Raspberry Pi Adventures

[Zeman]

Yesterday I ordered my first RPi, the recent B+ model to be exact. I am planing on making a mobile media device thats easy to navigate and use independent of other devices, like a laptop except itll be designed for a seamless media experience. The idea is to be self contained but for the device to easily handle adding external devices and storage.

I'd love to hear about what anyone else has done with the RPi, who knows if I have more inspiration I might get more.

[Growlithe]

My senior project last year was interfacing a Raspberry Pi with another Raspberry Pi with a sabertooth motor controller to make a wirelessly controlled wheelchair robot. I cheated and used TinyBasic instead of Python, but that's because I was too busy helping everyone with BS2 microprocessors; I was a TA in a digital course and the only free time I had to work on it. Raspberry Pi has been garnering support for some time now. There are tons of projects out there now a days. I enjoy console modding, so I might look back into getting my RPi to turn on a fan when my overclocked n64 gets warm, control some simple LEDs, and give it a manual reset from the controller, or something really basic like that to get back into the swing of it. I hope you're not one of those types to be offended that I chose a language that was more familiar for me to code in due to time constraints Some people are so elitist over their preferred language.

If you do build a device like that, I recommend li-po batteries. They've given me good amp hours per ounce and the dollar cost isn't too shabby. I'm sure someone with more experience may have a different recommendation however; I've not looked into them since '08.

[Zeman]

Wow I'm in awe...

Currently I'm not focused on the media center anymore and am instead setting up an arcade machine that will run off of a NES emulator (MAME for pi just has no good options) although after that I have ideas of hooking some arduinos to a pi to make a robot

And no I completely understand, personally I prefer Java, C, or C#, Python just feels weird to me.

Let me know how that N64 fan idea works out, I've also had some ideas of fan cooling systems for different devices.

[Growlithe]

I likely won't get to that project until college break because I won't have my n64 with me, however, I appreciate it, and good luck on your project as well. Also, don't forget that some programs that require just the language can be exported onto a cheap chip down the road. That probably won't be helpful with your project, but it is something many people think about when making project - use your Raspberry Pi as a dev kit in a way to work out the kink in a program, then order a chip that supports the language with your code on it for hardly anything. Such as with mine, I will likely write the code, debug it, then have a non-rewriteable chip stand in to free my Pi up.