November 2014 – RasPi.TV

The FLIRC case for Raspberry Pi B+

Product Launch, raspberry pi, Review 10 Responses »

Nov 282014

FLIRC have made a new enclosure for the Raspberry Pi B+, which is going on sale today. The Pi Hut is importing these to the UK and is the sole distributor for UK and EU. Priced at £13 including VAT, it’s an attractive case made of cast aluminium (painted). It has an integral heat-sink, and comes with a thermal pad you can use to ensure good thermal transfer. It weighs 95g. This is what it looks like… It seems to be targeted at media centre Pi owners, which is not surprising given what FLIRC is. […more…]

Gert VGA 666 review and video

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 12 Responses »

Nov 262014

Aaron Shaw from Pi-Supply sent me one of his early Gert VGA 666 adaptors for testing and comment, so I thought I’d share my findings. I followed the diagram in Gert’s manual. It’s a fairly simple build, just 20 resistors and two connectors. It took about 20 minutes, being careful to get all the resistors in the right places. The hardest part was the stacking header. The final product will ship with a slightly shorter stacking header. This should be a bit easier to solder. To get it working on the Pi, you need to […more…]

Raspberry Pi A+ Cases

raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 3 Responses »

Nov 212014

In the 11 days since the Raspberry Pi A+ was launched, a few different case options have materialised. Here is a little video walkthrough of the options so far… Naked Pi – no case at all Altoids tin – yes the A+ actually fits in one (see the video) Cyntech/ModMyPi case – this is a B+ case, but the A+ fits in it too, albeit with plenty of room to spare A+ Pibow Royale Coupé – Pibow specially designed for the A+ 3d printed cases Mike Redrobe’s @RasPiTV @RPiSpy @climberhunt I just made a minimal […more…]

The Raspberry Pi Family

Electronics, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 20 Responses »

Nov 142014

Now we have the A+, I thought it’d be a good time to celebrate its ‘birth’ by having a rundown of the various mass-produced models of Raspberry Pi. I had a look through my collection and was somewhat surprised to see that I have 10 different variants of Raspberry Pi now. There is one I don’t have, but more about that later. Here’s the family photo. You can click it for a higher resolution version. Rev 1 Model B In row 1, column 1 we have the Rev 1 model B. Although I was up […more…]

Raspberry Pi A+ How Much Power Does It Need?

Electronics, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware 32 Responses »

Nov 122014

Raspberry Pi A+ How Much Power Does It Need?

Two Raspberry Pi A+ arrived from Farnell yesterday, so I spent the afternoon doing some power measurements. I also made a comparison video showing power measurements for an A+, a B+ and an old model A Pi. As before, when I did a similar thing for the B+, I used my trusty eMeter. But this time I used it inline with an ISO-TECH IPS 3303D bench power supply (at 5.2V) to corroborate the readings. Methodology I wanted to see how much current each Pi would consume under four circumstances…. Idling in command line – low […more…]

Raspberry Pi Model A+ Launched Today

Product Launch, raspberry pi, Raspberry Pi Hardware, Review 16 Responses »

Nov 102014

Today, Raspberry Pi launches its new Raspberry Pi A+. Just like the model B was upgraded to B+, the model A now gets some love. So what’s it like? Essentially, it’s like a model B+ with the USB and networking end cut off. When I was at Raspberry Pi HQ a couple of weeks ago, I was allowed (under strict NDA and embargo) to shoot some photos and video. Here’s what it looks like… So What’s New & Different? The first three are the main changes – size, weight and cost. The rest are pretty […more…]

Get_iplayer Raspberry Pi Update

get_iplayer, raspberry pi, software installation 22 Responses »

Nov 052014

Latest update here. This article is left intact for historical reasons. Last week there was a great hoo-ha as the BBC announced changes to iPlayer and the way it will work, going forward. Basically they removed the RSS program indexing system, which was used by quite a few smart TVs and also 3rd-party apps like Get_iplayer. Although this doesn’t stop Get_iplayer from downloading a file if you know the correct PID, it did break the functionality of finding the PID automatically with Get_iplayer. It also broke the PVR (personal video recorder) functionality. But within a […more…]