Raspian / armhf package repository plans?
Are there any plans for building and providing a standard repository for armhf packages compatible with the likes of Rasbian?
Raspberry Pi seem like a great gateway drug for getting into ROS given how cheap, relatively powerful and well supported platform it is. Seem like a very sensible/obvious first choice when upgrading a robot to include a computer capable of running a full blown OS. The rather convoluted, shaky and time consuming process of building the environment and trying to get different packages is pretty intimidating if your not already a ROS veteran and a competent linux buff. I can claim neither.
I have come across a willow garage effort by Paul Mathieu in mid 2013 for groovy (including buildfarm instructions) which looks great but I don't see any indication that it was ever taken further or updated since.
Having prowled through the ROS tutorials (via ROS in a VM) and being thoroughly impressed by it's capabilities I only imagine the satisfaction of being able to start operating ROS on a fresh $40 RPi with in minutes of powering it on for the first time.
I myself am one of those amateur robot builder trying to upgrade from a arduino based arbotix include a RPi and I know it has all the tools I need but getting them to work remains a pretty convoluted process still.
Spend the extra $10-15 for a better board with an ARMv7 processor. You'll get something significantly more powerful and better supported by Ubuntu and ROS. I have no plans to support the Raspberry Pi.
Raspberry Pi 2 is being announced these days with a quad 900Mhz ARMv7 and 1GB RAM so maybe I will have the entire cake and eat it in the end. I'll be looking for your packages when I get my hands on one :)