Hackaday Prize Entry: A Raspberry Pi Project

There’s no piece of technology that has been more useful, more influential on the next generation of sysadmins and engineers, and more polarizing than the Raspberry Pi. For $35 (or just $5), you get a complete single board computer, capable of running Linux, and powerful enough to do useful work. For the 2016 Hackaday Prize, [Arsenijs] has created the perfect Raspberry Pi project. It’s everything you expect a Pi-powered project to be, and more.

While the Raspberry Pi, and the community surrounding the Raspberry Pi, get a lot of flak for the relatively simple approach to most projects which are effectively just casemods, critics of these projects forget the historical context of tiny personal computers. Back in the early ‘aughts, when Mini ITX motherboards were just being released, websites popped up that would feature Mini ITX casemods and nothing else. While computers stuffed into an NES, an old radio, or the AMD logo are rather banal projects today, I assure you they were just as pedestrian 15 years ago as well. Still, the creators of these Mini ITX case mods became the hardware hackers of today. It all started with simple builds, a Dremel, and some Bondo.

[Arsenijs] takes his Raspberry Pi project a bit further than a simple casemod, drawing influence from a Raspberry Pi smartphone, a Raspberry Pi security system, a Portable Raspberry Pi, and a Raspberry Pi wrist computer. These are all excellent projects in their own right, but [Arsenijs] is putting his own special twist on the project: he’s using a Raspberry Pi, and a few Raspberry Pi accessories.

While this project is first and foremost a Raspberry Pi project, [Arsenijs] isn’t limiting himself to the platform with the Broadcom chip. The team behind this Raspberry Pi project was busy porting the project to Odroid when the Banana Pi came out. This changed everything, a refactor was required, and then the Orange Pi was announced. Keeping up with technology is hard, and is a big factor in why this Raspberry Pi project hasn’t delivered yet. You can say a lot of things about the Raspberry Pi foundation, but at least their boards make a good attempt at forward compatibility.

Already [Arsenijs]’ Raspberry Pi project is one of the more popular projects on Hackaday.io, and is in the running for being one of the most popular projects in this year’s Hackaday Prize. Whether that popularity will translate into a minor win for this year’s Hackaday Prize remains to be seen, but it seems for [Arsenijs] that doesn’t matter; he’s already on the bleeding edge of Raspberry Pi projects.

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40 thoughts on “Hackaday Prize Entry: A Raspberry Pi Project

    1. This joke project, which was marginally funny for about 60 seconds, has now gotten three times the coverage on HAD as just about every other project ever showcased.

      The main effect this is having is to make me feel that the HAD editors don’t take hackaday.io or the projects there seriously. If they’re going to treat that community and the HAD Prize as a joke, it does a disservice to all the makers trying to do something real. It certainly makes me care about it a lot less.

  1. I was thinking something else: it must be a really slow day at HaD. This is beyond bad.. even for Brian. Humor must trigger on entirely different receptors when you are stoned.

  2. Well I think it’s hilarious. :)

    Maybe, one of these days, this project will come up again and have some awesome surprise for us. Honestly, It’s possible.

    Or maybe another Rick-Roll, lol.

  3. Well, he has a point. A lot of the linked-to posts have little more than a few lines and a single photo. No code, no schematics, no block diagrams, no functional description beyond what’s in the title. Nothing.

    The smartphone project linked is a great example. The description tells one nothing about how cellular connectivity is achieved, what the UI is, how the device is powered or really, anything useful. The project was started in March 2015, and over a year later, has nothing to show for it.

    If there’s nothing you wish to share, other than just a photo, there are probably more appropriate venues than this one to show off.

  4. I leave coment to Arsenjin asking to clearify what is his so call project is all about.
    All that I can see is that tis is some Social networking project or better say experiment. There is nothing in tehnical or better in tehnology domain.
    I sugest we all ignore those “sociology” projects and ask not to be spam by hackadey with eampty (shalow) email rewiews about them.

  5. Woah there Brown Pinchoff! This could be the Donald Trump of entries.

    People are smiling now. Too much faith in the system.

    They’ll laugh at the clever re-use of Raspberry Pi documentation.

    Their attention will be held by wild claims of a Windows 10 operating system.

    Crowds will gather as skeptics point to the lack of provenance.

    Hackaday and other media outlets will continue flogging its top performing click-bait horse as viewers snowball.

    A lack of build documentation will raise suspicions of an Orange Pi, Banana Pi, cake or some other Pi substitute being used.

    A taunting yet heedless counter-culture will inevitably form, dividing the community into Pro-Pi or Pro-Cake camps.

    Animosity will spill into the judge’s booth as rumors of Pi Zero bribery cast doubt as to their objectivity.

    The other entries become desperate, gluing in a Pi just to get a post on Hackaday. All in vain though, as they drop out like flies.

    Now the de facto winner, people start to reflect, wake up, then, slowly, try to stop the inevitable conclusion.

    It’s too late.

    It
    is
    too
    late.

    All is lost.

    Fast forward to next year. Hackaday rules become:

    1. Must contain a Raspberry Pi
    2. Must use Raspberry Pi accessories

    Prize:
    BeagleBone Black or Intel NUC

  6. Seriously, Brian… really?
    Enforcing a project to be liked and followed by enforcing articles about it on the Blog?

    What kind of popularity did this project gain?

    There are many other projects with much higher scientific value than this. There are other authors who pushed hundreds of hours of work, nights without sleep and many months of headaches to achieve things more spectacular than this so-called project, you naughty naughty boy, and nothing is even whispered on the blog.

    If things keep going like this, we all bet that this project already has its place reserved among the prize winners. The scenario is not new, we see it every day in politic elections, at our work places, in our schools, colleges, hospitals, corporations, also in smaller places where some specific things are enforced to be… politically correct.

    I have nothing against the author, he is nice and polite, but – really – when something seems weird and impossible to understand, you know what they say – follow the money.

  7. Seriously, Brian… really?
    Enforcing a project to be liked and followed by enforcing articles about it on the Blog?

    What kind of popularity did this project gain?

    There are many other projects with much higher scientific value than this.
    There are other authors who pushed hundreds of hours of work, nights without
    sleep and many months of headaches to achieve things more spectacular than
    this so-called project, you naughty naughty boy, and nothing is even
    whispered on the blog.

    If things keep going like this, we all bet that this project already has its place
    reserved among the prize winners. The scenario is not new, we see it every day
    in politic elections, at our work places, in our schools, colleges, hospitals,
    corporations, also in smaller places where some specific things are enforced to be…
    politically correct.

    I have nothing against the author, he is nice and polite, but – really – when something
    seems weird and impossible to understand, you know what they say – follow the money.

  8. Last time there was a post about this so called project I had a look at it and noticed that the only outbound (non-HAD) link was to a Pi retailer.

    My thought were along the lines – it’s not “link love” if you steal it!

    Anyway, if my memory serves me well, that link has been replaced with a link to the official pi org site.

    I am worried that I looked at a different project last time. In which case this comment would be utter sh.t – but at least for now, that is how I recall it.

    1. Hmm, I’m certain this couldn’t have happened. Unless contributors can change links and one of them did. Otherwise, that link (“Link to a project that inspired me”, right?) was to raspberrypi.org from the very moment this project was created.

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