The Raspberry Pi Has Arrived

Due to the insanely late ship date of my Pi, I received the v2 model for being patient.  (The v2 has 512MB of onboard memory vice 256MB on the v1.)  In the first 30 minutes, I was able to load one SD card with RaspBMC (XBMC optimized for the Pi) and another with Raspbian (The project’s build of Debian Wheezy for the Pi).  I didn’t get too much time to poke around with it from there.

Here are some of the uses I have in mind:

• Media center to stream content from the movie/TV collection on my NAS. (using RaspBMC)
• Penetration testing platform using PwnPi, Raspberry Pwn, or rolling my own, starting from a base install of Raspbian.
• A replacement for my always on test/dev server that also acts as the gateway for me to SSH into my home network.
• A front end for my audio components using an IR sender and a web GUI accessible from my phone. (Those GPIO pin outs are too tempting.)

Odds are, the first unit will end up being a blend of many of those options.  I’m already queued up for 2 more when I make it down the list again.

Because I spend more time at the prompt than consuming media, I think I’ll start with Raspbian and build up the LAMP stack first.

More to come as time allows.  I should probably be studying for my CISSP now…