Amazing little board!
Background
The Raspberry Pi is a "fit in your shirt pocket" linux box! Brilliantly designed to meet a simple goal: putting open technology within affordable global reach. There are many Pi enthusiasts who use this inexpensive platform to build some pretty cool projects including home automation, running media centers for videos/music, robotics. Just search under raspberry pi projects on the web and prepared to be amazed. After that, let your imagination run wild!
To clarify, this is the Model B (latest) version of Raspberry Pi with 512MB. The one I received from this seller was made in the UK, not China. Furthermore, the cat /proc/cpuinfo command confirms this as revision '000e'. These are all the versions released thus far, and their manufacturer: (Note that some Model B's that only have 256MB)
'0002' => 'Model B Revision 1.0',
'0003' => 'Model B Revision 1.0 + Fuses mod and D14 removed',
'0004' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 256MB', (Sony)
'0005' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 256MB', (Qisda)
'0006' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 256MB', (Egoman)
'0007' => 'Model A Revision 2.0 256MB', (Egoman)
'0008' => 'Model A Revision 2.0 256MB', (Sony)
'0009' => 'Model A Revision 2.0 256MB', (Qisda)
'000d' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 512MB', (Egoman)
'000e' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 512MB', (Sony)
'000f' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 512MB', (Qisda)
Setup
I purchased the kit that includes the board, clear case and wifi adapter. I used an old cell phone charger, and 4GB SD card (the bare minimum) that I already had lying around. From my Windows 7 PC, I installed the free SDFormatter software (from the SD Association) to format the SD card, and installed the NOOBS (New Out of Box Software) on the SD card. Once I booted up the Raspberry Pi, the NOOBS software presented me with a choice of operating systems. (Depending on your final application(s) you may want different OS). I selected the Wheezy Raspbian for my OS (as I planned to make an AirPrint Server). I may also consider the XBMC OS's in the future, but what I really wanted this for was AirPrint. The GUI walked me thru an installation process that was virtually completely automatic.
A note about Power Supplies:
Although I am getting by with a cellphone charger (rated to deliver 0.7A) this is really the absolute bare minimum. Many pi hobbists have reported unreliable function with weaker supplies (mine would be included in that category.) So far I haven't encountered any problems, but if I did, I would go straight to a decent 2A USB charger. (There's no sense fiddling with questionable equipment.) PowerGen sells a very nice 2.4A dual USB power supply for $10 which I have tested on the Raspberry pi. This would be my first choice.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1L22QFNB6AO5D/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0073FCPSK&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
AirPrint Server
As I've been garnering more iOS devices, and the iPad is becoming more popular, the lack of available print function has been more intolerable. AirPrint (apple's communication protocol for printing) is only available on certain printer models, and there are no drivers for older (and otherwise fine printers). I personally own a Brother HL-2170W, that has been performing great for me. I didn't want to have to replace it, just to be able to print from another device. I considered the Lantronix xPrintServer, but it costs about $90. I wasn't to interested in paying that much considering a new printer would not be much more.
It turns out that there are several "how-to's" on installing and configuring software on the Raspberry Pi to make a cheap airprint server. They use the CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) spooler and print scheduling system, which Apple has been using in MacOS X since 2002. The instructions are pretty straight forward and can be implemented in a couple of hours. The particular website I used was:
http://rohankapoor.com/2012/06/configuring-the-raspberry-pi-as-an-airprint-server/
So happy to be finally printing from my iOS devices!
VPN Server
There are many examples on the web on setting up a low-powered, always available VPN server. This allows you to privately browse the internet on any network (work, pulic wifi) with total encryption. Another benefit from VPNs are the ability to change the source of your internet traffic. For instance I have a VPN server in Japan that I use to obtain Japan-only streaming video content in the US. Hulu, Amazon and another that rhymes with Bamazon have this restriction, which the VPN can circumvent. You can make a PPTP (simple to make) or OpenVPN (more complex but more secure) servers.
XBMC
Another application I'm very interested in is attempting to make a media server based on the popular XBMC platform. The reviews I've read on the Pi implementation have been very positive, so I'm looking forward to trying this out!
A very enthusiastic 5 stars!
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