RISC OS London Show 2012

Just in case someone on here hasn’t realised yet, but this coming Saturday (27th) is the RISC OS London Show.

It will be your first chance to see the official release of RISC OS for the Raspberry Pi, and if we are lucky Eben Upton will be there to give it a once over, hopefully with less expletives of amazement than when he saw the alpha release :-)

Plus there will be ARMinis, Pandaboards, emulators, games, music and BigTraks. What more could you want?!?

http://www.riscoslondonshow.co.uk/

less expletives

Do you mean fewer? Or just as many but milder? I added the show to the 2012 Diary a week or so ago.

I thought it was the best show in a long time – thanks ROOL for turning up. It actually felt a bit crowded – maybe they need a bigger venue next year!

You had a choice of lots of hardware and you could get a generic Pi/Pandaboard (and all the bits to run it) or Rcomp and CJE both had complete RISCOS computers built around Pandaboards. They both claimed to have custom hardware added on, so it will be interesting to see a comparison review (great to have such a choice!).

Cheers, Mark.

Are there any London Show reports online yet? We were so busy at the ROOL stand, we didn’t get a chance to see any of the other stuff on show – I didn’t even go into the other rooms. Gutted. :(

I tried posting on the train on the way back, but my 15 minutes of free East Coast wifi ran out just as I was submitting!

Very good show. I was impressed that when the theatre was full with every seat occupied there were still a good number of folk wandering round the other stands.

I said to Bryan that I hoped they would get the videos online soon, as it’s impossible to go to the talks if you’re on a stand. CJE, opposite me, had lots of very interesting hardware. Vince, next to me, was showing off really old software running very happily on a Pi. The speed it boots up is remarkable.

Another guy stopped at my stand and said he’d downloaded the RISC OS image that morning and had done no more than turn it on to check it worked. He’d been a victim of a dodgy power supply, and RS had replaced the Pi and the power supply, except they’d sent two Pis by mistake and told him to keep them. He produced one from his pocket in a Pibow case: very nice. Then, after telling me the story of the power supply, he produced the other from another pocket, in an RS case!

There were certainly some visitors who had not been in touch with RISC OS for a few years. One person saw the Beagleboard on my stand and expressed surprise that RISC OS ran on it. He must have been drawn in by the amazing publicity surrounding the Raspberry Pi.

Theo Markettos was there. Unlike last year he did not have to talk non-stop about the Raspberry Pi, because half the people there (I exaggerate slightly) have one already.

Eben and Liz Upton had a good look round the stands. I caught a photo of Eben having Charm explained in depth by Peter Nowosad. Liz suggested another puzzle type to add to Wrangler but couldn’t track it down in the newspaper.

Chris Evans was explaining the nice real time clock board they can add to the Pi. It can also drive an LED indicating disc activity, with different colours for reading and writing. He had several of the LapDock things on his stand. He’s got a nice lead which makes it all very neat. Didn’t get a chance to ask him about the battery life on it. For those who don’t know, it looks like a very slim netbook, but is designed to dock a smart phone into it, so has no computer inside. The Raspberry Pi can be hooked up, and hey presto, a RISC OS portable. WiFi networking is a bit of an issue as although you can use an ethernet dongle thing, it’s not possible to configure it from RISC OS yet. Retailing from CJE for £300 or so, and also available with a Pandaboard.