Sign up for our Technology Newsletter 
Raspberry Pi Growing
Since it was launched in 2012, the Raspberry Pi has sold 10 million units, making it the most popular British computer ever.
A new starter kit for Raspberry Pi, including a keyboard and mouse, has been released to celebrate the success. The kit also includes an SD storage card, official case, power supply, HDMI cable, mouse, keyboard and guidebook – it costs $120.00 plus VAT and will be available in the coming weeks.
Company founder Eben Upton wrote in his bog that he thought they might sell 10,000 units during the product’s lifetime and were a little surprised about the product’s success.
“There was no expectation that adults would use Raspberry Pi, no expectation of commercial success and certainly no expectation that four years later we would be manufacturing tens of thousands of units a day in the UK and exporting Raspberry Pi all over the world.”
The mini-PCs are being used for more than just teaching kids how to assemble PCs. They are useful for setting up smart houses and other settings. One was even used in the hacker drama Mr Robot to bring down eVil corp by triggering the heating systems.
Courtesy-Fud
Raspberry Pi To Get Mass Storage
Bittorrent and WD have teamed up to create a 1TB drive for the Raspberry Pi. The Pi Drive has been designed especially for the Raspberry Pi Model B+ and the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, and offers a viable way to turn a Pi into a media centre, NAS and PVR all in one.
BitTorrent Sync makes it possible to sync content from all your devices straight to the drive, bypassing the cloud and making it an excellent backup device.
It differs from a standard hard drive, not least because it’s low-powered enough to be run off the USB port that charges your Pi, using a splitter cable supplied – no mean feat for a mechanical drive.
It’s not perfect. It’s a standard 2.5in drive but with a USB connection rather than a SATA which means it’s bigger than the Pi and you’ll need to create a bespoke case or let it all hang out in true maker fashion.
Essentially, it’s the same type of drive that you would see if you smashed open one of WD’s external drives, but it would take a brave soul to do so and this way you get the right cable and software to make it all work together.
The tie-up between BitTorrent and WD comes as the former announces version 2.2 of the Sync service which we have been following since inception.
The new version offers a clearer delineation between home and pro users. Home users can buy a lifetime licence for $39.99 which covers all 2.x releases. This comes in addition to the perpetual free version which will no longer be limited to 10 folders.
Instead the monetized version will come from business customers who remain on a monthly fee, and pro user subscriptions for advanced features such as collaboration and file sharing introduced in version 2.1.
The Pi Drive retails at $80 with a 35 percent discount offer through BitTorrent with the code WDPIDRIVE1TB. UK sellers are yet to be confirmed, but will form part of the newly launched BitTorrent Sync reseller programme that launches with this edition.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/raspberry-pi-to-get-mass-storage.html
Raspberry Pi Making Moves
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced that its pint-sized computer has now sold a whopping five million units.
The announcement came via Twitter, where the official Raspberry Pi account boasted that the five million milestone makes it the big-selling computer manufacturer in the UK of all time.
Just confirmed the big news we’ve all been waiting for: we’ve now sold more than 5 million Raspberry Pis.
— Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) February 17, 2015
We think that this means that in just under 3 years, we’ve gone from zero to being the biggest selling UK computer manufacturer ever. Yowza.
— Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) February 17, 2015
This comes just two weeks after the firm announced sales of 4.5 million Raspberry Pi computers, suggesting that its latest model, the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, has proved popular since it went on sale on 2 February.
Raspberry Pi said previously that it aims to ship three million units of the new model within 12 months, and Tuesday’s announcement suggests that it’s on track to smash that target.
The firm has yet to announce exactly how many Raspberry Pi 2 models have shipped, but we are likely to hear official figures in the next few weeks.
The second-generation device was unveiled at the beginning of this month, improving on the original Raspberry Pi with 1GB RAM and support for Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system.
It also boasts expanded GPIO pins and advanced power management and connectivity, making it possible to connect up to four USB devices, including powered devices such as hard drives.
Can Imagination Push IoT?
Imagination Technologies will take on the Raspberry Pi with the release of a single-board minicomputer for both Android and Linux developers.
In a bid to power a range of devices in the ever-growing world of the Internet of Things (IoT) space, the MIPS-based Creator CI20 can run both Linux and Android operating systems (OS) and is said to deliver both high performance and low energy consumption.
When it hits the market in January, the development board will target the likes of open source developers, the maker community and system integrators to provide them with tools and encourage them to create a wide range of applications and projects.
The Creator CI20 is based around a system on a chip (SoC) combining CPU, graphics and I/O circuitry, featuring an I/O connector block compatible with that of the Raspberry Pi, meaning it could be plugged into many of the same projects.
The board comes with a 1.2GHz MIPS32-based dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM with PowerVR SGX540 graphics for OpenGL 2.1 and ES 2.0 compatibility, meaning its capable of 1080p gaming at 30fps. It also features Ethernet connectivity alongside 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 plus 4GB storage onboard.
While it’s easy to compare the Creator CI20 to the Raspberry Pi, Imagination’s executive vice president of marketing, Tony King-Smith, told V3.co.uk that the develop board is not intended as a direct rival.
“We’re not trying to compete with devices like Raspberry Pi and Arduino, which many developers will already have, we’re giving them more options, and we believe this is a pretty rich offering,” he said.
King-Smith said that the Creator CI20 is ideal for the IoT revolution because of its embedded wireless capabilities, but also because it is capable of running mature OS such as Linux and Android that support graphical user interfaces.
“This will make IoT interesting, whether you’re looking at a thermostat or a sensor or whatever, it’s a compelling user interface that gets people excited,” he added.
Imagination has also launched a Creator Programme alongside the developer board to stimulate an IoT ecosystem around the device.
nVidia Goes For Raspberry Pi
nVidia has unveiled what it claims is “the world’s first mobile supercomputer”, a development kit powered by a Tegra K1 chip.
Dubbed the Jetson TK1, the kit is built for embedded systems to aid the development of computers attempting to simulate human recognition of physical objects, such as robots and self-driving cars.
Speaking at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) on Tuesday, Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen Hsun Huang described it as “the world’s tiniest little supercomputer”, noting that it’s capable of running anything the Geforce GTX Titan Z graphics card can run, but at a slower pace.
With a total performance of 326 GFLOPS, the Jetson TK1 should be more powerful than the Raspberry Pi board, which delivers just 24 GFLOPS, but will retail for much more, costing $192 in the US – a number that matches the number of cores in the Tegra K1 processor that Nvidia launched at CES in Las Vegas in January.
Described by the company as a “super chip” that can bridge the gap between mobile computing and supercomputing, the Nvidia Tegra K1, which replaces the Tegra 4, is based on the firm’s Kepler GPU architecture.
The firm boasted at CES that the chip will be capable of bringing next-generation PC gaming to mobile devices, and Nvidia claimed that it will be able to match the PS4 and Xbox One consoles’ graphics performance.
Designed from the ground up for CUDA, which now has more than 100,000 developers, the Jetson TK1 Developer Kit includes the programming tools required by software developers to develop and deploy compute-intensive systems quickly, Nvidia claimed.
“The Jetson TK1 also comes with this new SDK called Vision Works. Stacked onto CUDA, it comes with a whole bunch of primitives whether it’s recognising corners or detecting edges, or it could be classifying objects. Parameters are loaded into this Vision Works primitives system and all of a sudden it recognises objects,” Huang said.
“On top of it, there’s simple pipe lines we’ve created for you in sample code so that it helps you get started on what a structure for motion algorithm, object detection, object tracking algorithms would look like and on top of that you could develop your own application.”
Nvidia also expects the Jetson TK1 to be able to operate in the sub-10 Watt market for applications that previously consumed 100 Watts or more.
Raspberry PI Breaks Record
Sinclair ZX80 and runaway success story, the Raspberry Pi might be about to get its own monitor after a Kickstarter campaign to create a low cost 9in screen for it has exceeded its $90,000 goal in a single weekend.
The HDMIPi monitor from startup Raspi.tv presently stands at $100,996 on Kickstarter, an increase of $8,000 in just the last four hours. The concept behind the monitor is to create something small and affordable but with maximum 1920×1080 resolution. Even though the project has had to scale down its ambitions to 1200×800 resolution to fit the business plan, Raspberry Pi fans have flocked to crowdfund the device.
Put in perspective, that’s higher than HD 720p resolution, or as they describe it, “slightly better resolution than the 720p HD footage on BBC iPlayer”.
Monitor cases will be available in a variety of colours, designed by none other than Paul Beech, who designed the original Raspberry Pi logo.
Although primarily designed for the Raspberry Pi, the HDMIPi is a standard HDMI monitor and can be used for other devices – Android sticks, video cameras, games consoles and beyond.
Raspi.tv has pledged to ship orders in February 2014, delays permitting, and is already working on enhancements. It has described touch functionality as something that might become available as a bolt-on at a later date, saying that “enough people have mentioned it that we are sitting up and taking notice”.
As ever with the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, everything is a bit Ryanair, and power supplies, surrounds and so on are not automatically included, though of course, in the true DIY spirit, you can always make your own.
Raspberry Pi Gets A Store
Raspberry Pi Foundation has opened a store to enable users to easily download applications that run on the credit-card sized computer.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation said it partnered with Indiecity and Velocix to create a store for applications that run on the Raspberry Pi computer. The Foundation said that the store itself is an application that runs under its Raspbian Linux distribution and at launch has 23 applications available for download.
The Raspberry Pi Store contains games such as Freeciv alongside applications such as Libreoffice and Asterisk. The Raspberry Pi Foundation said its store accepts compiled binaries, Python code, images, audio and video.
The Raspberry Pi Store will allow developers to charge for applications, with the Foundation saying that it hopes to see a mix of hobbyist and commercial software. The Foundation also asked users that download applications to review them in order to improve the results put out by its recommendations system.
While the Raspberry Pi was initially intended to help teach people how to program, the device has gained wider popularity due to the fact that its hardware can run many typical PC desktop applications. The Foundation’s Raspberry Pi Store will make it easier for users to find and install applications on the device, which can only be a good thing for the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Linux adoption.
Intel Previews Android Tablet On Atom Chip
Comments Off on Intel Previews Android Tablet On Atom Chip
For the first time on Tuesday, Intel unveiled working prototypes of tablets computers with Google’s Android OS and the chip maker’s upcoming Atom low-power chip, code-named Medfield.
The tablet was about 8.9 millimeters (0.3 inches) thick and had a 10.1-inch screen, and was on display during a briefing at the Intel Developer Forum being held in San Francisco. The tablets ran on Android 3.0, code-named Honeycomb, and alpha software developed jointly by Google and Intel.
Earlier on Tuesday, Intel and Google announced they would ally on developing future releases of Android for smartphones and tablets. Intel CEO Paul Otellini showed off a Medfield smartphone running on Android 2.3, code-named Gingerbread.
The Medfield tablet is a reference design for device makers who want to launch tablets, said Steve Smith, vice president at Intel. Smith didn’t say when Medfield tablets would be released, but said Intel is currently optimizing the chips for tablets to balance power and performance.
Intel is banking on Medfield tablets to prove it is improving on power consumption with its tablet and smartphone chips.
Intel already offers tablet chips code-named Oak Trail and Moorestown, which haven’t been successful. Only a few companies such as Cisco and Fujitsu have adopted the chips for business tablets.