I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how relatively easy it was to get our Transit Appliance software stack running on the Raspberry Pi.
I’m using the Raspian OS (a variant of Debian) and the Midori web browser (webkit based).
I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised, since the ARM11-family processor and 512MB of RAM are substantially beefier than the Infocast/Chumby 8 that we’ve been running on successfully for some time.
I still need to acquire a compatible WiFi adapter and see how that does. But one true surprise is how nicely the single-board computer drives a display at 1080p (1920×1080) resolution. The Linux nettop we’ve been using for our flat screens tops out at 720p (1366×768)!
It will take more investigation to determine if we can really build some practical configurations around this. If so we’ll need a case and power supply, so the unit costs will be more than the $35 for the processor board, but could easily stay under $100…
Stay tuned.
4 responses to “$35 Transit Appliance?”
Very cool, when I was reading about that platform I thought of a few appliance uses, but I didn’t think of this one.
No personal RaspPi experience myself, but a friend has been playing with them for a few weeks and is very impressed. I bet it’ll make a great chassis for Transit Appliance. Good luck!
I’m pretty sure people have used USB WiFi dongles for the RP. However, it seems you need to watch for power requirements.
I was thinking of doing something like this, but ended up just getting a cheap 9″ Android tablet from DX.
I’m pretty sure people have used USB WiFi dongles for the RP. However, it seems you need to watch for power requirements.
I was thinking of doing something like this, but ended up just getting a cheap 9″ Android tablet from DX.