h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

At his request, I bought my beloved a Raspberry Pi for Christmas - I haven't seen him except for mealtimes since (should have bought one years ago!).

He does keep popping in and asking what can I think of that he can get it to do - we've now got the 5000 TV channels and access to all sorts of other weird and wonderful media applications that I really don't need or use.

But I think he really wants to program it to do something 'interesting'. He's watched many youtube vidoes of what a 5 yr old can do with one but wants to try something original.

Anyone got any suggestions? It's a little plastic box to me, no idea what it can do!

I assume he has already been here?

http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=15

and http://elinux.org/RaspberryPiBoardProjects might be of use.

He did a lot of research before asking for one so would imagine that he has looked at all the online sites - apart from the 20 open tabs on the PC with hacks, suggestions and help pages!

He's an electronic engineer by trade so is loving the simplicity and adaptability of it.

I just wondered whether the quirky minds of H2G2 had ever thought of an 'I wish I had a gadget that did THIS'?

I have the same problem (control systems engineer).
Hence the sensible suggestions.

How about a toaster that automatically browns the bread just right...
What toy er sorry tool would you like?

Don't you start, that's what he keeps asking me! Which is why I'm asking here .

Husband and son both got one for Christmas. No idea what they're doing with them. I'll ask.

Mol

I've always wanted an app on my phone, to control my kettle and toaster.... soemthing like that? no... seriously... it'd be so* useful, to check the status of the kettle, or toaster, and alter functioning accordingly, from rooms in the house, other than being in the kitchen to do so

Having a terrible memory, I would benefit from some way of being reminded of different sets of things at different times.

So Monday to Friday, I need to be reminded to take a certain group of items out with me (between 7 and 8, mobile, diary, pen and ID, at other times, the list would be different.).

So a time sensitive list. But it needs to know that I'm leaving the house, so it needs to sense that I've picked uo my car keys perhaps.

And I need to be able to add an item easily, like my work laptop which I had to bring home on Monday night with te inevitable consequence, that I arrived at the office on Tuesday without it and had to go home for it.

Or I could use a white board by the door. But I would forget to look at it. The electronic list would need to speak to me.

PP.

Can it make a raspberry pie, Billy Boy, Bily boy?

I did turn to the long running Raspberry thread at Cable Forum for some ideas but unfortunately I entirely failed to understand what anyone was saying.So I'll link and hope it's useful.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/19/33684075-raspberry-pi-a-revolution.html

Ah! Have I killed off another conversation?

No Incog you haven't ,it is just quiet, nab a comfy chair

I've got a Raspberry Pi here, it's, er, well, it's running Eddie.

One of the problems with a lot of modern code, is it relies on modern hardware. The code itself is far from optomised, and depends on the computers its running on to make it fast.
To counter this, and make sure that the new version of h2g2 that we're building runs as fast as possible, we're building it to run on a Raspberry Pi as our webserver

One thing to look into is how well it runs Python as a programming language, which is pretty good for writing games.
I think there's also a magazine called MagPi (or something) that I've seen over someone's shoulder that looked really good.

Incog, I have no idea what they are talking about either. I have now dubbed it the Rhubarb Crumble as it sounds a bit more serious than a Raspberry Pi.

Being that we are out of the UK I can now get more quiz shows on the telly than I ever thought I needed - only the UK and US have THAT many quiz shows!

Pastey, are you serious about running h2g2 on a Pi?

DDD - he has an an account here but doesn't use it often - maybe needs to have a word, I will freely admit that I can run around MS like a fiend but in programming, the O Level in Computer Studies from 1986 doesn't get me beyond line 90:Run in BBC Basic but he has spent days doing 'stuff' which quite frankly, I have no idea about!

Totally serious

It runs a trimmed down version of Debian as the operating system, with Apache, PHP and a MySQL database. Although most of the content will be stored on a different server with a larger hard drive.

But by limiting the power of the hardware we can make sure the software is as good as it can be before loading it up to the more powerful servers.

Now I know why the new Pliny works so well! It's Elton running like crazy in his wheel, trying to get a bite of the raspberry pie.