Oracle announced the availability of JDK 7 Update 6 which introduces a JDK for Linux on ARM v6 and v7 architecture. This JDK is aimed at “general purpose” ARM systems, such as ARM micro-servers and ARM development platforms. This new JDK for Linux on ARM is licensed under the Oracle Binary Code License, and can be downloaded at no cost for development and production use on general-purpose platforms. For embedded use such as an industrial controller or a kiosk appliance, a commercial license would be required. Here’s how Oracle summarizes the ARM Linux JDK features: This port provides 32-bit binary for ARMv6 and v7, with full support for Swing/AWT, both client (C1) and server (C2) compilers and runs on most Linux distributions. One caveat is that the current binary is softfloat ABI only, so it won’t work with (for example) the Raspbian distribution which uses the hardfloat ABI. We are […]
Gertboard Expansion Board for Raspberry Pi is Now Available for $60
More expansion boards for the Raspeberry Pi are coming out. This time, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the “semi-official” Gertboard expansion board that has been designed by Gert van Loo, a member of the foundation, but is not an official Raspberry Pi Foundation product. This board expands the Raspberry Pi’s “GPIO” pins and allows you to interface with the outside world in several ways including: Drive motors to open doors, lift things, or power robotics Communicate with sensors such as temperature, gas, light.. sensors Switch devices on and off Control LEDs The boards is composed of the following key building blocks: 12x buffered I/O 3x push buttons 6x open collector drivers (50V, 0.5A) 48V, 4A motor controller 28-pin dual in line ATmega microcontroller 2-channel 8/10/12 bit Digital to Analogue converter 2-channel 10 bit Analogue to Digital converter The gertboard is sold unassembled with the bare PCB and all the components […]
Adafruit Launches Raspberry Pi Starter Pack for $69.95
The Raspberry Pi is supposed to be great for hardware prototyping, but you may not know where to start and/or depending where you live it might be difficult to buy the small components needed at a decent price. That’s where Adafruit Raspberry Pi starter pack comes into play. It includes a case, some cables and power supplies, as well as a breadboard and a whole bunch of components. The package includes: Adafruit clear acrylic Pi Box USB Micro-B Cable to connect the Raspberry Pi to a power source 5V 1A power adapter USB TTL console cable to be used to access the serial console. Useful to debug the kernel or if you run your device without display and/or network. 4GB SD Card Adafruit Pi Cobbler kit with GPIO cable for connection to the GPIO/I2C/SPI/Power pins. USB microSD card reader for loading the image onto the SD card. Large full-size clear […]
WordPress for Raspberry Pi using Nginx and MySQL
I’ve been wondering how the Raspberry Pi would handle WordPress. I’ve found some instructions using Apache 2, but this may not be the best server to use for this type of low-end hardware. nginx server requires less resources, and as it is what I already setup for this blog, I decided to give it a try on the Pi. I’ll provide all the detailed steps I followed below, but you can also download the compressed SD card image (113 MB), uncompress it and copy it to an SD card the usual way. After the system boots, find your Raspberry Pi’s IP address, type it in your PC’s browser, and you should see the page pictured below. If you want to login to the dashboard, the username is “admin” and the password “raspberry”. Instructions to Install WordPress on Raspberry Pi You can use your default Debian Linux distribution (e.g. Raspbian) if […]
RasPiComm – Raspberry Pi Expansion Board
Daniel Amesberger has designed a tiny expansion board called the RasPiComm to make use of the extension header of the Raspberry Pi board. It connects to the RPi in a similar way to the shields for the Arduino board. The board comes with the following extensions: RS-485 port – Mainly used to control stepper motors. RS-232 (‘serial’) port – It can be used to access the serial console over “/dev/ttyAMA0″ serial device, which can be very useful for headless systems. 5 inputs connected to an onboard joystick and screw terminals 2 outputs (5V) with LEDs (green and red) also connected to screw terminals I2C connection – There are plenty of things you can do with I2C connections (Sensors, RTC, …), and Daniel successfully connected a tiny 128×64 I2C OLED display. Real time clock (RTC) with backup battery – Very useful for offline use if you need to keep track of the […]
Android 4.0 Running on Raspberry Pi with Hardware Acceleration
Eben of the Raspberry Foundation announced that a developer (Naren) has been working on a port of Android 4.0 for the Raspberry Pi, and the port already appears to be a an advanced stage with hardware-accelerated graphics and video working smoothly. The only major issue is the lack of support for AudioFlinger. The demo below shows Android 4.0 running in the Pi without audio as it’s not implemented yet. The UI is relatively smooth, and video playback and YouTube video streaming work pretty well. This is quite impressive considering the Raspberry Pi has less than 256 MB of memory available to the system, and I suppose they must have made some compromises to make this work. Moreover, I would expect that many applications won’t run properly due to the ARMv6 processor and low system memory. The source code and binary release are not available yet, as this port uses a […]
84 MB Minimal Raspbian ARMHF Image for Raspberry Pi
Many embedded systems applications do not require a desktop environment or graphical interface on the screen (e.g. server), and you may want to only install the files you really need on the SD card either to reserve as much space as possible for data and/or your program or to reduce costs. After searching for a minimal image based on Raspbian ARMHF distribution for the Raspberry, I could only find Linux Systems minimal image based on the Alpha version of the Raspbian Wheezy. Their compressed image is 109 MB in size, has a custom kernel, sshd and ntpd are enabled, but the wireless tools were deleted, and at the time the swap was located in another partition instead of a file inside the rootfs. The uncompress rootfs is about 414 MB (as reported by df -h when mounted as a loop device). I decided to prepare a minimal image myself based […]
Fedora To Give Away Raspberry Pis, OLPC 1.75 Laptops and Arduinos to Developers
Fedora will give away over 200 open hardware devices as part of its Summer of Hardware initiative to Fedora contributors. 150 Raspberry Pi boards, 50 OLPC 1.75 laptops and 20 Arduino boards and shields will be freely distributed to randomly selected candidates. In order to qualify, you must have a Fedora Project account, have signed the Fedora Project Contributor Agreement, be a member of at least one non-CLA / FPCA Fedora Group and be resident in one of the following country/region: Australia (excluding the states of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory), Belgium, Canada (excluding Quebec), Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, or the United States (excluding New York and Florida). To apply, you need to fill an application form by the 15th of August where you select your preferred device and enter your full name, Fedora account information and […]