Raspberry Pi or Mele A1000?

[[/\V3NG3R]]

Getting a "workshop" of sorts going in my study, and wanted a simple PC to use as a dedicated workshop machine. It's two primary functions would be creating and sending G-code to my Printrbot for when I need to print, and connecting to a USB logic analyzer (looking at the Saleae Logic Analyzer). It will also be used for basic web-browsing etc.

I'm tossing up between the Raspberry Pi (around $50, running Debian) and the Mele A1000 (around $80, running Ubuntu). The software that is required for the Printrbot is available for both Debian and Ubuntu, but the software required for the Logic Analyzer is only available for Ubuntu. There is, however, an alternative: a program called 'sigrok' is compatible with the Saleae hardware, however I'm not sure if it would be quite as good as the genuine software.

I'm a complete novice at Linux, 3D printing and logic analyzers, so any input or recommendations would be great...

Thanks,
David

[fester2001]

Originally Posted by [/\V3NG3R]

Getting a "workshop" of sorts going in my study, and wanted a simple PC to use as a dedicated workshop machine. It's two primary functions would be creating and sending G-code to my Printrbot for when I need to print, and connecting to a USB logic analyzer (looking at the Saleae Logic Analyzer). It will also be used for basic web-browsing etc.

I'm tossing up between the Raspberry Pi (around $50, running Debian) and the Mele A1000 (around $80, running Ubuntu). The software that is required for the Printrbot is available for both Debian and Ubuntu, but the software required for the Logic Analyzer is only available for Ubuntu. There is, however, an alternative: a program called 'sigrok' is compatible with the Saleae hardware, however I'm not sure if it would be quite as good as the genuine software.

I'm a complete novice at Linux, 3D printing and logic analyzers, so any input or recommendations would be great...

Thanks,
David

if your interested in the Mele A1000 also take a look at the MK802

IMO raspberry pi is cheaper (in theory), and has a bigger following if you chose to do something else with it later however the Mele A1000 and Mk802 both have more grunt but are not as popular.

[mtma]

A couple of things for 3D printing I would look out would be:

1. Printing on the DIY printers currently entails sending code live across the USB interface, so the computer's timeliness is important in order to ensure you get a good print result. On a Pi this pretty much means that it will only be the print spooler if you will to achieve good results, you wouldn't want to be doing much else.

2. Slicing can be somewhat operation intensive, so I wouldn't like to be slicing on my Pi to be honest.

3. There are direct SD card print options out for many printers. Though some of them might cost about as much as a pi board (but their results are as good as guaranteed).



You will not be enthralled by the Raspberry pi's performance, it's simply not that sort of device. The user experience is tolerable at best for one task at a time, the cost reductions have really hit it down as you would expect. Small things like having some reliable flash on board for the OS and stuff is really amiss.

It is also a wire spider with a retarded porting arrangement, there's no way to make a neat case for it without making the case four times larger than the pi itself and adapt the ports to a sane layout.

For these reasons I would lean towards the other options, but then again I have the raspberry pi but not the others.

[[/\V3NG3R]]

Originally Posted by mtma

Wall du text

I have to say I didn't even consider the problem with the need to send instructions live to the printer. Would I be likely to experience any problems multitasking (e.g. sending live to the printer while doing general work) on a decent (i7-950, 6GB Ram running 7) desktop machine?

Also, would it be possible to slice on one PC, then save the code and run it on another PC? Is this essentially what the SD card printing

[edzknows]

I have a mele a2000. I havent used it much as i got it to use to connect to my projector, to use as a video player and web browser, and i dont use my projector much.
Its quite a neat unit, and seems to work okay, but probably much better running ubuntu, then the half baked android thats on it now (i havent tweaked it at all).

[cleary edit]: take it to the for sale section

[mtma]

Originally Posted by [/\V3NG3R]

I have to say I didn't even consider the problem with the need to send instructions live to the printer. Would I be likely to experience any problems multitasking (e.g. sending live to the printer while doing general work) on a decent (i7-950, 6GB Ram running 7) desktop machine?

Also, would it be possible to slice on one PC, then save the code and run it on another PC? Is this essentially what the SD card printing

Lol, yeah your i7 will kill it several times over, but you're talking several magnitudes more power. I believe most firmwares have a small amount of buffering inside them as well which means that it's more a case of not letting the buffer starve (cue nightmares of 2x CD burners getting buffer starvation and ruining a burn).

Yep, you can definitely slice on a different PC to the printing one. The main thing will be that if you have more than one PC with the slicing software installed, then you will want them to have the same profiles, which usually means some copying between the PC's to get them set up as the profiles are stored locally to those PC's. Otherwise one slice on one computer will turn out different to a slice on another computer.