Back in February we learned that a Raspberry Pi camera module was coming to market that would be priced at about $25. If the idea of a small camera board for your projects is exciting, you’ll be thrilled to hear that the camera board is now shipping. The device can be purchased at multiple online retailers, including RS Components and others.

The camera module sells for $25 and has a five-megapixel CMOS image sensor by OmniVision. That CMOS sensor uses 1.4 micron backside illumination pixel architecture. The architecture allows the camera to deliver five-megapixel resolution still images and high rate HD resolution video capture capability.

When the camera module is used record to 720p resolution HD video, it can do so at 60p. The camera card add on connects to the Raspberry Pi via the existing camera connector and uses CSI for data and I2C for control. Users can record both 720p and 1080p at 30 frames per second in H264 format.

The small camera add-on board measures only 20 x 20 x 10 mm and has an integrated flat ribbon cable for connection. The camera will work with both the Raspberry Pi Model A or Model B boards. Depending on the version of the operating system you’re using on the board, you may have to upgrade to be able to use the camera add on.

SOURCE: RS Deliveries

At the moment you’ll find that though there are no Raspberry Pi units left for sale in the $25 category, the slightly higher-powered $35 USD edition can still be picked up for its normal price. According to the Allied Electronics sales page for the $25 edition:

“Due to limited supply of the Raspberry Pi Model A, we are not offering preorders or backorders on the product at this time. The Raspberry Pi Model A will only be available for purchase when we have inventory on hand to fill the order. We regret this inconvenience and sincerely thank you for your patience.” – Allied Electronics

If you’ve been looking for this device over the past few weeks, you’ll know all to well that it’s been for sale in both Europe and Asia for some time, the most recent release happening here in the USA with about as much fervor surrounding it as any far more expensive PC. When you’ve got the ability to compute on a device that’s the size of a credit card that also costs less than a night on the town, units are bound to move!

You’ll be interested to know that the $35 Raspberry Pi remains available at many retailers throughout the USA. Stake your claim right this minute!

Have a peek at the timeline below to see more information on the Raspberry Pi miniature computer (and its many offshoots) and be sure to head to the Raspberry Pi tag portal for more sweet berry action through the future. Would you purchase one of these little firecrackers if you had the chance?

The device is available now for $25 and has a decent amount of processing power for all sorts of projects. The Model A consumes about one third less power than the Model B and was envisioned for low-power consuming projects. The $10 discount does come with some notable changes in hardware compared to the Model B.

The Model A has 256 MB of RAM, a single USB 2.0 port, and has no Ethernet port. The board is designed to run the Linux operating system and has a built-in HDMI port. The board has a SD memory card port and a 3.5 mm audio output. The device also features a HD video camera connector for the Raspberry Pi specific camera.

The processor on the small board runs at 700 MHz. It appears that $25 Model A is currently out of stock at most sellers. The board measures 85.6 x 53.9 x 17 mm, and enclosures as well as other accessories and add-ons are available to go along with the Raspberry Pi to complete your project. The Model A was only available in Europe previously.

[via Techcrunch]

The model A the device features 256 MB of RAM while the newer model B features 512 MB. The little developer board also has a single USB 2.0 port and more. The problem some geeks who want to integrate the Pi into their projects run into is a lack of features to do the job they want.

The Raspberry Pi can be fitted with a wide array of new features via the RasPiComm extension board. The extension board adds additional ports, a real-time clock, and a five-way joystick input device. The new ports include a RS-485 port allowing for control of stepper motors and other objects. The extension board also has an RS-232 port as well as a real-time clock with a battery backup.

Other features of the board include a direct I2C connector allowing the user to directly connect a display or sensors. The five-way joystick input makes it easier to control the Raspberry Pi. All of those features are packed into a very small piggyback board requiring no additional cables. The extension board also has full API support including drivers for an OLED display, advanced stepper motor control, and a daemon mode allowing you to control the extension board via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. The extension board is available now for €43.69.

[via Amescon]

The sad news is that these are truly limited edition. The company announced that they’re only making 1,000 Blue Raspberry Pi boards, and they actually won’t be up for sale. Instead, they’ll be given to various charity organizations, and a few will be given away to some lucky winners, and one of them could be you. The company is simply asking to tweet at @RSElectronics with the hashtag “#bluepi”, and mention a suggestion for uses for a Blue Pi board.

Every week, the top ten entries will be selected by RS Electronics and the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and those ten winners will be sent a Blue Pi. Easy! However, if you don’t win the first time, RS Electronics will be conducting giveaways and other events until June. If you’ve been waiting to get your hands on a Raspberry Pi, here’s your chance.

In the package, you’ll get a Raspberry Pi system made with a blue circuit board, a blue-tinted case to put your Raspberry Pi in for protection, a certificate of authenticity, and a nice blue box that everything will come in. It’s too bad you won’t be able to buy one for yourself, but even if you could, expect to have paid more than just $35.

The Raspberry Pi version of the game, called Minecraft: Pi Edition, takes a few steps to get going, of course. Users will need to download a program called Raspbian “wheezy,” and then boot their RaspPi boards with the program. After that, all that stands in your way of hours of Minecraft play time are a few terminal commands.

There’s actually a dedicated blog specifically for the Raspberry Pi version of the game, and that’s where more details can be found if you need a little help getting the game going on your board. Of course, it takes a bit more effort than booting up a game on other platforms, but getting Minecraft for free seems like a good trade-off.

The Raspberry Pi is available for purchase in the US for $35, but it’s unsurprisingly sold out, and it’ll most likely stay that way for a while. However, if you don’t already have a Raspberry Pi board, you can buy one now and at least get yourself on the waiting list while you can, since waiting until they come back in stock might not be the quickest option to obtaining one.

The camera module will connect directly to the Raspberry Pi and will give hobbyists and DIYers the ability to build vision-based applications. Spec-wise, the camera is an OV5647 with a 5MP sensor that’s capable of recording HD video. The ribbon cable below the module connects directly to the Raspberry Pi’s mainboard. No other connections are needed.

Unfortunately, the camera doesn’t feature interchangeable lenses, filters, or even a zoom, but for only $25, you can’t really complain. The Raspberry Pi devs say that the camera module can be used for applications focused on robotics, home automation, and even aerial functions, where taking an expensive camera up into the sky is risky business.

The camera module will cost the same as the just-released Model A board, which is a European exclusive right now. The camera module was first announced back in July of 2012, around the same time that the Raspberry Pi board became generally available. Hopefully we’ll see the camera module sooner than later, but we’re looking at least a month, so you’ll definitely want to be patient.

The Model A is said to use only 30-percent of the power of the Model B, making it a better choice for those using solar power sources. According to the announcement, software is currently in development that will further lower this number. Unlike the Model B, the Model A does not offer Ethernet, offering instead one USB port and 256MB of RAM.

The units are available from RS Components and Premier Farnell. Those located outside Europe can order the Model A now from RS Components, but won’t get the unit for a bit because of a “short delay” caused by paperwork processing. Those who want to order from Farnell will have to wait until the paperwork goes through before they can order the unit.

Back on October 15, the Model B Raspberry Pi got a RAM boost to 512MB as a follow up to Turbo Mode, which overclocks the board to 1GHz for those who need a bit more performance. For those unfamiliar, the Raspberry Pi is a wildly popular miniature (by miniature, we mean tiny) computer that is ultra-low cost and can be used for a variety of nifty things, including setting up a media center for the living room.

[via Raspberry Pi]

For starters, the ever-popular media center software now fully supports Android and the Raspberry Pi, making it even more tempting to want one of those $35 mini computers. Other new features to version 12 include HD audio support, including DTS-MA and Dolby True-HD, thanks to the new XBMC AudioEngine (OS X and iOS support not yet available, though).

There’s also support for live TV and DVR functionality, as well as 64-bit support in both OS X and Linux. You’ll also get 10-bit H.264 video decoding and improved AirPlay support across all platforms. Other smaller updates include improved controller support in Windows and Linux, advanced filtering, video library tags, and advanced UPnP sharing.

XBMC has certainly come a long way, and those who passed on it because of its lack of several key features may want to give it a second look now. Plus, with support for the Raspberry Pi, we should be seeing tons of new hardware ideas come to fruition from DIYers everywhere. This may just be the version of XBMC that takes DIY home theaters to the next level and beyond.

The Raspberry Pi team will be working with Google, as well as six UK “educational partners”, to find the right set of students to donate the 15,000-worth of Raspberry Pi computers. The six educational partners include CoderDojo, Code Club, Computing at Schools, Generating Genius, Teach First, and OCR. Specifically, OCR will be creating 15,000 teaching and learning packs to go along with each Raspberry Pi unit.

The team noted in a blog post that they’re “absolutely made up over the news,” and that “this is a brilliant way for us to find kids all over the country whose aptitude for computing can now be explored properly.” The Raspberry Pi team believes that abundant access to these types of tools (as well as any other types of tools) is crucial to discovering what students are good at.

The Raspberry Pi has been a huge hit ever since it initially released almost a year ago. Essentially, it’s a tiny computer — about the size of smartphone — that costs only $35 and can be used for all sorts of electronic projects, as well as be used as a normal, low-profile computer running Linux or any other open-source operating system.

There’s also a tip jar system, allowing users to reward those who release their apps for free. A recommendation engine is also present, to suggest titles of potential interest based on previous downloads; that should be more useful when the store gets more content, since right now it’s not too difficult to scroll through everything on offer.

Raspberry Pi sprang into the public eye when it released budget computers priced from $25, targeted initially at providing a low-cost platform for schools to teach programming, but swiftly adopted by developers of all ages and stages of expertise. With the launch of the Pi Store, the potential audience increases to include those who perhaps aren’t so comfortable with code, but would still like to play with a ‘board.

According toIndieCity, the company which is running the Pi Store, developers with an existing registration will be able to add a Pi SKU under the “platforms/installers” section of their setup. Apps can be released as works-in-progress as well as completed titles.

Those already with a Raspberry Pi can find the newest Raspbian image at the company’s site, complete with Pi Store access. Alternatively it’s possible to add it to an existing build.

Sprite uses a Raspberry Pi board to run the MAME from Linux, and then uses use an SPI-controlled 2.4-inch TFT display instead of dealing with video outputs. Sprite also wanted to have the cabinet run off of batteries in order to make it portable, so he used old mobile phone batteries along with a cleverly-designed charging circuit. So, when the power supply is connected to +5V, the batteries charge up, and when that power is removed, an ATtiny85 microcontroller provides 5V of power to the cabinet using the mobile phone batteries.

Sprite even added a marquee to the MAME cabinet, which is a tiny 128×32 white OLED display, in this case. The display will show the logo of the game currently being played on the cabinet. Everything in the system is set up to be completely seamless when switching between games, and it automatically re-configures the controls and marquee when switching to a new game.

While this may not be a permanent and dedicated arcade solution for most gamers, the ingenuity behind this tiny Raspberry Pi-powered MAME cabinet is one of coolest mods we’ve seen recently, bar none. The video above shows Sprite himself testing out the machine by playing some Bubble Bobble and then switching to Nemesis later on.

[via Hack a Day]

The Raspberry Pi team has announced a Minecraft port called Minecraft: Pi Edition. On top of just playing the game, it’ll also support several different programming languages, which will let you modify the game and make tweaks to the in-game world. The Raspberry Pi team has promised that eager users will be able to download the game for free starting next week.

The Raspberry Pi computer runs on a 700MHz ARMv6 processor and has sold tens of thousands of units to hobbyists and educational establishments alike, and it’s still on back order. So, if you’re now wanting to get in on the Minecraft fun for cheap but don’t yet have a Raspberry Pi board, you’ll be waiting a little while.

In related Raspberry Pi news, the team was also hard at work over Thanksgiving weekend developing a camera add-on for the Raspberry Pi board, which was announced earlier this year. It was shown off at Electronica 2012 in Germany, and it has a 5MP sensor that’s also capable of recording 1080p video at 30 frames per second. The camera will plug into the CSI pins on the Pi board and will arrive sometime next year at a cost of $25.

Back in September, Raspberry Pi announced a new Turbo Mode that promised to squeeze 50% more performance from the little machine. Turbo Mode allows the processor to be overclocked as high as 1 GHz for more performance. More processor speed is a great thing, but Raspberry Pi says that one of the most common requests is extra RAM.

Raspberry Pi has now addressed that request for more RAM with the announcement that the Model B of the little developer board is now shipping with 512 MB of RAM. Previously, the little board had 256 MB of RAM. Versions of the board running 512 MB of RAM are expected to arrive in customer’s hands today.

The company says that it will make a firmware upgrade available “in the next couple of days” allowing users to access the additional memory. That would indicate that right out-of-the-box even though there’s 512 MB of RAM present, the Raspberry Pi boards won’t be able to access more than 256 MB. Combining more RAM with Turbo Mode should broaden the use of this tiny little developer board.

According to Raspberry Pi, overclocking was supported by the hardware at least from the outset, and was a simple matter of editing the config.txt file. However, the team was unsure whether it could have a negative impact on chipset life, and so decided to make it a warranty-buster.

After some more testing, however, and some clever automatic scaling which only allows turbo mode to function when the system is busy and, essentially, when temperature levels are sub-85-degrees centigrade, the official overclock has been produced. Raspberry Pi suggests testing with Quake 3 – something we know the $25 board is very capable of doing - to test out system stability.

Other system tweaks include WiFi support out of the box – though you’ll need to provide a USB WiFi adapter yourself – along with improved analog audio and better USB performance. New boards will come with the turbo mode option enabled; existing owners can upgrade with instructions here.

They’re paired with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of onboard storage, while a MMC card slot can be used to add more. There’s also a SATA port, two USB Host ports, 10/100 ethernet, and an HDMI output capable of 1080p Full HD video for hooking up your display. Finally IR – handy for home entertainment center integration – and a full 96 extender pins are on offer.

That’s an impressive array of kit for $49, and there’s a range of OS support too: Android and Ubuntu get namechecked, but it shouldn’t be too tricky to get your own preferred flavor of Linux up and running. You can even overclock the processor to up to 1.5GHz.

According to the Cubieboard team, the first 100 boards were available at the start of this month, though supplies are still constrained. No word on when that might change.

[via Engadget]

Right now, the team has hardware-accelerated graphics and video up and running with the Raspberry Pi’s VideoCore IV GPU. Currently, AudioFlinger support is the only main thing absent, though that’s still being worked on.

The end result will be a tiny computer that can put all your favorite Android apps and streaming content onto a TV, via HDMI connection and with full internet access. We’ve already seen that the board can squash the iPhone 4S and Tegra 2 in graphics crunching, as well as being capable of 1080p HD video.

There’s no public release of the Android port so far, though since shipping of the Raspberry Pi itself is backlogged between 12 and 17 weeks depending on which country you’re ordering from, you’re in for a wait anyway. Meanwhile, alternatives like the Gooseberry continue to sneak out of the woodwork, with Android baked in from the outset.

Powell has released several videos that have excited us in ways that only Google otherwise has in modern times with their effort known as Project Glass. In fact, Powell has made no effort to hide the fact that he’s been inspired by Google for his project series here – and since he’s rolling out the videos well before Google’s final product is set to hit shelves, he’s certainly got some engineers on the edges of their seats. Have a peek at a simple boot process here and see what this project is shaping up as.

This man named Powell has had several exciting moments appear here on SlashGear over the past few months, each of them accessible in the timeline below aside Project Glass events that have popped up right alongside Powell’s. The race is on, folks – who will create the most usable system first?

Akerman saw that the Pi had had a USB port offering fast and easy access to a webcam, so he could obtain live images sent down to him from the payload. Dubbed the “Raspberry Pi In The Sky” project, the weather balloon reached about 40 kilometers before bursting, which is not bad since most balloons carrying small loads like tracking devices or sensors for temperature and pressure can reach altitudes of about 30 kilometers or so.

Akerman admitted that there were a lot of challenges faced along the way, including the obviously harsh environment from reaching near-space, which has less than one percent atmosphere with temperatures dropping down to -50 degrees Celsius. The Pi itself also had its own set of challenges to work with, which included an SD card, power requirements and operating system.

You can check out Akerman’s launch video below and his blog post here.

[via WebProNews]

The board runs Ice Cream Sandwich and is more than capable of handling 1080p video playback as well as basic browsing duties and lighter gameplay. Ports include mini HDMI and microUSB, and there are three physical hardware buttons for volume control and power. The Gooseberry has the advantage over the Raspberry Pi in terms of power and performance, and the newer architecture means it can run Ubuntu as well.

Having said that, it doesn’t have a LAN port (just WiFi), but more importantly it doesn’t quite have the same community behind it. Still, we doubt many will be complaining about what you get for the price tag. The board costs £40 (~$62) in the UK, and should be shipping in the next 2 to 6 weeks. The store only seems to have a limited quantity available (around 85 as of the time of writing), so you better be quick in snapping one up.

For its part, the camera doesn’t seem to add too much bulk to the system, but additional bulk is essentially unavoidable when the computer is only the size of a credit card. The camera – which attaches to the Raspberry Pi through a ribbon cable – should be available sometime within the next three months, so if you’re dying to put the add-on to the test, you don’t have much longer to wait.

Introduced back in April, the Raspberry Pi quickly took the world of computers by storm. It racked up an insane amount of pre-orders in a short amount of time, and even though the Pi is primarily aimed at getting kids interested in programming through inexpensive means, consumers made it clear that they wanted in on it as well. Founder Eben Upton told CNET that there is still a backlog of orders to fill, but with the Raspberry Pi Foundation producing 4,000 units per day, he hopes that it will soon be able to catch up with demand.

Unfortunately, Upton didn’t delve into specifics as far as a release date is concerned when he announced the camera during the Raspberry Jam event in Cambridge, England, so it looks like we’ll be left waiting for more official word on when this camera will become available. Stay tuned.

The minature computer is now available from resellers such as RS Components and Element 14. Having said that, the computer is still in high demand. RS Components says any computers ordered today won’t be delivered until the end of September, while Element 13 says they should be able to supply them in five weeks.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is doing its best to keep up with demand. The organization says that the computers are being produced at a rate of 4,000 per day. The Raspberry Pu definitely seems to have gone down a treat with the online denizens, with hackers managing to install Chromium OS to the computers, with Ben Heck even designing a custom keyboard for the board inspired by the BBC Micro.

[via The Inquirer]

It’s a very compact solution too at 3.5 by 3.7-inches. Naturally, the processor is compatible with Android, and Ubuntu can also be booted using the board, something that the Raspberry Pi can’t claim. We’ve seen various USB sticks running Android making the rounds, plus smaller media players based around Cortex-A9 processors that run Android too, so this new ODROID-X board should fit quite nicely into that category of computing.

Still, you’ll be paying a lot more for this than you would the Raspberry Pi. While the Pi cost $35, the ODROID-X comes in at $129. Then there’s the matter of putting it in some sort of casing and booting software your software of choice, but it might be an interesting option for resellers hoping to sell a cheap yet powerful media player or mini Android computer.

[via Ars Technica]

Heck modeled his Raspberry Pi keyboard after a BBC Micro-inspired keyboard with a custom wood closure. The keyboard has cartridge slots and an add-on experimenters kit. The top cover over the keyboard has hinges and can flip open giving the machine vintage look. The DIY computer has an on-off switch, Ethernet connectivity, and video/audio composite ports.

Other features include a 5 V DC output and a USB hub so you can attach peripherals like flash drives or amounts. The experiment kit attached to the device uses C++ programming language. If you’ve wanted something unique to do with your Raspberry Pi, this might be the ticket.

What’s happening here is that the Motorola Lapdock acts as a shell for whatever system you want to run through it. It connects to you a device with a microUSB and microHDMI cord, displays a mirror of whatever the system has to offer up on its own display, and gives you full access to it with its own keyboard and trackpad. Of course this system doesn’t automatically work for whatever 3rd party computer you’ve got on hand, it having been made for the Motorola Atrix in the first place, then pushed for the Motorola Droid RAZR as well in stores now.

But what we’re seeing this week is each of several different miniPCs, made with only the most basic of elements to keep cost down, being hooked up to this machine. Motorola certainly didn’t intend for this “Lapdock” as they call it to be used in this way, but increasing sales this way is better than nothing – Lapdocks back on top!

Check out the timeline below to see all the times we encountered the Lapdock in all of its iterations, and head to the Raspberry Pi portal to keep up with news on the most lovely miniature computer on the market today.

The good news is that the cheap little computer board has been approved by the official Chromium OS team to run the operating system. What that means for now is that the Chromium OS can boot on the Raspberry Pi board. That doesn’t mean the operating system is stable on the hardware though.

In fact, it could be a while before a stable version of the operating system is available for little $35 Raspberry Pi mainboard. Considering that Chromium OS is known to run considerably better on Chromebooks rocking hardware such as Intel Celeron processors and 4 GB of RAM, than it does on slower machines with Intel Atom processors and 2 GB RAM, you have to wonder how well the rather sloth-like Raspberry Pi will do with the operating system. After all, the board only has a 700 MHz ARM11 processor and 512 MB memory.

[via Liliputing]

This is by no means an unprecedented manufacturing line for hardware, by any means, but certainly is a positive note for those making their orders for this odd little monster before it’s been formally introduced to reviewers. There’s already a 10,000 unit pre-release shipment out there, but the second wave has not yet hit. Orders placed after April 18th are being called ready for July and onward. Individual customers will also be updated on their order status as updates are available.

This little machine, for those of you that don’t know, is a computer without a case with a cute tiny Raspberry logo on it that costs $35 USD. It’s designed to be undeniably inexpensive at the same time as being functional, and is aimed at changing the world with that combination. When you’ve got 100,000 orders racked up in ONE STORE before your product is shipped in bulk, you might consider your goal to have been met. We’ll certainly be hearing more from the Raspberry Pi team in the near future!

Raspberry Pi distributor RS Components revealed that it has already received 250,000 pre-orders, up from the 220,000 it reported last week, while another distributor, Element14, says that it has surpassed 100,000 pre-orders. Altogether, at least 350,000 pre-orders have been confirmed.

Element14 notes that those customers who placed their pre-orders before April 18, will receive their shipment before the end of June even if they received a note that shipments might be delayed until August.

Some Raspberry Pi computers began shipping to customers last weekend and received generally positive reviews. Although it’s a bit sluggish for a PC and lacks optimized software, it is after all only $35 and the size of credit card. It’s a tiny, low-powered, and incredibly cheap ARM-based Linux system that can connect to a TV or keyboard for word processing, gaming, and playing HD video.

[via Inquirer]

The Raspberry Pi was announced back in February as an incredibly affordable ARM-based Linux machine designed to teach children about programming. The tiny $35 Raspberry Pi can connect to a TV or keyboard to be used for word processing, gaming, and playing HD video. Production of the computer had been delayed twice due to a production mistake as well as a testing mix-up.

Customers among the first to have placed an order should expect to receive their shipments by April 20. However, this initial supply of the Raspberry Pi is still limited, with full production volume set for later this year. Hence, current orders are limited to one per customer and only a portion of the customers who pre-registered interest will receive an invitation to order.

[via PCMag]

Andy Taylor currently volunteers at the UK Computer Museum, an organization that was working on software to run on the Raspberry Pi. After that project was finished, Andy decided to port the ZX Spectrum emulator Fuse to the mini computer. The games he managed to get running include Manic Miner.

It opens up even more possibilities for the Linux computer. It’s only a matter of time before people begin porting other emulators, and although there may be a limit on what it can render, we wouldn’t be surprised to see some classic consoles of old land soon.

That’s if customers can get their hands on a Raspberry Pi, of course. The computer is so popular it sold out within two hours in the UK, and was then hit by manufacturing delays caused by an incorrect ethernet jack. Meanwhile, 2,000 boards are currently waiting to gain CE compliance before they can be be shipped to UK customers.

[via Gizmodo UK]

Both RS Components and element 14/Premiere both opted not to distribute the Raspberry Pi board until it held the CE mark. The company behind the board maintains that it’s not a finished product and didn’t need the CE mark. Raspberry Pi feels its board should be sold under the same terms as the Beagleboard and other similar products that lack the CE mark. However, since the two main suppliers wouldn’t sell it without that mark, Raspberry Pi took action.

The company says it’s working to get the first 2000 boards that are now in the UK tattooed with the CE mark as soon as possible. At the same time, the company is working on bringing the rest of the initial batch of boards into the country. Raspberry Pi says that at this point they expect emissions from the board to meet category A requirements without any modification and could meet more stringent category B requirements sans case. The company is also trying to find out if it can ship the Raspberry Pi board in the UK under the same terms as the Beagleboard. We will keep an eye out for more news.

“With the development of GPS controlled drones, far-reaching cheap radio equipment and tiny new computers like the Raspberry Pi, we’re going to experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air. This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war” The Pirate Bay

The drones are dubbed Low Orbit Server Stations (LOSS) and The Pirate Bay suggests a cheap transmitter can provide up to 100Mbps, per node, over a 50km distance. That, the site argues, is “more than enough” for the proxy system it has in mind.

To be frank, it reads more like science fiction than something you’d expect from a torrent site, but that’s not to say it wouldn’t actually work. Issues like power and remote control would need to be addressed – perhaps using solar or wind energy – and then there’s the potential for lawsuits should a drone accidentally drift into flight lanes.

The Pirate Bay has come under increasing legal attention over the past few years, with a court case finding the site’s founders guilty of enabling piracy of copyrighted content. In response, the site has shifted from hosting torrent files to instead offering so-called magnetic links to externally hosted files, a move which allows for a 90MB download of the entire site’s catalog.

[via TechDirt and via TorrentFreak]

The Ethernet jacks being used in production models were the wrong type. Unfortunately, the ones being used did not include integrated magnetics, which help filter out noise and provides DC isolation. The incorrect jacks have already been soldered to boards, so each and every one will have to be removed and replaced with the correct jack before the boards can be shipped to users.

While the foundation says the jacks are relatively easy to replace, sourcing the correct ones could prove tricky. What were thought to be the correct jacks are now faulty, which means the team has to hunt down and order a large quantity new jacks as fast as possible. An apology has been issued on their blog, and they also thanked customers for their patience.

The $35 “Model B” of the Raspberry Pi is the more powerful alternative to the $25 version, featuring two USB ports instead of one, and an Ethernet port. The GPU is said to be twice as fast as what is featured in the iPhone 4S, and the computer is also capable of decoding 1080p video from a Blu-ray.

“Stocks from Raspberry Pi of the initial production quantity are limited and these have already sold out” element14 said today in a statement. “We’re working very closely with Raspberry Pi to ensure we meet the demand as soon as possible.”

That demand has been fueled by the surprising capabilities of so cheap a device, which – although originally intended for the education market, as a tool to encourage young people to take up programming – soon proved itself entirely able to take on Tegra 2 and the iPhone 4S in terms of processing potency.

Sales of the Model A – which is $25 but has pared back features – are expected to begin later in the year; it began production today. There’ll also be a Model B Bundle,  with a Model B Raspberry Pi, wireless mouse, keyboard, WiFi dongle, SD Card reader other components, though pricing is yet to be confirmed.

Although the Raspberry Pi was intended as an educational tool, with the foundation behind the computer hoping to motivate schools into teaching programming skills as part of the curriculum, its surprisingly potent processing power quickly grabbed the focus. Early demos showed it capably running Quake III, with subsequent demos showing unofficial AirPlay support.

In fact, the Model B is tipped to have twice the GPU power of the iPhone 4S and be capable of roasting NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 in raw grunt.

You can find details on how to buy over at the Raspberry Pi site, though at time of writing one retailer, Farnell, is sold out, and the other is asking for would-be buyers to “express interest” with next deliveries expected at the end of next week. The stock took just two hours to be depleted.

The Raspberry Pi $25 PC is essentially a computer motherboard with a low-powered ARM-based processor by the name of Broadcom BCM2835 and a cute set of connections around the Raspberry Pi logo printed on the board near the center. You’ll be running Linux-based software right out of the box and is set to be aimed at education groups, hobby computer builders, and those looking for the cheapest computer on the block. There will be two versions of this device when its released – the basic build for $25, and the slightly upgraded version with internet connectivity for $35.

The board is able to handle 1080p HD video playback, gaming to some degree, and has been shown to roll out on giant screens in testing phases several times already. You’ll be able to see this computer in action within the month and will be able to pick one up for yourself by the end of the month. If all goes according to plan, that is!

[via Raspberry Pi]

There’s been a leak of the omnipotent colorway everyone always seems to want, white, for the phone that’s coming down to crush us all: Nokia Lumia 900. The entire Canon PowerShot range has been overhauled to include Wifi, waterproofing, GPS, and a whole lot more. The titan known as Skyrim has been brought to a whole new level with the Skyrim Creation Kit for your PC. And if that weren’t enough, you’ll be able to play Skyrim on no less than a brand new Xbox 360 Kinect Star Wars kit starting on the 3rd of April!

There will be no Samsung Galaxy S III release in March. Verizon will be rebooting their double data promotion soon. It’s time to get giddy with Windows 8 gaming as its own line-up is revealed. The Apple iTV rumors continue, and HTC HERO FORCE is not the name for the studio HTC has created for its hero devices in 2012 – but I wish it was!

According to the company, the quartz crystal that the Raspberry Pi board was designed to use was readily available in UK, but over in China where the device is manufactured it was hard to find. The manufacturer is finally putting the boards together after getting a supply of the crystals. The first batch of boards is expected to be finished on February 20.

After the boards are complete, they will be shipped over to the UK where they will be available for purchase shortly thereafter. Another interesting piece of news has been offered up as well. Broadcom has published a datasheet on the BCM2835 SoC that is used inside the Raspberry Pi. Those of you out there dying to learn more details about the SoC can grab the datasheet, which describes the ARM peripherals inside the chip in PDF form here. We mentioned that the Raspberry Pi would be running a custom version of the XBMC software not long ago.

“What’s really striking is how badly Tegra 2 performs relative even to simple APs using licensed Imagination Technologies (TI and Apple) or ARM Mali (Samsung) graphics” Upton says. “To summarise, BCM2835 has a tile mode architecture – so it kills immediate-mode devices like Tegra on fill-rate – and we’ve chosen to configure it with a very large amount of shader performance, so it does very well on compute-intensive benchmarks, and should double iPhone 4S performance across a range of content.”

Strong words, but we’ve already seen some of what the low-cost computer is capable of. As well as playing Quake III and Full HD video it’s also – with some unofficial software – able to stream AirPlay video from an iPad. That makes it an ideal home entertainment box, but also positions it pretty strongly as a games console alternative.

Unfortunately it seems what Raspberry Pi won’t be able to do is run Windows 8. Despite Microsoft’s Windows-on-ARM project, Upton says, talks between the companies have confirmed that Windows 8 will require an ARM7 Cortex chip at the least, whereas the $25 board runs a 700MHz ARM11. “Perhaps a future version might go there” Upton concludes,”we certainly get a lot of people asking if they can run Windows applications on the device.”

[via Geek]

Plug the Raspberry Pi into the TV, using the standard HDMI output, run the AirPlay app, and the iPad can select the cheap computer as a playback option for video. If you’re wondering, the creepy cows are from the infamous cyriak.

Although billed as a low-cost way for students to get to grips with programming and open-source hardware/software, Raspberry Pi is looking more and more interesting to everyone else, too. Back in August it was shown running Quake III, and now it looks like it could make for a capable little A/V streaming adapter too.

The first ten units went up for auction at the start of the month and brought the charity a pretty penny; however regular production has since started, with pricing at the far more reasonable $35.

[via Gizmodo]