Raspberry Pi Complete Starter Kit -- [Model B - 512 MB]

Raspberry Pi Complete Starter Kit -- [Model B - 512 MB]..

Special Price Raspberry Pi Complete Starter Kit -- [Model B - 512 MB] By Vilros

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60 of 66 people found the following review helpful.
Finally! A cheap AirPrint server...and more!
By T. Caradonna
Amazing little board!

Background
The Raspberry Pi is a "fit in your shirt pocket" linux box! Brilliantly designed to meet a simple goal: putting open technology within affordable global reach. There are many Pi enthusiasts who use this inexpensive platform to build some pretty cool projects including home automation, running media centers for videos/music, robotics. Just search under raspberry pi projects on the web and prepared to be amazed. After that, let your imagination run wild!

To clarify, this is the Model B (latest) version of Raspberry Pi with 512MB. The one I received from this seller was made in the UK, not China. Furthermore, the cat /proc/cpuinfo command confirms this as revision '000e'. These are all the versions released thus far, and their manufacturer: (Note that some Model B's that only have 256MB)

'0002' => 'Model B Revision 1.0',
'0003' => 'Model B Revision 1.0 + Fuses mod and D14 removed',
'0004' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 256MB', (Sony)
'0005' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 256MB', (Qisda)
'0006' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 256MB', (Egoman)
'0007' => 'Model A Revision 2.0 256MB', (Egoman)
'0008' => 'Model A Revision 2.0 256MB', (Sony)
'0009' => 'Model A Revision 2.0 256MB', (Qisda)
'000d' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 512MB', (Egoman)
'000e' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 512MB', (Sony)
'000f' => 'Model B Revision 2.0 512MB', (Qisda)

Setup
I purchased the kit that includes the board, clear case and wifi adapter. (EDIT 1/25/2014: It looks as if the kit I purchased is no longer available, rather an expanded 11 piece kit is offered with many accessories.) I used an old cell phone charger, and 4GB SD card (the bare minimum) that I already had lying around. (Note: I just used this stuff to get going but you probably want to upgrade to 8gb, see below for more comments about power supplies.). From my Windows 7 PC, I installed the free SDFormatter software (from the SD Association) to format the SD card, and installed the NOOBS (New Out of Box Software) on the SD card. Once I booted up the Raspberry Pi, the NOOBS software presented me with a choice of operating systems. (Depending on your final application(s) you may want different OS). I selected the Wheezy Raspbian for my OS (as I planned to make an AirPrint Server). I may also consider the XBMC OS's in the future, but what I really wanted this for was AirPrint. The GUI walked me thru an installation process that was virtually completely automatic.

A note about Power Supplies:
Although I am getting by with a cellphone charger (rated to deliver 0.7A) this is really the absolute bare minimum. Many pi hobbists have reported unreliable function with weaker supplies (mine would be included in that category.) So far I haven't encountered any problems, but if I did, I would go straight to a decent 2A USB charger. (There's no sense fiddling with questionable equipment.) PowerGen sells a very nice 2.4A dual USB power supply for $10 which I have tested on the Raspberry pi. PowerGen Black 2.4-Amp (12 Watt) Dual USB Wall Charger w/Swival Plug Designed for Apple and Android Devices This would be my first choice.

AirPrint Server
As I've been garnering more iOS devices, and the iPad is becoming more popular, the lack of available print function has been more intolerable. AirPrint (apple's communication protocol for printing) is only available on certain printer models, and there are no drivers for older (and otherwise fine printers). I personally own a Brother HL-2170W, that has been performing great for me. I didn't want to have to replace it, just to be able to print from another device. I considered the Lantronix xPrintServer, but it costs about $90. I wasn't to interested in paying that much considering a new printer would not be much more.

It turns out that there are several "how-to's" on installing and configuring software on the Raspberry Pi to make a cheap airprint server. They use the CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) spooler and print scheduling system, which Apple has been using in MacOS X since 2002. The instructions are pretty straight forward and can be implemented in a couple of hours. The particular website I used was:
[...].
EDIT: Amazon keeps deleting my link. Just do a search an google for "raspberry pi airprint" and you should get useful hits near e top. If you can't find it, just ask me in the comments.

So happy to be finally printing from my iOS devices!

VPN Server
There are many examples on the web on setting up a low-powered, always available VPN server. This allows you to privately browse the internet on any network (work, pulic wifi) with total encryption. Another benefit from VPNs are the ability to change the source of your internet traffic. For instance I have a VPN server in Japan that I use to obtain Japan-only streaming video content in the US. Hulu, Netflix and another that rhymes with Bamazon have this restriction, which the VPN can circumvent. You can make a PPTP (simple to make) or OpenVPN (more complex but more secure) servers. There are several how-tos for both.

XBMC
Another application I'm very interested in is attempting to make a media server based on the popular XBMC platform. The reviews I've read on the Pi implementation have been very positive, there are also a few demonstrations on YouTube so I'm looking forward to trying this out! I've seen Xbmc used to setup Apple AirPlay to stream music and videos to your Pi. Cool!

Some more ideas (All of these have been implemented on the web to some degree)
Home automation: controlling lights, garage doors, sprinklers and appliances with a mobile interface
Security camera: for 30 bucks on amazon you can add an HD motion camera, then mount it in a security camera shell
Temperature and humidity monitor: monitor your house temp and possible interface with thermostat or outside vent shutters

A very enthusiastic 5 stars!

Please feel free to leave a comment/question as I'm happy to reply.

56 of 63 people found the following review helpful.
Good kit to get started, but weak power supply caused me some learning curve grief.
By R. Grokett
The package arrived fine. All pieces were included. Very nice kit for anyone starting out with Raspberry Pi. A few notes though:

o The SD card is really 4GB, even though Windows will only show 1GB. Ignore that. The included OS takes up about half the card, leaving about 2GB free once booted.

o The power supply is underpowered and appeared to cause problems during booting, which I thought were SD card related, but weren't. Since the included power cable is USB, I replaced the supply with a much better one and this cleared up the booting issues.

o After installing a LAMP stack, I ran out of space on the original card, so I went ahead and bought a 8GB card and ended up with about 4GB free after LAMP. I also d/led and installed the latest version of Rasbian on this card.

o The included WiFi worked fine, after adding the SSID and passwd, (just google raspberry pi wifi).

o My kit contained no instructions at all. Would have been nice to add a one page Getting Started, but googling raspberry pi setup got me thru the initial stuff.

You can piece together all the items in this kit, but the resulting cost, if you have to buy separately, ends up about the same or more unless you already have some of the cables and such.

UPDATE: The company contacted me offering to replace the power supply for free, saying that they did discover a bad batch. Excellent customer service!

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Raspberry pi set up a breeze
By LMFlan
The RPI set up was very easy following the instructions in the book "Sams Teach Yourself Python Programming for Raspberry Pi in 24 hours". This kit was probably overkill, but I wanted the options for my daughter. I only wish someone somewhere had mentioned that it's very easy to set up VNC server on the RPI so that you don't need any peripherals. I wouldn't have spent the extra money on the external powered USB hub. If you have an HDMI TV and USB keyboard, you can just use that for the initial configuration, then after setting up wifi and the VNC Server on the RPI, just use any other laptop you have to access it remotely. As a UNIX person I should have guessed it would be easy to set up VNC Server, but it just didn't occur to me when I was buying things. Another tip: I had to search and search to find out how to select a locale in the raspi-config utility. Use the space bar to select one from the list. FYI: VNC server set up instructions: [...]

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