Although the Dragon is reusable, SpaceX's contract with NASA stipulates that new capsules be used for each resupply mission. Not sure if the contract allows SpaceX to refurbish the capsules for other commercial missions, but the other CRS Dragons are being used for showpieces at the moment.
Interesting - I didn't know that. Do you know if this is due to NASA being general cautions with a new, relatively unproved vehicle? Or is it a condition of human-rating the Dragon?
NASA was unwilling to believe any discount offered for use of a refurbished spacecraft until they'd actually done it, so the bid was made on the basis of a new capsule for each mission.
(The human-rated Dragon is going to be a different version anyway, with altered docking support, much beefier propulsion, altered solar panels, and of course, internal controls and life support. Current plan is new spacecraft permission there, too, though, perhaps for the same reason.)
They've recently diversified into lighting, with "Big Ass Lights." The companies are organized under "Big Ass Solutions" http://www.bigasssolutions.com/
It's a product of a higher target altitude (650km for Orbcomm vs. 330km for an ISS resupply) and wanting to perform a single second-stage burn to achieve the target orbit.
Xively was one of the services we used as inspiration for Phant / data.sparkfun.com. Before they were Xively they were Pachube and things were easier to work with and free. Then Xively gobbled up Pachube and things got all business-y. Thus Xively has been an example of how we didn't want to build it.
It makes me very happy to hear this. I've always been sad that the initial promise of Pachube being an open place to store and exchange data was subsumed by corporate overlords.
This is as close to the mindset of the original Pachube as I've seen in a long while.
Very nice and thanks! Writing a replacement for Xively/Cosm/Pachube was on my TODO list, but now I don't have to. I'll take this for a spin later, and hope to contribute if there is anything I have to offer.
The cruising altitude of Google Loon's is well above the cruising altitude of any commercial jet. This accident was caused by a balloon coming down, a much rarer occurrence.
I don't expect to hear a postmortem from Google, but I'd be astonished if this wasn't a malfunction of some sort-- These balloons almost certainly have an emergency cut-down device of some sort capable of safely and rapidly returning the payload to Earth.
I'll be interested to see how this progresses. With any luck, it'll open up a market of cheap, well-distributed SOMs, similar to the Pi opening up a market for cheap, well-distributed ARM/Linux Dev Boards.
The situation's surprisingly similar: Powerful ARM Dev boards existed before the Pi, but the price was steep, they couldn't be found in traditional distribution channels, and the OS/Driver support was poor at best. This is, more or less, the place we're at with embedded SOMs.
Look, the rPi started off as a play-thing for kids, and there is now a valid rPi generation. It is expanding as a platform. But: in the industrial world, the rPi is a small fish. You can get an rPi precisely because some other industry has already driven the demand/price/costs down for it to be affordable/profitable to build a new brand around what is, a common industry practice/device mind-set.
There are, but they aren't close in specs and price to this one. The AT91 series are completely different in terms of functionality vs the Broadcom. The AT91SAM9 series don't even have a floating point unit last time I checked. This chip can do full 1080p h264 encoding/decoding/and support that resolution for display output (HDMI and DSI). This also has flash storage and 2x more ram onboard.
I think you're gravely misunderstanding the intended goal and target user for this device. It's not "for consumers" but a path for hardware developers to prototype with a full Pi and then ship with a custom unit that's been configured as needed - without having to modify your code.
Nope, I don't see these being sold in Radio Shack. The world of electronics distribution reaches way beyond Radio Shack.
I mean: Before the Raspberry Pi, there were Linux-capable ARM Dev Boards, but the vast majority of them were niche items, over $150, and you had to call up the manufacturer and convince them to sell you one. (oh, and don't you dare use this in production without securing a larger purchase agreement!) Now, there's a proliferation of sub-$100 Linux-capable boards being sold by all the distribution houses, in large quantities, with no or limited restrictions on use in production.
I hope this move from the Raspberry Pi foundation does the same thing for OEM SOMs. Right now, there are only a handful of SOMs on Digikey/Mouser, most with fewer than 100 units in stock, all (that I can find) over $100, with zero community of support. Most of the companies with strong reputations in the market require a phone call before they'll even agree to sell you units for sampling.
"Before the Raspberry Pi, there were Linux-capable ARM Dev Boards, but the vast majority of them were niche items, over $150... Now, there's a proliferation of sub-$100 Linux-capable boards..."
If anything started this it was the BeagleBoard released by TI well before the Pi. You can get a feel for how much influence it had from the fact that half the boards released these days are named *Board in a similar way. MinnowBoard, CubieBoard, DragonBoard, OwlBoard, MarsBoard, Arndale Board, PandaBoard, CosmicBoard... I could go on...
I'm no Raspberry Pi hater, but let's just not go all history-revisionism here.
Here in Austria, at least, any Conrad's has a "raspberry pi accessory" shelf. Sure, its Conrads .. but then again its Conrads. That is about as Big Mac Consumer as you are going to get.
I know of at least a few other places, here in Vienna, where you can get an rPi pretty much any time of day by vending machine. wtf, you're still using Radio Shack, lol.. ")
My local Radio Shack carries both Arduinos and various Propeller microcontrollers, along with sundry components for them (LCDs, wifi, bluetooth, etc). It also sells various breadboards and some really cool individual integrated circuits (hex and other logic gates), MOSFETs, CMOSs, and bunches of other cool stuff. And I'm not in a huge city or in California.
If you're into hobby electronics, it's worth checking out Radio Shack if you've not been in one for a while. They carry much more than just electronic kits for kids.
But I agree that the target market for these is more professional engineers looking to take a prototype into smalltime production, or an early protype into something more refined.
I would love to see something like this for embedded Linux applications (Platforms like BeagleBone or Raspberry Pi), without the overhead of X11, rather than just Android/Tizen/et al.
The problem with that was that the short line from Louisville to Indianapolis hasn't been seriously updated in over 50 years. The speed limit on the entire section of track is something like 30 mph. Of course folks aren't going to go by train when it's over twice as long as driving.
There's been some talk of a Louisville-Lexington-Nashville line, but nothing particularly likely to happen.
