OLinuXino, a serious Rasberry Pi competitor?

All the pictures and user guide show NO mounting holes and was discussed early in rPI thread. Without ability to mount on or in something for education it will be a nightmare. Let alone more will be "lost" or is sometimes known as "trousered".

Power is by MicroB USB connector, and takes 700mA according to User Guide. So I see a lot of problems with crappy cables being used to power it and PCs complaining about over current.

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I wonder if Conitec had portrayed their board as a educational non-profit board would they have had thousands of people clamoring to buy one, and the price would have dropped to a reasonable level ??

Building 100 of anything is expensive, build 10,000 can get cheap in a hurry.

Just wondering....

Perhaps. But others boards are not really cheap either. However, the performance of the Conitec board is very poor. The same price will buy you a board with an 800MHz Cortex A8 CPU and 512MB of memory. It seems Conitec moved itself into the market of professional device programmers. Over a decade ago I bought one of their Galep programmers. Really nice but nowadays you can buy a Chinese programmer for 1/10th the price Conitec is charging.

Exactly. Imagine being able to put something together on a piece of stripboard or a PCB you etch yourself and put some real processing horsepower into it for a small amount of money.

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was the first video found by google, and it has a power plug and holes.

Have removed both in later versions?

Cheers Don...

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Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.

I think an opportunity to make a plastic case that captures this board with holes for the connectors. (won't need holes in the board)

Maybe that's what they were thinking of doing, get another revenue source flowing.

This is clearly a Broadcom evaluation board. Not the RP itself.

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Why would you want to power it from a PC? A wall wart would be a much better idea, it is a standalone system after all it doesn't need a PC connection to program it like an Arduino.

Firstly it is suggested by them to use an MP3/camera/phone USB to microB cable in the user guide.

Secondly the base price does not include a wall wart. I don't think it even includes a USB cable either.

Thirdly because that is what people WILL be doing

A classromm with computers already why get out wall warts (which at least one kid will trouser as he could do with one or thjinks it will be cool).

A classroom with other computers already there teacher does not have to hand out an extra thing.

People at home forget to get a wall wart or take board to show someone else or nerdy kid takes with him to 'play' with elsewhere and forgets wall wart.

Someone travelling between countries and different shaped holes in walls so wall wart does not work.

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A wall wart with included micro USB connector costs less that 10 bucks. That is if you don't have one already, virtually every smartphone other than Apple's products use them as a charger.

What makes you think that? It makes no sense to do so

Not if they have a bunch at home already

You don't hand them out, they are set up in the computer lab already along with the screen, mouse and keyboard.

USB wall warts are ubiquitous.

Most USB wall warts are of the universal voltage type, you just buy a cheap adaptor. I even have one that came with slip in connectors that cover 90% of the power sockets in use in the world.

If the classroom already has computers, you don't need to get the Raspberry Pi at all. Just let the kids use the regular computers.

On a sunny day (Thu, 8 Mar 2012 21:54:33 -0000) it happened Paul wrote in :

On top of that it needs 5V *stabilized*. That is a big problem, it should have been 7 to 20 V unstabilized, or 2 to 20V unstabilized, so you could use it in a car or some battery powered system. the extra regulator is expensive. Most new stuff works on 3.3V or some type of Li Ion battery,

I made a little 9-20V to +5 V switcher with USB connector to charge a real Chinese mediaplayer I have, that because I have plenty 12V wall warts. Adds an other 5$ at least even if DIY.

Thats true. I don't think the RP is very suitable for use in a classroom. Its too fragile.

How many are not? Most are rated 1A and 2A is on its way.

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Chinese mediaplayer I have,

You know about Dealextreme.com? You probably could have saved some money and clear some space by throwing the 12V wall warts away :-).

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On a sunny day (Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:26:09 GMT) it happened snipped-for-privacy@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote in :

Chinese mediaplayer I have,

Yes, and I know about ebay too. I payed GBP 8.89 for the Chinese media player, it has a 2.4 inch screen. plays Xvid, mp3, has a FM radio, mp3 player, calendar, stopwatch, camera, microUSB, audio recorder, can record video from that camera, and a build in battery. Quality is excellent. It educational value is fantastic if you play educational videos on it, for example the Feynman lectures.

So the 5 $ extra for that switcher did not weight that heavy. Of course it has free shipping from China.

If you do some searching on ebay you find a lot of single board computahs too. I never bought one of those, but there was some cool stuff around, like with touch screen and what not.

This week I bought some nice 16 GB USB sticks, One HD movie fits on it:-) My Samsung 46 inch LCD plays it,

Just bought it for the looks, and because it is actually cheaper than the local shops.

I love it that the old guys are telling the new kid what to do.

Maybe the RPi has a plan that does not include the legacy path for teaching computers.

Getting people to help reduce the cost buy selling to the general public (like OLPC).

Why not just wait till the other shoe drops.

hamilton

On a sunny day (Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:26:09 GMT) it happened snipped-for-privacy@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote in :

Chinese mediaplayer I have,

Oh, I forgot to mention WHY I did the separate charger... The PC USB port would switch itself off because of too much current, IIRC it is only 600mA in the spec? Not sure. If the strawberry pie is indeed 700mA that will promise a whole lot of fun on a whole lot of peesees.

Chinese mediaplayer I have,

The USB 2.0 spec only allows for 500 mA maximum current after the device has been configured. Unconfigured devices are only allowed 100 mA. For devices that require more than 100 mA, the configuration is only done after the host first reads the current requirement, and has determined that it can still supply it. For instance, a 4 port bus-powered USB hub can only support 4 devices if they have a max 100 mA requirement.

Cell phone/battery chargers with a USB type plug are not limited to those currents, and can typically supply more.

I suspect the strategy is to tell people to just go buy a cigarette lighter (12V) to micro-USB power adapter on eBay for literally a buck or two shipped to your door. (I just found one for $0.99 shipped from Taiwan, 5V @ 1A output...)

Exactly. What I'm looking for is the Embedded Linux Computer with FPGA connected directly to the CPUs bus and to 0,1" headers, so that my students could deal with different peripherals (implemented in the FPGA) and connected to simple circuits assembled on the breadboard (or on prototype PCB connected via flat cable). Does anybody knows about such cheap boards?

-- TIA & Regards, WZab

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