Raspberry Pi

Does anyone own one if so what do you use it for and details of any project.

I have ordered my first one, I will use it as an old school gaming emulator. I intend to order another one when more familiar and use for XBMC (the Pi is cheaper and more powerful than WDTV). Also considering using home security.

So anyone else been using one?

a) media centre - using raspbmc
b) NAS - using stuff from the projects for RPi - with 2HDD and auto-backup from one to the other
c) I plan to use a Pi camera, when I get around to it

Use it for XBMC... probably wouldn't use it for anything else... Would rather use a PC for most other implementations, a little bit more expensive but a lot more powerful.

I've got one. Tried it with XBMC but found it too sluggish and with plenty of old PCs around i found it better to repurpose those with OpenELEC.

At the moment my Pi is just sitting on the network running Raspbian.

I'm currently planning a new home server for media storage and virtual machines (and Docker containers). One of those containers will be running TVheadend and at some point i plan to add a Sat>IP box (or IP-LNB) to my network for distribution of free-to-air channels.

At that point the Pi will be used as a card server with a Freesat-from-Sky card (and maybe a Sky sub card further down the road) allowing the TVheadend server to decrypt and distribute encrypted satellite channels within the network.

cool folks thanks for the replies.

I found an old psp the other day so I am considering removing the UMD drawer and the psp motherboard & battery and converting to a pi console.

I took delivery of one yesterday. I haven't set it up yet but I'm looking at two uses - DNS server and syslog server. I'll almost certainly use Arch Linux as I don't need e GUI.

Sounds good Sarah. I would like to get to a point where i have the skill to do something like that. I am really hoping to use this as a learning tool.

I had to laugh yestery, my wife phones and says "Your Raspberry Pi has arrived and it's really small"

I get home and its the wifi adapter lol.

Perhaps I should start a Borg style project and upgrade the wife!

I'm sure that once you have your Pi up and running it won't take you very long to get to grips with what you want to do. It seems that there's a fantastic amount of information and support out there. It's going to be a learning curve for me too but I'm really looking forward to it.

Running a DNS server isn't particularly complicated. If you just want one to answer DNS queries from your local computers that's very straightforward. It only gets a little more complicated when you want to use it as an external facing nameserver running DNS zones for domains you control. Even then it's just a matter of making sure the syntax for the zone files is correct. You'll be fine.

You're already being more adventurous than I am by running wi-fi on it. I'll just be using mine hardwired.

As for the wife upgrade, might I suggest an upgrade from 1.0 to 1.1, which is a bug fix, rather than trying the leap to 2.0b in one go?

Best of luck!

wifi is a must for me as it makes moving it much easier and flexable.

Looks like I may also need to invest in a more powerful powersupply as some geek friends have suggested that can be a pitfall for emulation. First port of call has to be playing some classics from the arcade like r-type and silkworm on the big screen, then some amiga classics, after that onto some serious stuff

It's a bit tricky to say what you'll need for power supply.
600mA at 5V is usually adequate, while 1000mA at 5V is sometimes needed when there is significant peripheral demand (WiFi adapters especially)
There is a limit on what the Pi can handle before it blows a fuse.
Mobile phone chargers often prove a disappointment, as they won't sustain the supply voltage needed.