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Raspberry Pi heading in-store, will be stocked by Maplin

by Alistair Lowe on 17 August 2012, 10:38

Tags: Raspberry Pi Foundation, Maplin Electronics

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Since its release earlier this year, the Raspberry Pi has sold well over 100,000 units, with factories currently churning out 4,000 per day to meet demand.

The £30 device has attracted hobbyists far and wide, along with those interested in the system's educational use. The Raspberry Pi is currently the cheapest and one of the smallest embedded Linux systems on the market, offering high-end graphics, a modest ARM11 CPU, with HDMI, RCA video, GPIO, USB, Ethernet and camera interfaces, amongst others, making the tool incredibly flexible for small projects.

Often when we think electronics store, we think Maplin, as one of the few chain stores that specialises in electronics and hobbyist tools and equipment. Already the store sells the ever popular Arduino 8-bit microcontroller system plus various shields and, now it will be adding the Raspberry Pi to its repertoire.

Raspberry Pi Starter Kit

Maplin will be stocking a Raspberry Pi Starter Kit, which includes a Raspberry Pi, of course, but also a 4GB MicroSD card, an AC powered 4-port USB hub, a USB keyboard and optical mouse, a 2.1A twin-USB mains supply, a 1.5M gold-plated USB A to Micro B cable, a 1.5M gold-plated HDMI cable and an N150 Nano WiFi dongle. All this will be offered at the not too unreasonable price of £69.99.

Raspberry Pi Canon Mod

If you're still having doubts over the value of this little computer, most recently a man named David Hunt, managed to mod the battery grip of his Canon 5D MKII DSLR to incorporate the unit, opening up possibilities to extend functionality only seen on high-end devices, such as WiFi, USB storage, remote control and on-board image processing. Once David's software is complete, he'll have potentially saved himself thousands of pounds in equivalent functionality.



HEXUS Forums :: 14 Comments

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I've heard the buzz around the raspberry pi but haven't had much time to look into it fully and explore what capabilities it has - does anyone know if this could run as a mini HTPC if hooked up to an external HDD?
Yeah, it can handle HD video pretty well and I think there is a port of XBMC compatible with it.
This: http://www.raspbmc.com/

Works very well for me :)
That's good to hear, thanks for the info. Might pick one of these up for a HTPC. Where did you guys get yours, don't really need the mouse and keyboard as I'd probably pair it up to a remote or wireless K/M and would probably want a bigger SD card as well.
martian_aphid
That's good to hear, thanks for the info. Might pick one of these up for a HTPC. Where did you guys get yours, don't really need the mouse and keyboard as I'd probably pair it up to a remote or wireless K/M and would probably want a bigger SD card as well.

Try farnells element 14 service if you want it on its own. I wasn't very impressed by RS service when I bought mine. I would recommend buying a decent PSU as cheap generic ones cause problems (although a decent smartphone/kindle charger works well from what I've seen).