Raspberry Pi number 1 goes for £3,500 on eBay

The Raspberry Pi  project is almost a perfect example of open source engineering story. Well, it has started in popular fashion - a £20 Raspberry Pi computer sold for £3,500 on eBay last week, writes Steve Bush.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation, which intends to sell its educational computers directly, auctioned 10 of its beta production board on eBay.

As executive director Eben Upton pointed out in a video on the Foundation's website, this limited auction was aimed at: computer collectors, benefactors intending to donate to the foundation - which is a charity, and software development firm's wanting hardware before full-production boards are released later this month.

In a move that may cause priority arguments amongst collectors in the future, Raspberry Pi number 1 was actually the tenth auctioned, with number 10 going first for the relative bargain price of £1,900.

Number 7 was bought by an anonymous benefactor for £989 and donated to the Computer Museum at the Centre for Computing History in Suffolk.

Set up by a group of high-flying techies, the Foundation aims to inspire a generation of programmers by putting competent low-cost hardware into the hands of children and teenagers, much in the way that Sinclair computers did in the 1980s.

"We have parts in stock for our first 10,000 units, and expect to be in volume production by the end of January," said Raspberry Pi Foundation executive director Eben Upton.

The computer, Raspberry Pi, is intended to cost under £20, is based around a 32bit ARM11 system chip which plugs into a TV through HDMI or analogue video, and will run some Linux distributions, Python, Iceweasel and KOffice amongst other open-source applications - a slight setback is that Ubuntu is not yet supporting the hardware.

Most importantly for the Foundation, unlike PCs and smart phones, Raspberry Pi can be programmed by the user as soon as it is switched on, tempting them to explore computer science.

Read the original news story >>

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Linux distributions, in graphical form

Thanks to Steve Bush, our Technology Eduitor, for flagging this amazing graphic. Ever wondered what a document of Linux distros would look like, in graphical form?

Check out the Wikipedia page for List of Linux distributions. Specifically, check out http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Gldt.svg

And there's anoher one for the Debian family tree.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Wind River offers Qt Commercial on VxWorks

Wind River has collaborated with developer of Qt for desktop and embedded development Digia to offer platform support for the Qt Commercial development framework on Wind River's VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS).

Qt Commercial is a cross-platform user interface (UI) and application framework with tools for the creation and deployment of applications for desktop and embedded platforms.

his collaboration opens the way for developers across a range of market segments including industrial, medical, and aerospace and defence to design and deploy rich UIs using the Qt development framework running seamlessly on VxWorks.

The Qt Commercial development framework in combination with VxWorks will support graphical user interface (GUI) development and standardisation across projects, revisions and organizations within the enterprise.

In addition, it will enable the users of VxWorks to create differentiated and user-appealing devices with advanced interactive GUIs and added support for 3D and 2D graphics through OpenGL ES and OpenVG.

Qt Commercial support will be offered on VxWorks 6.9 and subsequent versions, and will be available on selected Intel, Freescale and Texas Instruments platforms. Qt Commercial support for VxWorks will be available in a beta version based on the Qt Commercial 4.8.1 release.

Digia will be demonstrating Qt UI applications running on VxWorks platforms at Embedded World 2012, next week.

Richard Wilson

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

ARM releases Development Studio 5 Community Edition for Andorid

For small firms, ARM has released Development Studio 5 Community Edition, a free version of its reference software development toolkit, writes our technology editor Steve Bush.

Known as DS-5 CE. "the new edition is dedicated to the Android application developer community and helps them create native software for compute intensive tasks that can run up to 4 times faster than Java code," claimed the firm. "DS-5 CE includes limited, but essential functionality from the premium DS-5 toolkit to help solve common Android application developer pain points."

Included is an integrated graphical debugger for NDK-generated code and visibility of processor information including NEON single instruction multiple data (SIMD) registers.

It permits development of Java and C/C++ code in the Eclipse development environment, and there is a tailored version of the Streamline performance analyser for compatible Android development platforms.

"Streamline captures detailed, system-wide performance statistics from a variety of sources which helps developers to locate hotspots in their code and isolate potential causes," said ARM. "Platform builders can add support for Streamline by integrating an open source driver available from the Linaro website."

"We have worked with ARM to ensure that DS-5 support is available as an easy to install add-on for Linaro Ubuntu images in the past and are working together to deliver a similar developer experience for DS-5 CE as part of our Android images", said Alexander Sack, platform technical director, Linaro.

DS-5 CE is available free-of-charge for use by individuals and organisations with annual revenue of $100,000 or less, and up to 10 employees.

Steve Bush

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Google's open source language gets to Go 1

This one just caught my eye on the Google Developers Blog - an update on its Go project, an open source programming language. Yesterday it officially reached version 1.

Since November 2009, writes Scott Knaster on behalf of the "Go team", "more than 200 outside contributors have made thousands of contributions to the code, tests, and documentation. The open source community has been essential to Go's success".

They write:

It is a great pleasure to announce today that the Go project has reached a stable point we are calling Go version 1, or Go 1 for short. Go 1 is the result of months of work refining the specification, improving the implementation, increasing portability and re-working and adjusting the standard library. Go 1 offers compatibility for future growth: programs written to the Go 1 specification will work dependably for years to come even as Go continues to develop.

The benefits of Go 1 are also available to Google App Engine developers, as Go 1 is now the standard Go runtime on Google App Engine.

Read the full post >>

Check out the Go project site (and the interactive code editor), and also see this video about Go by Andrew Gerrand, Developer Advocate of Google Sydney

Pictured above is the Go 'Gopher'...

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Commodore Amiga lives again, in Mini PC form

One to provoke nostalgia, maybe, among Gadget Masters of a certain age... Commodore USA has breathed life into another old brand with the release of the Commodore Amiga Mini PC.

Taking a leaf of out Apple's Mac Mini book, it's a small form factor device with a bring-your own monitor and keyboard approach...

According to the company:

The new Commodore AMIGA mini case is ultra small and is made of 100% all aluminium housing, finished by sandblasting and anodic oxidation. It also includes a slot load Blu-Ray drive and internal space for two 2.5" hard drives. It measures 7.5 inches square, with a height of only 3 inches. There is no end to its placement possibilities.

The spec? Commodore USA says it features:

    * 16 Gigs of fast DD3 memory.
    * Integrated nVidia Geforce GT 430 Graphics with 1 Gig of DD3 memory.
    * The ability to drive 3 monitors displays.
    * HDMI, 2-Dual DVI and DisplayPort output. (includes VGA adaptor)
    * 7.1 channel high definition sound.
    * 6 Gb/s SATA HD
    * 4 USB 3.0 and 4 USB 2.0 ports for external data access.
    * A slot loading Blu-ray drive that can also write DVDs.
    * 2 WiFi antennae for outstanding signal reception.
    * A 1 Tb Hard Disk to store video and personal data.
    * Optional 300 or 600 Gb SSD drive

Thanks to Sue P for flagging this one. She says it is going to make her dig out the old Amiga buried at home, gathering dust...

[Via geeky-gadgets.com]

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

DIY Geiger counter smartphone app helps measure radiation

Out of awful events sometimes the better side of human nature emerges... We previously highlighted - see How to build your own Geiger Counter - the work of some engineers at Libelium, a wireless sensor network company, to help the people of Japan, around Fukushima, determine levels of radiation for themselves.

Well, our sister site New Scientist's One Per Cent blog has recently reported on a Smarphone-based intitative to help people track the critically important levels of radiation around them.

Kat Austen, CultureLab editor, writes:

In the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster, amidst a climate of  general mistrust of government radiation data, a number of crowdsourced initiatives for mapping radiation levels sprang up, such as Japan Geigermap, in which radiation readings from citizens are aggregated and displayed online using a web service called pachube.

But most Geiger counters for personal use cost around $200, prohibiting many from measuring radiation for themselves. That's where non-profit organisation radiation-watch.org has stepped in.

They have devised a way for people to construct their own smartphone-compatible Geiger counter at home. Pocket Geiger uses 8 photodiodes to detect the radiation, aluminium foil to screen alpha and beta particles, and a plastic "Frisk" sweet box for the housing. The total cost is just $46.

Ishigaki started the project in June last year, and with the help of supporting scientists and a team of hackers he has developed the self-assembly Geiger counter and app to allow anyone to measure radiation levels in their home or neighbourhood and upload them to a central server, where they can be visualised on a map.

The project has now grown to over 10,000 users, but due to privacy issues the maps can only be viewed within the radiation-watch.org community.

Continuing to develop the technology, the team have recently launched the Pokega Type2. The first Geiger counter without an internal battery, the Pokega Type2 uses the same technology as its predecessor, except that it uses the smartphone as a source of power.

Costing just $65, the Pokega Type2 was developed with the help of a variety of external organisations, such as Japan's High Energy Accelerator Research Organization and the Dutch Metrology Institute.

Read the full blog post >>

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.