[E3-hacking] Hello! (and cheap E3s)

[Chris Tingley]

Hi All,

Thought id quickly introduce myself as a new member!  Im a Masters  
student at Reading University UK studying Computer Science and  
Cybernetics so the thought of getting all this funky hardware for  
such a silly price seemed like a fantastic idea!

I know that on Sunday, Tesco were selling the E3 for £30.  Today when  
I went in there to pick one up, they had gone up to £50!  After a  
small amount of googling i found that Currys, Dixons, Argos and Toys  
r Us are all still doing it for £30 - I will go and get one tomorrow  
morning.

I am interested in the software side - being able to run own custom  
software on it [ip video phone, skype, home automation controller,  
maybe even a normal phone and networked answer machine!] - the  
possibilities are quite interesting to what you can do with quite a  
cool bit of IO hardware in a convenient form factor.  But the other  
great use is just for components - even the screen and camera are  
pretty good items to get for 30 quid!

Thats all for now - but if anyone has any suggestions on what i  
should start to investigate first with this beast as there is no  
point us all working on exactly the same thing.  My low-level  
firmware is not great (willing to improve), but i'm ok(ish) with the  
hardware side and pretty hot on the higher-level software.

Chris