What are these Raspberry pi things?

[Okjoek]

There's these miniature computers I'm finding when looking around online. A common one is called "Raspberry pi", but there's similar looking things by other names as well. Is this some sort of special form factor? What Kind of CPU do these things use? Intel? AMD? ARM?

 

I guess this would be an interesting title for Linus to make a video about, but until then can anybody teach me what these things are?

 

Do they run a normal operating system? Or are they not x86? If not what kind of OS does it use? Linux?

Can I play any games on one? Maybe not advanced games but maybe less demanding stuff like say... Shovel Knight or Stardew Valley?

If not what can I use it for?

[aeroencychris]

Raspberry Pi is the most common company to make small form factor SOC boards like that, but there's other brands like ODROID and Orange Pi that make similar products

Most that I've seen run on ARM chips since they're all relatively low power, generally with 512-1024mb of RAM included, and boot from an SD card.

Raspberry Pis specifically run specific operating systems such as Raspbian (desktop environment made by the Raspberry Pi organization), but common OS's such as Kodi and RetroPie (emulator) work as well.

A more recent model such as the Pi 3 would likely be able to run Shovel Knight if it's supported on Linux, but I've used mine for lighter titles such as GBA and SNES emulators (N64 is often a bit too much)

They also include GPIO pinout for projects (I'm using a Pi Zero right now to make an RGB LED controller)

This only confirms my theory that Linus should make a Techquickie video on these...

https://www.raspberrypi.org/

They're only $40 on Amazon, I highly suggest you buy one and try it for yourself.

[SCHISCHKA]

Sorry but you must have been living under a rock for the last for or five years!

It was one of the first SOC's aimed towards hobbyists and education. Its goal was to be as cheap as possible so they could get them into schools. It mostly runs linux, the official OS for it is based off Debian. Most people use it for Kodi media playback and electronics projects. 

 

For games people are using them to play old emulators. I think its most advanced game would be OpenArena (Quake with boobs).

 

I mostly use mine as a web browser coz it uses less power than my PC.

[Droidbot]

They're little single-board computers that have moderately quick quad-core ARM (not x86 like a desktop) CPUs, 512MB-1GB RAM, and use SD/MicroSD as storage. They can be used for literally any project that requires a computer, like acting as a home server, computer for the kids, media center PC, etc. 

[Okjoek]

I don't have any spare monitors with HDMI capability save the Television in the livingroom. Could use one of these things to Watch Youtube at 1920x1080p on the television?

[Ithanul]

The most interesting tasks to do with a Pi.

 

Make stuff like this:

 

 

Or other things like a emailing door bell, auto waterier for a garden, etc.  They are neat little computers, pretty much up to your imagination and programming skills.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

They're the little devil's spawn

[Droidbot]

21 minutes ago, Okjoek said:

I don't have any spare monitors with HDMI capability save the Television in the livingroom. Could use one of these things to Watch Youtube at 1920x1080p on the television?

Just use a ChromeCast for that instead, Rpi is too much to set up for just youtube. 

[SCHISCHKA]

4 minutes ago, Droidbot said:

Just use a ChromeCast for that instead, Rpi is too much to set up for just youtube. 

chrome cast works out cheaper too

[Ryoutarou97]

They're basically really small, cheap, weak computers that have a lot of functionality geared towards hobby electronics (such as i/o pins, and a really small form factor. They basically let you attach inputs and outputs then write what happens in between which allows for a good way to teach some computer science in schools, and for hobbyists lets you make projects that only need a small controller on the cheap. There are loads of these things (called micro controllers) in varying levels of power. People who build keyboard, for example, use a Teensy (usually 2.0) controller which is far less powerful that a raspberry pi, but also only half the price at $20. A Pi isn't useful really for running as a standalone desktop, but they are very good for things like (as other comments have mentioned) making dedicated emulators because a GBA is so weak that Moore's law makes a board the size of one powerful enough to emulate it. The Pi is actually powerful enough to do some of the kind of stuff you would want a dedicated computer for such as building a router on linux, running a low-cost server (note: not in any professional environment, but if you wanted one to upload docs to this would be a cheaper way to do it) , etc.

[SLAYR]

3 hours ago, Okjoek said:

I don't have any spare monitors with HDMI capability save the Television in the livingroom. Could use one of these things to Watch Youtube at 1920x1080p on the television?

You could, but it would be very slow, the cpu isn't too fast in these, they aren't meant to handle lots of computation, but people have turned them into steam in home streaming boxes, made them into flight computers for drones, diy cluster computer, or NAS, really anything you need a computer for a RPi can do it.