Category Archives: computer

Raspberry Pi: $25 Computer

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image of a circuit board diagram

Raspberry 1 circuit board diagram

One great thing about technology is all the great disruptive innovation it makes possible. And while some gadgets cost a large amount of money it is also great how many really cheap but nevertheless extremely cool gadgets we get to choose from. The folks at Rasberry Pi are creating this computer (alpha boards have been sent to the manufacturer), that just a bit larger than a credit card, and is designed to plug into a TV or be combined with a touch screen for a low cost tablet. The expected price is $25 for a fully-configured system.

The ICs used in the design are an ARM-based application processor (center) and an SMSC LAN9512 USB 2.0 hub and 10/100 Ethernet controller (right and down from center). The SDRAM is mounted on top of the application processor in a PoP configuration.

Following the example of the BBC Micro, we intend to launch both a Model A device (lacking the LAN9512, and with 128MB of RAM) at the $25 price point, and a Model B device (including the LAN9512, and with 256MB of RAM) for a $5-10 additional cost. We remain confident of shipping before the end of 2011.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity which exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing.

They are developing, manufacturing and distributing an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children and expect the computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world.

Provisional specification
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Wearable Computer with Projection and Gesture Recognition

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Pattie Maes presentation at TED shows a very cool prototype for wearable, useful computing spearheaded by Pranav Mistry (who received a standing ovation at TED). It’s a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment.

The prototype of the system cost only $350. The software, created by them, obviously is the key, but how amazing is that, $350 for the hardware used in the prototype! There is a useful web site on the Sixth Sense project.

The SixthSense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user’s hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques.

The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.