Saves about £6 over buying the bits separately... and it appears to all be good (official) stuff.

The case is nice (pop the top to plug in camera and get at the GPIOs), PSU should be solid and the SD card is pre-loaded with an operating system, so it should be plug'n'play.

I'm currently using a Pi 3 to create a home automation system with a 7" touch screen and a z-wave radio. A Pi 1 drives my 3d printer with OctoPrint. A Pi 2 runs a photo frame. I've got a Zero that controls a string of 100 LED colour change lights that gets used for parties and the Xmas tree... and another Zero that I was going to use to control an electric radiator, but I'm moving so I probably won't bother now. Too much Pi?

folks using retro pie, any pads that are decent yet still cheap? pi hut sell some with decent feedback for a fiver, but odd review slates the dpad. will prob end up using mostly for sf2/final fight. pref from uk as cba to wait weeks. ta in advance (sos op if stepping on toes, just thought id ask as audience here)

This is now £40

Price now reduced to £41.50 for the 16gb black, and white starter kits.

£41.89 now for white..

ordered a couple of these with the black cases, did this in the very early hours of 16 aug, today is 17 aug and they arrived at work on the standard free delivery. very nice surprise. decent price considering it comes with official case and power adapters and preloaded micro sd cards thrown in. I've ordered one for myself as a "spare" and another for a friend who's into retro gaming. I've set these up for Kodi also to use as a streaming device, the built in wifi is very useful, although i think a hacked Amazon Fire TV stick may be better as it comes with a remote control.

any good links to start off? thx

So what do you do with your PI? Just looking for ideas.

Try emuparadise mobi for Roms

You could remote connect to it, and control your raspberry pi via your laptop. This would then save you money on buying a seperate keyboard and mouse, as you can do it via your laptop. You could also hook up your snes controller to your laptop, without the need of using a tv.

Superb, thanks for your help.

Absolutely, initial setup will require a keyboard, unless you find an image that has all you need more configured.

Do you any of you guys know if I could run one of these without a keyboard?
I'm thinking of getting one to play snes and master system games only and would ideally want to control it with a control pad only (after initial set up)

Thanks

£70 seems a lot to me for that bundle if you're planning to just use it for RetroPie. Just my opinion of course but in my setup wired game controllers just wouldn't work - not sure how much a pair of bluetooth ones would be but apparently RetroPie works perfectly with the old XBox 360 wireless controllers which are quite cheap on eBay.

I am thinking of getting a Pi3 to replace an existing original Pi Model B which is struggling to cope with my ever growing KODI movie list. And a Pi3 running a dual boot RetroPie and OpenElec is my next step I think :smiley: A Pi3 and an SD card which has all the ROMs on it already (saves me spending the time looking for them - remember, not all MAME ROMs work on RetroPi and you have to make sure you get the right 'version' ones) will be the next addition to the man cave.

Soz. :smile:

Saves about £6 over buying the bits separately... and it appears to all be good (official) stuff.

The case is nice (pop the top to plug in camera and get at the GPIOs), PSU should be solid and the SD card is pre-loaded with an operating system, so it should be plug'n'play.

I'm currently using a Pi 3 to create a home automation system with a 7" touch screen and a z-wave radio. A Pi 1 drives my 3d printer with OctoPrint. A Pi 2 runs a photo frame. I've got a Zero that controls a string of 100 LED colour change lights that gets used for parties and the Xmas tree... and another Zero that I was going to use to control an electric radiator, but I'm moving so I probably won't bother now. Too much Pi?

Looks like a good deal, heat added.

I was looking to turn one of these into a wee retro console using RetroPie. I've browsed various bundles on eBay costing around £80 which includes controllers etc but crucially memory card all set up with software and ROMS. Putting aside the issues surrounding gathering thousands of ROM files, does anyone have experience setting up such a thing from scratch? I've heard it can be a right pain and very time consuming.
Thanks in advance.

I initially started writing my open heating control system in Node.js on my Pi. Got it working, but it wasn't much more than a timer and some thermostats run over a web interface. I am using a large solid state relay to control the immersion heater in my hot water tank and a trial Pi Zero that controls an electric radiator with a regular relay. I wanted to add lots more features, but my coding skills aren't that great. Then I discovered OpenHAB, which is all open source and did so much more. OpenHAB is hugely expandable, but it isn't exactly light weight and all Java based, so it runs fine on a Pi 3 but was a bit laggy on the Pi 2.

I'm using an Aeotec AEOEZW090 USB z-wave stick. It took me a while to work out that I needed to add the user 'openhab' to the group 'dialout' or it didn't have permissions to get the data (the stick appears as a modem type device to Rasbian). At the moment I've just got it running a couple of table lamps off of z-wave controlled plugs. z-wave isn't exactly cheap though. The touch screen doesn't do much yet, but when I've got OpenHAB configured, I'll make it the default screen.

I'm now in the process of using an ESP8266 board (Wemos mini) to create a cheap (£5) light sensor and reporting that data back using MQTT over WiFi, which OpenHAB can then pick up and act on. The idea is that the table lamps will only come on when it's dark.

If I can get my ESP8266 thing working reliably (and it's been fine so far), I don't think I'll actually use z-wave for that much, probably just radiator valve controllers and maybe some lighting dimmers. I'll just have a swarm of ESP8266s around the house running relays, motion detectors, thermometers and other sensors.... fun until my router dies under the load and my house effectively locks up. :stuck_out_tongue:

​please*

​site pleased

I actually prefer to use written guides with good screenshots as opposed to having to pause a video whilst following it for the first time, but it's horses for courses, whatever works for you is fine, & the videos are good to show you exactly how quickly you can do things that look complex when written down step by step (a simple two minute task can look complex when written in foolproof specific steps, I've written many such guides myself!).

Paying for someone to do things like set up retropie or kodi is self defeating.

At some point something will go wrong or you'll want to change or add something. At that point you'll either be stuck or will have to learn it anyway.

It's all simple enough if you can follow basic instructions & can read for yourself, & you'll save some cash in the process.

Retropie is free to download and extremely easy to set up. Loading the roms into place is the only slight complication. With a Pi 3 though, with built in wifi, it's much simpler.

I don't have a problem with people collecting old roms, but paying someone for them is just a bit unsavory, frankly.

I'm tempted with this:
Look at this on eBay http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/131880226716

It's actually £69.99
I suppose the only hesitation I have is the collection of the ROMS. I don't want to shell out for something like this and then still have to trawl sites for specific games I want. First World problem, I know!

​As I understand it getting up and running with RetroPie is also easy. it is the MAME rom collecting which is difficult.

can anyone recommend good projects that I can run using this kit...
I'm looking in to arduino robots, ai and robotics
thx

Morning all, anyone ever set a pi up without a PC? Am getting this today and I'm aiming to push everything from my android phone.

I've ordered a pi zero yesterday.

First mission, magic mirror for bedroom or bathroom, then planning on adding some sort of speech recognition, like Alexa. I have a few PS eye cams which have 4 microphones built in, should be nearly as good as the echo.

I have zero wood working skills though :wink:


Also have an air conditioning unit that has no remote, using voice control would be cool to add a thermometer and then ask Alexa to set temperature etc, wife might not be too happy with me taking apart a £250 two week old unit though...

Surely any self respecting geek buying a pi would have things like a power supply and micro sd card lying around anyway?

Seems to me like £43 would buy a better specification smart phone, or tablet? Something more powerful but with more user friendly interfaces?

LiOnhead - I'm using an original P1 and a pi3 as IP security cameras for my home, the official Pi camera modules are excellent. I'm also setting up a Pi2 running Zone Minder to control camera recordings, motion detection etc. The possibilities are endless with these things. next up for me will be a couple of Zero's to play with :smiley: Being retired is fun!

Bought it last week, I can confirm all parts are official by raspberry and top quality.

bought this about 2 month ago same price. it's all official and great as it's really all plug in and go!