Raspberry Pi used for a message board..

Yes, but you'll need a bluetooth dongle if you want to use one and it'll take a bit of setting up.

A wired keyboard will work out of the box.

Cool..  Wired it will be to get started!

Darrell, I notice you are based in the USA, be aware that the Raspbian OS ships with a UK keyboard layout by default.

It's not so hard to reconfigure it. If I recall correctly, on first boot you go automatically into a setup wizard and I believe you can set it up in there. Let me know if you have trouble with this.

You'll want to install Open Office, for that you will need internet access temporarily. I recommend you get a Model 'B' Raspberry Pi. They're 10 bucks more, but they're a lot easier to connect to the rest of the world. You can then get online by connecting an ethernet cable from the Pi to a router or ethernet socket in the wall or whetever you have. You can use a Wi-Fi dongle instead, but like bluetooth, this takes just a little bit more setting up.

You can get much fancier later if you want, for example it's quite easy to set it up so that you can update the PowerPoint presentation wirelessly by sending it from another computer.

You didn't say how big your slideshows were going to be. A rough size range would allow me to make some further suggestions about how best to get your presentations onto the Pi and update them.

Finally, I would think a 4GB SD card will most likely be large enough for your needs, but 8GB are hardly more expensive and will be highly unlikely to ever need to be upsized given your intended usage.

Thanks for the information.  It has been ordered.  I will get back with you next week when I get it.  I'm sure I will have more questions then.

Hey Darrell. The RPi will definitely suit your needs. If you ever need something a little more packaged for the office than an RPi, take a look at the Gumstix Waysmall. It'll definitely do the job for you, but does come at a premium over the RPi, I realize.

Have fun with your project!

Darrell,

Being curious, I took a few minutes to try out Open Office on my Pi here.

It is quite useable. I loaded one of my work presentations (a pptx file). Open office loaded it fine. There are a few font differences, but considering this is taking a preso straight from Windows to Linux its pretty good. In a few minutes I had a looping presentation going on an HDMI monitor.

I think this will serve your needs just fine.

Talk to you next week when you have a Pi on your desk.

BTW, the Pi is so small it is possible to screw it to the back of the TV, and some people have even powered their Pi from a USB socket on the TV, meaning the only trailing cable you will need to deal with is power for the TV.

best,

Derek

I finally have everything...  Any good instruction out of the box?

Hey Derrell,

  The Pi could make a good Computer for your Message Board. Depending on several factors. What Software you want to use to collect and Show the messages. One that will run on one of the Pi OS's, will have to be chosen. When you say, you want to use a TV to Display the info. Do you mean a regular CRT TV with a Composite input? Or a newer Flat Panel LCD TV with an HDMI input? Both would work. But, with the CRT TV. You will need to make the Tex very large, in order to be able to read it. But, the text will still be fuzzy. One of the many Variations of the LCD Flat Panel TV's or Monitors, would work better. You would get better Results for Readability. With a higher Resolution Monitor. For example, a 720P Monitor wold be allot less Readable than a Higher Resolution 1080P or I and so on... You can see how the text in Raspbmc looks on my CRT TV. In my Videos that I made for my Review, here... http://www.element14.com/community/roadTestReviews/1577. Video 002 and 003 have views of the Raspbmc running on my CRT TV. Hope this helps...

Don

Sorry for the slow response, notifications from the E14 site seem to be broken for me, so I had no idea you had posted this.

Not sure what you mean by instructions or out of the box. :-)

Do you mean getting started from scratch with the Pi?

If so, yes there are numerous getting started articles and sites. Just Google "Raspberry Pi Getting Started", that is what I would do. ;-)

best,

Derek

Hi, do you have the full instruction or steps to show how are you going to make this?

I'm having a project currently to make a message board using Raspberry Pi.

Thanks everyone for the concern.