Raspberry Pi

Jul 24, 2014 · 3 mins read

I’ve known about the Raspberry Pi project for a while but never got a chance to get one myself. So this holidays I found about a store in my little town that actually sells them (WHOA). I got my hands on one and I have to say they are pretty brilliant!

They are pretty brilliant!

So one week after I had bought the Raspberry Pi model B a new model come up.

I hate when this happens, especially because I’ve been searching the whole wide web (ehehehhhh) and there was no clue that this was going to happen…

Nevertheless, the new model isn’t all that new… It’s the same everything (apart from the power thing) but rearranged, which in fact is a little important. My Raspberry has cables coming out of 3 sides which makes it look disorganised…

I’m using it as a Media Center.

Moving on with the mumbling, this is a terrific device, I’m using it as a Media Center, and it is WHOA so much better than my Wii… (yes, I was using a Wii as a media center, since I’m not that into games right now). It’s not lighting fast, but what can you expect form a 35€ device? It plays HD and FullHD really nice. My only problem now is the internet, since it doesn’t has Wi-fi I’m using an old Vonets adaptor (don’t ever think about buying one, they are complete rubbish) and so despite my 90Mb internet I can’t get over 10Mb on the Raspberry… which is sad because I know it could be so much better.

In terms of software I’m using OpenElec which is a stripped down version of Linux that only contains the necessary packages to run XBMC and it is probably the best MediaCenter software available right now for the Raspberry Pi. It boots from a cold shutdown in about 25 seconds, and its ready to view content.

It boots from a cold shutdown in about 25 seconds.

I had read a lot about overclocking the Raspberry before I bought it and what I discovered is that if you want to do it it’s better if you get some raspberry pi heat sinks as they help a lot to dissipate the heat from the components. After overclocking the Pi just to the Modest mode (800 MHz) the difference is really noted especially on the menus - they slide much better.

One of the best things about the Raspberry is the fact that the OS (Operating System) is on the SD Card which means that you can have as many OS’s as you want you just need a SD card for each one (or you can use some softwares to install more than one - more of this in the future…).

You can have as many OS’s as you want!

So I’ll continue to experiment different things with my little Pi and see you soon.

To be continued… :D