News: How Big is Your Rig?

Our electronics are getting smaller and smaller. With all that shrinking, we usually have to sacrifice functionality for space. It seems as though the group working on the tiny Linux-based PC, Raspberry Pi, have finally made some headway. There’s is a small PC board that is designed to be compact and functional. For being such a tiny rig, it outputs 1080p resolution video like a champ.

Before Christmas, the group received their first round of circuit boards for testing. Everything seems to have gone smoothly as the site reported stable results with only a minor error requiring a quick solder job. Once the problem was fixed, the prototype was able to output a test video at 1080p without any problem from its HDMI port.

The rig consists of a 700MHz ARM11 processor, 128MB of RAM, USB, HDMI, analog video, and analog audio ports all for only $25. A version with 256MB of RAM and a network connection will be available for $35. Both versions are powered by a 5V power supply and weigh approximately 1.4 oz. The storage memory is based on which size SD card you put in. The reason for designing these computers was to provide a reasonably powerful, low-cost PC that anyone could afford. This could literally change the world once it is put up for sale in developing countries.