Raspberry PI is an awesome mini Linux Computer. I was totally amazed with the computing power it bears and the inbuilt GPIO pins make it even more awesome! I am pretty sure this cute lil linux box opens unlimited possibilities for a creative tech person because of this Computing and Electronics prototyping features it bears. So thats it a lil intro about RasPi and here we go, my 1st project using it! xD

I have used Raspbian Wheezy Linux distro installed to my Sandisk SDHC 8GB class 10 microSD card. My monitor has no HDMI port, So I had to use home Sony TV for it. Plugged everything, powered on, And booyah!the PI booted successfully!

Small issue was noticed after few mins, its only about colors! the colors were only black and white. So I googled about it and found that some TVs display like this and i need to edit a conf at PI O/S. If you need more info can be found here: (Simply the fix is change to: "sdtvmode=2" at "/boot/config.txt" file, and do a sudo reboot, Voila! colors will come up!)







Despite blinking LEDs xD I have tried a new tutorial to stream video from a Web Cam attached to PI to Web server, So the video stream can be accessed by the LAN network. I have used my router for this connected to PI.




RaspberryPI is awesome for electronics-computer-mobile combinated projects. And while surfing I found theirs another product called beagle board similar to RaspberyPI. : http://beagleboard.org/
Since the highly marketing strategies of RasPI we dont aware much about this gadget, But I think it can do more stuff than RasPI though the cost it lil bit larger. RaspPi is 35$ and BeagleBrd is 89$ A nice comparison between both those two credit card size Linux Computers can be found here:

And finally i wanna thank my friend "Harsha Kumara" who provided me his awesome gadget to play with it for couple of days! Thanks harsha!

Playing with GPIO!


Let's start with the first method (File System):

*Before starting startx
Use SuperUser (After every reboot) or use sudo before any command
sudo su

Connect an LED using a resistor between GPIO11 and GND.

Creating a File access to GPIO using console commands:

If you write to the ./export file in the /sys/class/gpio/ subdirectory, the system creates a file with a GPIO structure according to the input. In this case we want to create an access to write directly to GPIO11 in order to handle an LED.

Create a GPIO file access:
echo 11 > /sys/class/gpio/export 

Configure the Pin Direction (In/Out):
echo out > /sys/class/gpio/gpio11/direction

Write a value to turn on the LED using the GPIO11:
echo 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio11/value

Now your led should be ON!!!

Write a value to clear the LED using the GPIO11
echo 0 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio11/value

Now your led should be OFF!!!

Delete the created GPIO (11)
echo 11 > /sys/class/gpio/unexport
 
Ref: https://sites.google.com/site/semilleroadt/raspberry-pi-tutorials/gpio


lil guide on RasPI




lil guide on Beagle Bone/Board





Links:

Login using Remote Desktop to Raspberry PI: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2119786
Raspberry Pi Hardware Overview, Documentation, and Research
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1945778

Raspberry Pi Supercomputer