Talk:Raspberry Pi/Archive 1
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Is it like the Beagleboard?
Seems to resemble Beagleboard quite a lot, just in a smaller form factor. Is it based on the same OMAP CPU? The specs seem quite similar. Panu-Kristian Poiksalo (talk) 09:40, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
- You mean of course that the BeagleBoard resembles the Rasberry Pi which was originally developed in the 2004 and had working units in 2006. Twobells (talk) 17:12, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
- "Is it based on the same OMAP CPU?" <-- no the raspberry pi is based on a broadcom chip.
- "Seems to resemble Beagleboard quite a lot" <-- they are quite similar in many ways, the biggest difference is the pricepoint, the raspberry pi is targetted to be somewhere arround a fifth of the price of the beagleboard. Of course you can buy beagleboards today while the raspberry pi is still a future product.
- "Rasberry Pi which was originally developed in the 2004 and had working units in 2006." <-- while the raspberry pi foundation has been arround a while the current iteration of the Pi (arm based, "credit card" size) seems to be much newer than that though i'm having trouble detemining just how old. The beagleboard came out in 2008.
- -- 130.88.108.187 (talk) 10:58, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
network conneciton
Does it have network/internet connectivity? I don't see it mentioned either way and it a pretty crucial feature of a modern computer Back ache (talk) 15:55, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
- ISTR reading it'll optionally have a Wi-Fi chip. There may possibly be a reference to that somewhere. Otherwise, it'll be Ethernet-over-USB AFAIK. --Trevj (talk) 18:31, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
- The official website mentions an optional 10/100 ethernet controller ( http://www.raspberrypi.org/?page_id=2 ). Apparently, for 5 to 10 dollars more, you can get the "extended edition" with ethernet and 256MB RAM total. 137.226.181.41 (talk) 22:38, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
- Additionally, I would assume you could plug in any USB WIFI adapter supported by the OS for wireless network connectivity. ThomasJ73 (talk) 08:25, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
- Also there is a cheap chip (made by Microchip) (specifically the ENC28J60 [1]) that will add ethernet functionality to any device that has an SPI interface, (which the Raspberry PI has) if not using that there are also plenty of chips that do the same, as long as the CPU has an external (16-bit) data bus and a few address lines. (which the Raspberry PI also has), In any case adding ethernet connectivity shouldn't be that much of a problem. But all that is really irrelevant, because you see, the first version of the Raspberry PI had an interface for a (CCD chip) camera, and I learned that for a more recent version of the Broadcom chip Raspberry PI uses, Broadcom replaced that (unused) functionality and replaced it with an MII interface, so it became a simple matter of adding a cheap PHY to get Ethernet connectivity. And when designing the new "credit card form factor version" version of the Raspberry PI, that will be going to sell for $35, they did exactly that. Mahjongg (talk) 00:42, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
Processor
The article currently states The prototype is designed on a Broadcom processor 2763 but this piece claims the 2835 (apparently derived from the 2722). As the info is officially unknown (and perhaps incorrectly reported) maybe it should be removed from the article here, pending confirmation. --Trevj (talk) 06:04, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
- The processor was officially revealed as a 2835 today. http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=106 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.245.254.6 (talk) 14:01, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
- The datasheet for the CPU BCM2835 IC chip is NOT available to the public. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 17:39, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Licensing
I am considering adding a paragraph about licensing. The software part is easy, but there are some unanswered questions about the hardware:
Is the hardware under some sort of free / open source / creative commons license or is it proprietary?
Is the Raspberry Pi Foundation asserting that the hardware in under patent protection? I am assuming not - nothing there appears patentable.
Is the Raspberry Pi Foundation asserting that the schematics and board layout are under copyright protection?
Have they published the schematics or board layout? If not, do they assert that the schematics or board layout are under trade secret protection?
Is the Raspberry Pi Foundation asserting that the name and logo are under trademark protection? Have they ever used the TM mark? Have they gone farther and registered the name/logo and used the (R) mark? I would be very surprised if those are not trademarks, whether or not they mark them as such (and it is normal practice for FOSS projects to retain trademark rights). Guy Macon (talk) 09:49, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
- "even planning to release the schematics and board designs for the Raspberry Pi": [2]
- "We intend to release our schematics and board designs provided we are satisfied that the chips needed to build the device are available through distribution in reasonably small quantities": [3]
- "We're partway through trademarking the logo": [4]
- --Trevj (talk) 11:16, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks! That's a really good start. In case anyone doesn't know the subtleties of trademark law, in the US the logo automatically became a trademarked when they first used it. No doubt he is referring to it becoming a registered trademark; some nations do not recognize trademarks rights arising through use. Guy Macon (talk) 11:28, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
Release date citation needed
The FAQ at http://www.raspberrypi.org/?page_id=8 mentions that the product is scheduled for release in nov/dec. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.12.201.202 (talk) 07:23, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
- As of today, that FAQ says simply November, 2011. That ref has been added. --Ds13 (talk) 17:10, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
Logo image
You are invited to join the discussion at File talk:Raspberry Pi Logo.svg#Contested deletion. Trevj (talk) 07:30, 17 October 2011 (UTC)Template:Z48
Programming languages
This addition to the table has been reverted with the summary Revert: Every language with an ARM port will work on Raspberry Pi. We're not going to enumerate them all. Why not? Although other hardware within Category:Single-board computers doesn't list languages, I believe the Raspberry Pi to be fundamentally different in that it's intended to encourage programming. The interview with David Braben is presented in a reliable source. Does anyone other than me think it's valid to include 'Programming languages' in the table (with more languages to be added in the future)? I can't see anything at WP:NOT suggesting the exclusion of such material. Is the removal of this content justified by any policy? Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 14:47, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
- Because it's listcruft. There are two possible states for listcruft:
- 1) The list is incomplete -- thus its selection is arbitrary.
- 2) The list is complete and way too long for the article's scope.
- Neither of these are desirable. State #1 will invite people to add their favorite language to the list, until the list eventually grows to #2, at which point the list is too long for anyone to bother reading through it, therefore useless. Chances are we would end up duplicating List of open-source programming languages (which itself is incomplete), as most open source language implementations work on ARM too.
- Further, I find that including BASIC -- a mostly obsolete language -- in such an incomplete list gives it undue weight. -- intgr [talk] 15:25, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
- It's a listing of items within a single cell in a wikitable, not a list. By the stated logic, the following should also be removed:
'Video outputs', 'Audio outputs', 'Onboard Storage', 'Low-level peripherals' and'Supported operating systems' and 'Unsupported operating systems'. Listcruft is not policy. Regarding state #1, Wikipedia is a work in progress. -- Trevj (talk) 16:16, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
- It's a listing of items within a single cell in a wikitable, not a list. By the stated logic, the following should also be removed:
- Yeah, there are no policies directly covering this, and yes it's not a bullet list. But that doesn't address any of the arguments I made:
- Listing all languages that work on the ARM platform would be way too long, I'll bet you that nobody would bother reading through the list. That would make this list useless.
- Such a long list is out of scope of the article. You're welcome to start a separate article and link to it.
- BBC Basic is an obsolete language; mentioning it on a limited list would give it undue weight.
- I'd say the list of operating systems for ARM is way shorter and they're relevant here because they directly depend on the hardware and perhipherals on the board.
- So here are some languages I can think of off hand that probably work on the platform: C, C++, Objective C, C#, VisualBasic.NET, Java, Scala, Clojure, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, Java, JavaScript, ActionScript, Pascal, Delphi, Pike, Lua, Scheme, OCaml, Go, Haskell, Smalltalk, Lisp, Forth, Fortran, Erlang, Ada, shell script, Tcl, Self, R, ColdFusion, Eiffel, VBScript, Guile. I probably missed many. All of these are general-purpose languages, used to this day to get work done -- something I doubt about BBC Basic. -- intgr [talk] 17:12, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for clarifying your argumets. Here are my thoughts.
- Listing all languages that work on the ARM platform would be way too long, I'll bet you that nobody would bother reading through the list. That would make this list useless.
- I don't think it's the place of editors to selectively omit relevant sourced information on the assumption that "that nobody would bother reading" it.
- Such a long list is out of scope of the article. You're welcome to start a separate article and link to it.
- A long list (if it really were a list) may be outside the scope and be undue. If I've correctly understood your comment, you're suggesting that List of programming languages running on the Raspberry Pi would meet WP:GNG. At this stage, I think that's highly unlikely and such an article would very soon be merged into Raspberry Pi. The included "list" was a single wikilink in what is effectively the bottom of the article, and comprising just 9 characters. I fail to see how that could possibly be viewed as WP:UNDUE.
- BBC Basic is an obsolete language; mentioning it on a limited list would give it undue weight.
- Have you read BBC BASIC? It's not clear which implementation Braben is referring to. But if he considers it to be obsolete, I think he would have responded accordingly to the question "So is it safe to assume there will be an analogue to BBC Basic on Raspberry Pi?"
- I'd say the list of operating systems for ARM is way shorter and they're relevant here because they directly depend on the hardware and perhipherals on the board.
- There are probably a great number of Linux derivatives which could run on the hardware, potentially leading to a long "list". Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I don't understand how OSes "directly depend on the hardware and perhipherals on the board" any more than programming languages do. Do you mean that specific OS builds are required for the hardware, whereas languages are only indirectly dependent because they depend on the OS?
- Listing all languages that work on the ARM platform would be way too long, I'll bet you that nobody would bother reading through the list. That would make this list useless.
- All of these are general-purpose languages, used to this day to get work done -- something I doubt about BBC Basic.
- Perhaps it would help to include Braben's quote: "You could write something in Basic doing fancy graphics processing but where you could look at it and it’s really obvious what it’s doing. That’s great from a teaching point of view, and from a fun point of view." The project is about learning and teaching - he's saying that experimenting with BASIC can be beneficial to learners. The project isn't about "get[ting] work done". It's about education.
- Thanks. -- Trevj (talk) 19:11, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
- Thanks for clarifying your argumets. Here are my thoughts.
- Yeah, there are no policies directly covering this, and yes it's not a bullet list. But that doesn't address any of the arguments I made:
People who say that BBC BASIC is obsolete and listing it would put "undue weight" on it do not grasp the (historical) significance of providing BBC BASIC, in a way it is the singular programming language for the Raspberry PI !
The reason that BBC BASIC has that status is because in Britain (the raspberry PI was created for the British educational market) it was the foremost language used in education in the 80's, and this system is more or less a "remake" of such a "learn to program computer".
Another reason for the BBC computer's historical significance is that the creators of the BBC computer (Acorn) also designed the ARM processor architecture that is used in the Raspberry PI.
If you read the "mission statement" of the raspberry PI foundation, [5], and some of the interviews and such it is clear that a longing for the days that all British children were exposed to programming on the BBC computer with BBC BASIC directly lead to the wish to create this educational computer, cheap enough to give away to all British school children to give them back the direct exposure to programming that we do not have anymore in schools these days.
Obviously using the same language as a previous generation learnt programming with is more or less a prerequisite "to put the fun back in programming". Programming in BBC BASIC is fun because BBC BASIC has a high turnaround rate because its an interpreter, not a compiler. So you can type in a few lines of code and run it immediately. Also because its such a clean and simple programming environment it doesn't distract from the basis of learning to program.
Its not meant for "getting work done", but meant for "getting to know how computers work" in a fun way.
Mahjongg (talk) 19:48, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
- I'm adding this row (and BBC BASIC) again, as there's no consensus (or good reason) to keep it out. -- Trevj (talk) 08:47, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
- Looking into this a little more, Python is to be the main lang, with C & Perl also to be used. These are now included in the table. Others have been tested but including them could be classed as original research, so it's probably best to omit them for now. -- Trevj (talk) 09:34, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
- After thinking about this for a bit, what bugs me is that these languages are listed in a table for factual hardware specifications. But they just don't belong -- the hardware in no way constrains which languages can be used; nearly all open source languages have at least one ARM-compatible implementation.
- However, it would very much make sense to create a separate section/paragraph about Raspberry Pi Foundation's educational project and list these languages there. Because that's a statement about their educational vision and not the hardware platform.
- In that light, I went WP:BOLD, rearranged the article a little, and moved the "promoted languages" to the 2nd section. But I don't feel strongly about these changes; all I want is to make it clear that the hardware can support any language. -- intgr [talk] 21:31, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
- The idea that hardware in any way determines what kind of language can be supported is in a way a "red herring", as any computing system that is Turing complete (and has enough storage) can emulate any other computer, and consequently can support any programming language. So that aspect simply isn't worth any discussion. What is worth discussing about is, for what purpose a system was designed. And in this particular case its obvious it was designed to make learning the basis of programming simple and fun! Making it simple means that all superfluous distractions from the task of entering code, and see what the code does should be removed, so no "windowing systems etc" to distract from the task. Making it fun means that you can do something creative with that generates immediate gratifying result. Mahjongg (talk) 00:34, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
- intgr, that edit makes a lot of sense: the table wasn't the best place for that info. -- Trevj (talk) 08:53, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
- The idea that hardware in any way determines what kind of language can be supported is in a way a "red herring", as any computing system that is Turing complete (and has enough storage) can emulate any other computer, and consequently can support any programming language. So that aspect simply isn't worth any discussion. What is worth discussing about is, for what purpose a system was designed. And in this particular case its obvious it was designed to make learning the basis of programming simple and fun! Making it simple means that all superfluous distractions from the task of entering code, and see what the code does should be removed, so no "windowing systems etc" to distract from the task. Making it fun means that you can do something creative with that generates immediate gratifying result. Mahjongg (talk) 00:34, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
Links to datasheets etc.
I've tidied up by removing a number of these. Remember this is a wiki, those aren't appropriate external links for this article. If someone wants info on ARM11 (say) they don't come here, they go to that article. Similarly if someone has started here and wants more detail on ARM11, they follow that wikilink and that contains the pertinent resources... --62.254.139.60 (talk) 14:25, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
- The Raspberry Pi is nothing more than a single board computer that isn't hidden inside of a case, thus main IC chips are an important part of such boards. I added a better link to the Broadcom chip and added a link to the SMSC chip. These are related to this article, thus should not be removed. Concerning the ARM11, technically those links were NOT datasheets, but I let them slide. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 06:01, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
- I agree with Sbmeirow. Links to the major ICs used in the RP should be included here for the same reason links to the Atmel ATMega are included in Arduino. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:28, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
- Looking through the external links in arduino and links to underlying data sheets aren't there. If people want to know about ARM11 they go to the ARM11 article, not here. Sure we might have a summary of ARM11 here with a link to "main article..." as we see all over the place, external links to such detailed documentation belong there. --62.254.139.60 (talk) 14:58, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
- when I said datasheets etc. the "etc." was a giveaway that they weren't all datasheets. If we believe it's little more than the core chip then we should delete this article and add it as a subsection of the article on that chip. (WIth a redirect of course). Got to admit I'm suprised this is at all controversial. It's the way all articles work, PCs have been based around x86 architecture for ages and it's incredibly well known and an intrinsic of the platform - we don't link the x86 reference documentation from the article on PCs. --62.254.139.60 (talk) 15:00, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
Arduino most certainly does reference the datasheets for its major ICs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino
has a link to
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?PN=ATmega328P
Which is the overview of the Atmel ATmega328P.
The "Documents" tab on that page leads to
which has a link to
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/doc8271.pdf
(If a manufacturer has an overview page that links to the datasheet, it is better to link to that than to link directly to a large PDF.)
A Raspberry Pi is like an Arduino, Beagleboard, or Pandaboard, and is not like a PC, Macintosh or Commodore 64. Those are general purpose computers -- the point of the PC. etc. is running apps (even though you can hack them). The point of the Arduino, etc. is educational hardware hacking and software hacking (even though you can run apps on most of them). The audiences for the two classes of product are completely different, and thus the Wikipedia pages should have different emphasis.
You may be surprised that a proposal to treat an educational bare board computer like a general purpose computer is controversial, but it is very controversial. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
- Great response. Generic PC's must be 100% compatible at a specific level, otherwise Windows and other O/S wouldn't be able to run on them. Arduino single board computers are different yet are very similar because of the Arduino high-level software and common AVR. There are some similarities between different ARM chips, yet there is a mountain of differences between the "jillion" proprietary peripherals that get attached to the ARM cores, especially when vendors like Broadcom lock down their datasheets. Compare the Beagleboard vs Pandaboard vs Raspberry Pi, they are all ARM-based, but they are all 100% unique and not compatible with each other, thus is why technical details are mandatory for single board computer articles. The Raspberry Pi is a unique one-of-a-kind board, thus more technical details MUST be linked to describe it properly. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 16:33, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
- Concerning Arduino, examine the Processor column at Arduino#Arduino_board_models, and look at all those links to the exact microcontrollers. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 16:58, 2 January 2012 (UTC)