Gav's World : Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi(s)

I've been following the Raspberry Pi project since before they were released to the public and should have been one of the first in line to get one! I was waiting in my car at 06:00 on the 29th of February 2012 with my tablet and mobile phone trying to connect to the RS and Farnell websites to order one. The network was slow and the websites were overloaded... so I didn't get an order placed until about 09:10, so missed out on the first shipment.

Anyway, the first one arrived many weeks later and I played with it. Eventually, a 2nd revision board was announced, so I simply had to order one. I gave the first one to my Mum to use as a media centre with Kodi (called XBMC at the time), with the distribution OpenELEC.

The new one, I originally bought for playing around with and had the intention to hook up some electrickery to do fancy things (well I am an electronics engineer that used to designs parts of radar for fighter aircraft after all) - but I just never found the time. So, it became a computer for the boys to play with. However, since X.org (X Windows System) hadn't been optimised for the GPU inside the Pi, even the simple GCompris was incredibly slow. So, the time came to swap it with my old media PC, knowing that the Pi is more than capable of playing 1080p video.

It ran OpenELEC with only really one other thing: Music Player Daemon (MPD) to allow me to play music through my amplifier without having to turn the TV on. It's now spare however.

Then I had a cunning idea (after several long journeys in in the car with the kids in the back)... an in-car Wi-Fi hotspot with a selection of videos for the kids and some music for me. The kids could then have tablets in the back running Kodi (getting media from this server) and whoever is in the passenger seat can control the tablets from their smartphone in the front seat, without having to stretch around. (note that the kids were too young at the time to be able to read, so couldn't operate Kodi themselves). This obviously required me to buy another Pi!

Of course, once the Raspberry Pi 2 was announced, I simply had to order one that day, literally a few minutes after they went on sale... it arrived the following day and I was most pleased!

Then what does the Raspberry Pi foundation do? They release a Pi Zero and then on their 4th birthday, a Pi 3... well guess who bought both of them as soon as they went on sale too?! Of course, the moment the Pi Zero W was announced on their 5th birthday - well, you get the jist!

Then came the 3+, the 4, the 400, and even the 5! So many Pis!!!

There are a few models that I don't have though: A-Models, and Compute Modules.

With all of these Pis, I had to juggle them around to make best use of them... and then to top it all off, my original B-model (v1.0) came back to me when I gave my Mum my Pi 2 (an upgrade for her home media centre).

So, here are my current Raspberry Pi projects:

Name (DNS)	Model	Rev	Project	Operating System
gav-pi0	B (v1.0)	0002	Donated to Stirling High School Rasberry Pi Club
gav-pi1	B (v2.0)	000e	Kitchen Jukebox [1]	Raspbian Lite
gav-pi2	B (v2.0)	000e	Donated to Stirling High School Rasberry Pi Club
gav-pi3	2B (v1.1)	a01040	Home Media Centre [2]	LibreELEC
gav-pi4	Zero (v1.2)	900092	Cluster Pi (Worker 1)	ClusterCTRL
gav-pi5	3B (v1.2)	a02082	Desktop Pi [3]	Raspbian
gav-pi6	Zero W (v1.1)	9000c1	MPD Monitor	Raspbian Lite
gav-pi7	3B (v1.2)	a02082	Wee Red Masq	Raspbian
gav-pi8	3B (v1.2)	a22082	Desktop Pi [3]	Raspbian
gav-pi9	3 (v1.2)	a02082	Cluster Pi (Controller)	ClusterCTRL
gav-pi10	3B (v1.2)	a02082	Picade	Retropie
gav-pi11	3B+ (v1.3)	a020d3	Car Media Server v2.0	Raspbian Lite
gav-pi12	4 (v1.1) [4GiB]	c03111	Experimentarium	Raspbian
gav-pi13	Zero (v1.3)	900093	Cluster Pi (Worker 2)	ClusterCTRL
gav-pi14	Zero (v1.3)	900093	Cluster Pi (Worker 3)	ClusterCTRL
gav-pi15	Zero (v1.3)	900093	Cluster Pi (Worker 4)	ClusterCTRL
gav-pi16	400 (v1.0)	c03130	Keyboard Pi	Raspbian / Retropie
gav-pi17	3B+ (v1.3)	a020d3	Home Media Centre	LibreELEC
gav-pi18	5 (v1.0) [8GiB]	d04170	Every Day Pi	Raspbian

[1] Installed at the ex-wife's house
[2] Installed at Mum's house, to let her view her photos on her TV.
[3] One for each of the boys!

These projects are old / temperarily on hold (perhaps waiting for another Pi to arrive)

Car Media Server (made obsolete by Car Media Server v2.0)
The Lab Model (made obsolete by Desktop Pi. I've actually given away my Plusberry Pi now. Basically, it was originally designed for B-models, and the on-board regulator can bearly provide enough juice for a Pi2 and definitely not enough for a Pi3, so the Pi inside it throttles its CPU)