Any monitor you can attach to the RaspberryPi will work, Most HDMI, DVI monitors should be fine. The Pi also has a RCA video out which should allow you to use an old TV, but I haven't tried it myself. This site goes into it a bit.
3 Ways to Display Your Raspberry Pi On a Monitor Or TV
Well, yeah. They kinda do.
Between #1 and #2, should be #1.5 - HDMI to DVI cable, or HDMI cable with HDMI-to-DVI adapter.
HDMI to VGA is lossy. I'd prefer it, given the choice of a digital connection. But I'd prefer it over the RCA connector.
For the flow meters it still looks like some soldering may be recommended, but I think breadboarding requires less skill than installing a light fixture. If you can hook up an Xbox or dvd player you should be fine. The only additional tool you should need would be a wire stripper to take the ends off the flow meters and expose the leads. I would wait for the full bill of materials and a photo guide if you have no experience.
Soldering will result in a much more durable and compact solution - and cheaper as well if you can pay for soldering in beer.
That being said I am still willing to sponsor an I/O board for the dev team if a suitable one is identified.
Breadboarding is an alternative. It will cost more and take longer, but it's possible. The breakout board is nice because it offers additional I/O pins and automatic voltage conditioning. It's also a lot better to fry a $3 chip than a $42 Pi.
Right now, I think we're pretty well into the MCP23017 direction. If you find a pre-assmembled board based on MCP23017 that features an IC socket, automatic 5V handling and a decent number of pins (or daisy chaining), shoot me a link via PM.
The bezel looks like a Samsung, but I could be wrong. The only reason I used a monster monitor is I wanted to add a TV to my bar area, and my desk was too crowded with dual monitors.
The Pi can be headless and you could use a cheap tablet with a browser if you liked as long as you have Wifi. If you don't need flow meters or other I/O and can supply a screen, All you need is a Pi, A micro usb charger from an old phone, an SD card, and maybe a video cable and something for data entry. If you add a wireless adapter, you can maintain it from a web browser on your network and probably don't require the mouse, keyboard and attached monitor except for when performing upgrades.
Oh my gosh, after writing this post I finally found a use for my blackberry playbook.
Yeah, you could theoretically use a tablet, I suppose. The bang for the buck in screen size isn't really there, but free is free.
Its just an old samsung 19" tv I had lying around after a I changed my home audio/automation over to ip based. My pi actually goes into a HDMI matrix switcher that I have, so I can pull up the pi/interface on any tv in the house.
It broadcasts a web server, so it can pull up on pretty anything that can pull up internet . You don't ever need a monitor either, you can always get to it using putty or the like for programming. I do most of my config during down time at work. Which is also easy to do by allowing some port forwarding at home.
Bryan
If my work firewalls weren't super aggressive, I might try.
Is there any easy/dirty way to get the new hop and keep my db? I tried some rudimentary copy/past but it didn't work.. Its no big deal either way.
thanks
Hrm. Not really.
Best way would be to export the beers table, drop the raspberrypints database, re-load the repository, and then import the schema.
If that's greek to you, you're best to wait for the public release.