Raspberry Pi

[cully]

no its not a drink or anything to eat

its a development computer based on the latest mobilephone chips
i have been seeing reviews on these and they looked a real good base for all things processor based and mobile

its basically a pc the size of a pack of cards built for school kids to develop there programming skills, its new only just released here but the boards have been around for a bit now in the wild and developers/hackers have made some wonderful bits of kit with them

   

powered by a 5v usb charger or even 4AA battery's it has HDMI out capable of HD @ 1080

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

i decided to buy one after reading a blog on how to turn one into a on demand tv media centre

the blog is here http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/desktops/how-t...-50008599/

all my bits have turned up over the last few days and today i decided to have a build.
to be honest there weren't much to do other than load a SD card from a PC with the boot loader then it all set up automatically via a wired net connection

   
   

so basically Ive built a media centre that can access and play all my stored music and videos its got iplayer/itv/4oD/5 on demand channels
Ive also found NASCAR speed on demand redbull web TV and there are loads of other stuff

its Linux based running XMBC and its operating system is all on an SD card so if you have other applications for the board you just change SD cards and plug new peripherals in and away you go

say an incar computer with touch screen or home automation system controlling lighting heating via an app on your phone