On Wednesday February 29th 2012 Modern Family aired the “Leap Day” episode, which I loved because Phil was so excited that he had an extra day he took it off to spend with this family. Mr Eben Upton also took full advantage of the extra day and released the Raspberry Pi model B credit card size computer that cost 27.7€. The origin story I remember hearing at the time was that Eben and a friend were drinking a beer at a pub lamenting about the knowledge level of the computer science majors at a university where one of them taught. They remembered how they had been baptized with some government subsidized computer in the early 80’s that introduced them to programming and hacking (using this term in a good way to mean really playing with and understanding how things work) but the new students knew a little HTLM and thought they knew everything. So they thought what if we turn More’s Law on its head and instead of doubling the capacity, pack everything that was possible into a computer for a price point of of $20. With a computer for $20 anyone could hack away without too much fear of breaking something, and it would be possible to equip whole computer labs for the price of one regular computer.
So on that particular extra day back in 2012 I did not take it off, but I did spend hours in a virtual line trying to buy my first Raspberry Pi.
In the end I was successful in purchasing one on the launch date, but I then had to wait until 3 months until it arrived:
In the years since I have found the Raspberry Pi very handy and my collection and variety of uses of them has grown. Here is my current collection:
RaspberryPi
- Model: Raspberry Pi Model B Rev 2
- Revision: 000e
- Serial: 00000000c7667eaa
- CPU: 700 MHz 32-bit ARM1176JZF-S
- Ram: 512 MB
- Date purchased: 29/02/2012
- Price: 27.07€
- OS:
- Kernel:
- Use: The original! Was used as binary clock, thermometer, and was the home server for over 10 years and was finally retired in 2023 and being replaced with 4th generation with 8GB RAM
PiCam
- Model: Raspberry Pi Model A
- Revision:
- Serial:
- CPU: 700 MHz 32-bit ARM1176JZF-S
- Ram:
- Date purchased: 03/10/2013
- Price: 24.04€
- OS:
- Kernel:
- Use: Was originally purchased as a time lapse camera rig and I got the Model A due to lower power requirements. Was used a few times but the camera quality was not as good as the gopro so was not used too much.
PiMame
- Model:
- Revision:
- Serial:
- CPU:
- Ram:
- Date purchased: 2013
- Price:
- OS:
- Kernel:
- Use: First mame arcade I setup. The joystick(s) and buttons connect directly to the GPIO pins! Very fun project and has given hours of entertainment and lots of gaming competitions!
PiLifeBoat:
- Model: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2
- Revision: a02082
- Serial: 00000000ac6003ba
- CPU: 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex A53
- Ram: 1 GB
- Date purchased: 28/11/2017
- Price: €33.51
- OS: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
- Kernel: 6.1.21-v8+ #1642
- Use: Offsite backup of Synology NAS
PiPiratePigRadio:
- Model: Raspberry Pi 3 Model A Plus Rev 1.0
- Revision: 9020e0
- Serial: 00000000778f27ae
- CPU: 1.4 GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex A53
- Ram: 512 MB
- Date purchased: 20/07/2019
- Price: 27.95€
- OS: Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
- Kernel: 5.10.63-v7+ #1496
- Use: Hosted at my dad’s house and equipped with software defined radio receiver RTL2832 so I can listen to KPIG radio station from Spain
PiArcade:
- Model: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Plus Rev 1.3
- Revision: a020d3
- Serial: 00000000ac946ab9
- CPU: 1.4 GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex A53
- Ram: 1 GB
- Date purchased: 05/12/2020
- Price: 44.65€
- OS: Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
- Kernel: Linux retropie 5.4.72-v7+ #1356
- Use: Standup mame arcade
PiImac
- Model: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.1
- Revision: c03111
- Serial: 100000005d972ec3
- CPU: 1.8 GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex A72
- Ram: 4 GB
- Date purchased: 22/02/2020
- Price: 64.99€
- OS: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
- Kernel: Linux raspberrypi 6.1.21-v8+ #1642
- Use: Kitchen digital photo frame connected to old shell of Apple iMAC A1173 that had no motherboard, but the 17” screen. First Raspberry Pi that I used GUI interface and works amazingly and is a fully functional computer!
Ersa
- Model: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.5
- Revision: d03115
- Serial: 10000000e1f13077
- CPU: 1.8 GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex A72
- Ram: 8 GB
- Date purchased: 22/06/2022
- Price: 149€ (was a kit)
- OS: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
- Kernel: 5.15.61-v8+ #1579
- Use: Home server that gathers weather statistics from Oregon Scientific WMR928NX, runs all sorts of docker containers, and hosts this blog
Thanks for reading and feel free to give feedback or comments via email (andrew@jupiterstation.net).