Sony "building nothing but Pi 3"
A post pull of bollocks from start to finish. What Eben said is EXACTLY the truth,
It's quite clear that the Zero is not a particularly good device for the majority of school use cases., it needs extra cables, is much slower, has no inbuild GPIO connector, you need to add it with solder!
The Pi2 or 3 are MUCH better suited and should be schools first point of call, then use Zero's in the small number of cases where they are better suited.
They do intend to meet demand (which has been unexpectedly high), and its also worth noting that the Foundation funds all Zero manufactures, unlike the other models which are made by RS or Farnell, so there is also the issue of finding the funds to do so.
The Pi3, as a device that is clearly going to sell more than the Zero, needed production capacity to meet the demand up front. Once that demand i met, the production line can move over to Zero's.
It's pretty Simple stuff, not difficult to understand why it was done this way.
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Friday 4th March 2016 11:13 GMT Martin an gof
Re: Sony "building nothing but Pi 3"
Arguably worse than the lie is the fact that they introduced a product knowing full well that they had no intentions of meeting demand for it
I don't think the RPF had any intention of lying about anything. They did try to anticipate demand for the Zero, but they had problems both with time and scaling production.
Eben gave a recorded interview (sorry I've no time to look for it now, but it's linked-to in the comments to one of their launch announcements on Monday) in which he said, if I remember correctly, that one of the reasons they weren't able to produce Zeros as quickly as they originally intended was that "a major manufacturer" of one of the components (he refused to say who or which component, but my impression was that it was something big like the memory - he did specifically say it was not Broadcom) were utterly incompetent and didn't supply what they had promised. In fact he got quite heated about it, while still refusing to name the company.
M.
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Friday 4th March 2016 11:40 GMT druck
Re: "We make these Pis"
I told my wife about it on Monday, one turned up on the doorstep on Wednesday!
She's bought me one of each variant of model B so far. The Pi3 is going to replace the Pi2 as my ssh gateway machine, and the others are going to shuffle down the chain of media players connected to TVs, leaving my original 256MB B available for electronic projects as it was originally intended - if I ever get the chance!
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Friday 4th March 2016 15:09 GMT Paul Smith
Re: RS still has 2,128 in stock.
About a wheel barrows worth by my reckoning, possibly closer to a hat box in official El Reg measures. My Pi 2 box (still waiting for my three to arrive) was 3.5x7.5x12cm or 315cm volume. 1285 of them would have a volume of 404775 cubic cm or a cube of 74cm per side (about 2'6" x 2'6" x 2'6").
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Friday 4th March 2016 19:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: RS now has 3488 in stock.
"1285 of them would have a volume of 404775 cubic cm or a cube of 74cm per side (about 2'6" x 2'6" x 2'6")."
Thank you. A cube, edge size 2 foot 6? Not many years ago that would have seemed almost infinitely improbable. Cup of tea anyone?
There's 3488 in stock at the moment so they must have had another delivery or two since my earlier post.
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 19:59 GMT Dwarf
Re: Great if we can ever actually buy one
I too wanted a zero as it would be ideal In one of my projects, but lack of availability made me go meh.
Then the Pi 3.0000 came among with a faster chip, so I'm betting that a pi zero v2 will come out instead. After all stocking two CPU types is probably not ideal for the foundation either.
I've now got 8 pi's doing different things. Just wish they would add more ram and add a sata port
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Thursday 3rd March 2016 19:11 GMT werdsmith
Re: Already FRYING
These overheating things are people who are deliberately stressing the processor with no heatsink.
They heat up to 82C at which point the the broadcom chip automatically throttles back the CPU clock and cools itself.. I was using one last night, occasionally checking the temperature, no heatsink and it stayed at 40-43C.
So if you are going to hammer it, it just needs a heatsink. No big deal.
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Friday 4th March 2016 00:50 GMT Oh Homer
Re: Already FRYING
The chips are actually overheating to 100C, but the sensor is inaccurately reporting the temperature as 80C, which is a serious flaw, even if the temperature itself is somehow deemed "acceptable".
Given that the target demographic is school children (or at least that was the foundation's original goal, which admittedly does seem to have been largely abandoned), I'm not sure that I'd agree with their definition of "acceptable", and I suspect that schools will share my scepticism.
It's especially disappointing that this may be the first SBC that absolutely requires an HSF, since being fanless is after all one of the SBC's biggest selling points, along with the fact that, until now, they drew very little power, and thus could realistically be operated by battery (something smaller than a car battery, that is).
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Friday 4th March 2016 07:41 GMT James Hughes 1
Re: Already FRYING
Bollocks again. Get that agenda under control.
Other chips have been tested, and do not show the disparity between external an internal readings. It appears the one in that post is an outlier.
With greater power comes greater heat dissipation requirements, again, not difficult to understand. Just stick a heatsink on it if what you are doing gets it too hot - and all becomes well. You absolutely don't need a fan unless you are in very extreme conditions.
As for the abandoned school children, are you completely out of your bloody mind? Picademy's around the world, Pi's used for teaching from the ISS, funding for Scratch development.. You only have to Google to find hundreds of examples. Clearly you are too dumb to do that.
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Friday 4th March 2016 09:37 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: hot water
James, purely in the interests of full disclosure etc, do you think you should disclose your affiliation when posting here on this topic? Mods, are you in the picture here and are you comfortable with it?
[I have very little sympathy with Old Homer - just want to keep the discussion clean and tidy and above board, prevent anyone getting into hot water, and I'm thinking that not everyone knows who you work for? Fair?]
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Friday 4th March 2016 11:21 GMT Martin an gof
Re: hot water
I would agree - if you could force other commentards who obviously have affiliations they are not disclosing and related agendas they push to do the same. Can't be done, and if attempted would quickly turn into a bit of a mess.
James has never made a secret of his affiliations, and he has been a prolific poster for a very long time. He is one of that select band who actually posts under his real name, the same name he uses for posting in other places.
Granted some people are new in these parts and may not have come across him before, but it takes half a second to click and review his posting history.
I quite enjoy it when he starts "correcting" someone ;-)
M.
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Friday 4th March 2016 08:13 GMT werdsmith
Re: Already FRYING
It's especially disappointing that this may be the first SBC that absolutely requires an HSF, since being fanless is after all one of the SBC's biggest selling points, along with the fact that, until now, they drew very little power, and thus could realistically be operated by battery (something smaller than a car battery, that is).
I suspect that you are the type that is chronically disappointed.
The Pi3 doesn't need a fan, and for most uses doesn't even need a heatsink, I have no plans to fit a heatsink even. If you need a low power Pi then simply use one of the other models, or use a Pi3 and set the CPU clock back to 1GHz.
As for the mission of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, it is a not for profit with its declared mission in education and that is still the case. Separately Raspberry Pi Trading have the devices built and distributed by partner companies and turn their profit over the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The Foundation use this money to produce educational material, train educators and create dozens of schemes to encourage coding for kids. Which is how two Pis ended up getting through spaceflight testing and are now orbiting the planet on the ISS running code written by schoolkids.
All this information is out there on the web in blogs and news. It's really easy to find if you are not busy consuming a diet of FUD.
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Tuesday 15th March 2016 01:29 GMT Oh Homer
"Outlier"?
It's amusing watching the
Broadcom shillsPi apologists migrate like a herd of sheep over from the Pi forums, to valiantly defend their favourite consumer toy with empty rhetoric.Well, look on the bright side, at least they'll have something to keep them warm next winter.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
