Is anyone taking a serious look at RaspberryPi?

[bcjenkins]

Greetings,

I placed an order yesterday for 3 of the 512MB RaspberryPi boards and to my surprise they shipped last night. OpenELEC.tv has been doing nightly builds for the RaspberryPi and the feature set looks pretty nice:

Features:
=========
- System size ~ 85MB
- Minimal hardware requirements
- Ultra fast boot
- Optimized build for RaspberryPi
(arm1176jzf-s, vfp, hardfloat, LTO, as-needed, Ofast)
- Simple configuration via XBMC itself
- Plug and Play external storage
- PVR support (DVB-T/C/S/S2 via
VDR (XVDR, VNSI), TVHeadend, Njoy N7, VU+, Mediaportal, 4the Record
- Blueray and DVD support
- Remotecontrol and CEC support
- Airplay and Airtunes support
- AFP, NFS, SAMBA, iSCSI, SSHFS, NTFS, extFAT, BTRFS, HFS+, ext2-4, FAT/VFAT support

I'll be testing this out with a view on DVD and BR playback as well as the media files from SageTV. Considering the impending PVR support, I will also be looking into these as extenders with a server setup.

Anyone have any experiences to share?

B

[mayamaniac]

let us know how well it works.

[Ryand833]

I'll be giving it a try... you're lucky. I ordered my Raspberry Pi 4 months ago and just now got the notification that it shipped.

[Ender]

I have a ver1 Model B Rpi, and as for the openelec xbmc variant goes, it works well. The most difficult issue I had was finding a usb charger that worked well enough (holding voltage at load).

It is a bit slow in the menu, and navigation department at times, but video playback is excellent once you purchase the proper codecs.

I have not found a single sage recording that does not play, newer builds will play dvd rips (folder structure) all this while consuming 3 watts at full load.

I have yet tried to stream a bluray, but I think it will work well.

[ChaOConnor]

Yes, I have two of the original Model B's (somewhat pissed I didn't wait for the 512MB ver, but oh well). I've used OpenElec and Raspbmc. I think OpenElec runs faster, but other's have found Raspbmc to meet their needs.

That being said, I've been trying to get Java to work reliably, which the the 512 ver will help with. If we can get Java working, their is a chance, albeit small, we could get Sage on there. I've been searching for packages that are ARM compliant, then we'd only have to run the Sage specific code in an emulation type enviroment. This has got about a million to one shot of working, but it was an interesting thought experiment for me to play with.
Problem is Java right now doesn't support the Hard Float instructions, won't until December at the earliest it looks like.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by ChaOConnor

That being said, I've been trying to get Java to work reliably, which the the 512 ver will help with. If we can get Java working, their is a chance, albeit small, we could get Sage on there.

Unless you get official help from SageTV, I think the chance is about 0 to get a sageclient working. The choices as I see them are:

- Taking the (ARM!) HD100 firmware for its miniclient is a non-starter, since the HD100 firmware is statically linked and the BCM GPU on the rPi is a lot different than the Sigma GPU on the HD100, so you'd need to replace all the GPU interactions

- Taking the MiniClient.jar from the Linux miniclient would require that you reverse-engineer & re-implement the contents of the x86 libSage.so, or somehow run it under emulation.

Is there any binary translation / emulation software that can run an x86 jini lib on arm?? The only binary translation / emulation software I'm aware of (Apple's Rosetta, DEC's FX!32 & mx) rely on the host CPU being about 2x to 5x as fast as the emulated CPU, which is not true with respect to running x86 on arm. The one time I tried to do anything complex with binary translation (running a commercial DEC Ultrix MIPS binary on DEC Tru64 Alpha) it was a miserable failure. Of course, I was a lot younger and less experienced..

If there is a binary translator for arm that I'm not aware of, this sounds like a heck of a lot of fun, and maybe I'll pick up an rpi just for kicks..

But I think you'd have a lot more luck with xbmc & the xbmc add-on for SageTV.

Drew

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by drewg

Is there any binary translation / emulation software that can run an x86 jini lib on arm??

Probably not until 2014:
http://cdn.eetimes.com/electronics-n...86-code-on-ARM

[drewg]

Originally Posted by brainbone

Probably not until 2014:
http://cdn.eetimes.com/electronics-n...86-code-on-ARM

I found a 2 academic papers (google MISA XAM, and an older chinese paper at http://ojs.academypublisher.com/inde...711331141/1961). Both of these approaches would be problematic for just doing a single shared library rather than an entire application.

Your best bet would probably be to dis-assemble it & translate it by hand. Yuck.

Drew

[drewg]

BTW, if you are intellectually interested in binary translation, the seminal paper on this was the CACM paper about MX & VESTA from the feb 1993 CACM. It is paywalled at http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=151227 (I have the original print version..).

It also appeared in the Digital Technical Journal here: http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/dtj/...l4num4art9.pdf

Drew

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Greetings,

I placed an order yesterday for 3 of the 512MB RaspberryPi boards and to my surprise they shipped last night. OpenELEC.tv has been doing nightly builds for the RaspberryPi and the feature set looks pretty nice:

I'll be testing this out with a view on DVD and BR playback as well as the media files from SageTV. Considering the impending PVR support, I will also be looking into these as extenders with a server setup.

Anyone have any experiences to share?

B

I thought about using a few of these, but since they lack the ability to play Netflix and/or Hulu Plus makes it a non-starter for me. I'm pretty much going down the path of El Gatos Eye TV to our iPads/iPhones to AppleTV route for our television watching. Now that we cut the cord to cable, EyeTV fits the bill (since it can only handle one video source).

[bcjenkins]

I get the boards today and I'll be trying out the XBMC SageTV add on as well. So we'll see how it goes. The good news is if it doesn't work out as a SageTV player, I can always use it as an Asterisk server ala IncrediblePBX.

All I can say, I sure miss the SageTV betas. I need shiny objects to keep me preoccupied.

B

[jjstok]

I have a 512 B on the way and a friend who is a linux guru. Pi is continuing to release images. So I am hopeful I will get more out of it than not... I'll update if anything blows my mind.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

I thought about using a few of these, but since they lack the ability to play Netflix and/or Hulu Plus makes it a non-starter for me.

That may not be the case as there is an effort to port Android to the RPi so you should therefore be able to use Android tablet apps on the RPi. Here is more info although it has been kind of quiet for a couple of months.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1700

And what about some sort of fast VNC application with a Windows box as the VNC server and a VNC client running on the RPi?

edit - One other idea is if Playon runs on the RPi or it supports DLNA to access a PlayON server. Not the worlds best solution but not bad for $35.

[bcjenkins]

Installing OpenElec was very easy using an existing Linux host and the performance seems to be very good from a graphics menu perspective. I am in the process of finding a case for the device that will accommodate and IR sensor. Anyone know of any?

I will be attaching the IR sensor to the GPIO pins instead of using a USB add-on.

B

[Fuzzy]

I would think playon would work just fine. OpenElec seems to support UPnP sources just fine.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

I am in the process of finding a case for the device that will accommodate and IR sensor. Anyone know of any?

You can build your own with Lego:

[matt91]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

I can always use it as an Asterisk server ala IncrediblePBX.

I've been running it for 2+ weeks now, and it's doing great. It's just a "play toy" at the moment to see how well it works, but I would consider cutting our $15/mo VOIP "cord" if it continues to work well.

We only make/receive about 10 calls a week at home anyway, so it's a relatively low-risk endeavor.

[bcjenkins]

This is very good news: http://arstechnica.com/information-t...w-open-source/

[brainbone]

I've been thinking about trying the MK808, but I'm not sure what I'd use for a simple remote control, or how Android and various apps, like Netflix, Plex, Hulu, etc., would work with a simple remote, without resorting to something like this.

[bcjenkins]

I have been struggling for a while on case selection for the RPi as I couldn't find one terribly media center focused. I finally settled in on this case: http://builttospecstore.storenvy.com...-enclosure-kit with a modification

Craig @BTS is adding http://www.showmecables.com/product/...tor-Metal.aspx to the case with IR Receiver etched above it in lieu of the expansion slot for the cable. This will allow for an eye to be plugged in and the box to be out of sight.

You can connect the jack to the gpio header for IR.

The mod was a very reasonable fee $5 and I am doing 3 of these.

B