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Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

raspberrypi.org

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Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#491

Post by minerjoe »

slightwinder wrote: post #294
minerjoe wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E-waste is a massive problem nowadays. Why not assemble the lab out of "old" computers? They might take a bit more electricity to run, but, at least in the US, you can get truckloads of computers that were destined for the scrapyard, for free. One local school here threw away 50+ small dell quad-core i5's in their quest to make sure they spend their money wisely. I've assembled a small lab, with many computers, laser…

Old Computers are usually rather big, heavy and a bit limited in their ability in terms of interfaces. Like they often have no sd-card-slot, bluetooth or wifi. And yes, they need more power. This RP400 is small, can be taken everywhere by kids, has all necessary interfaces to make something funny and can on worst even run from a manual energy-source (which of course is more relevant for a poorer country than a rich c…

One city government around here threw away over 100 HP thin clients. They run on about 10-20W. I plan on making a nice cluster out of them.

The point I was trying to make, which doesn't seem to come across, is that spending $ on new equipment is a shortcut. A quick fix. Spending just a bit of time seeking out the sources of e-waste in your community, in the right technical hands, can pay off big.

You don't have to feed the beast. It doesn't take much vision to see that the action of paying $ into a system that happily externalizes all damage is part of the problem and directly contributes to the ecological and socialogical degradation we are all hopefully observing.

You can get all you need for hardware for free if you spend the time to seek it out and at the same time, you are helping clean up the mess.

We developers, many of us have been around from the time that 16K was a lot of memory, a 40MB hard drive could hold all you had, and 1 MHz was fast enough to play with almost any of the ideas in computer science. This is still true for many many tasks. I would argue that learning algorithmic complexity (big O) can be easier when you don't have a massive amount of compute that blasts through O(2^n) in about the same time as O(n) for many data sets. Try that on an apple II. A ten year old computer can have 16G of ram and run dual cores over 2GHz. You can learn a heck of alot of computer science with one of those machines. No need to feed the beast.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#492

Post by ineedasername »

cactus2093 wrote: post #409
ineedasername wrote: post #265

This blows my mind. I know, it's much more incremental than it is revolutionary, but I think the form factor achieves a much greater degree of access for many people than a typical Pi whose bare hardware may be a lot more intimidating. Now, it's "just" a computer, which happens to expose a 40-pin connector for the standard Pi hardware fun. And unlike other options you might find, this has the massive built-in communi…

> The district couldn't secure all of the necessary Chrome Books, and some students have been left attempting remote learning via their parent's phone, or simply left behind. A cheap mass market device has some truly amazing potential to fill in these gaps at the same time that it enables more advanced S(T)EM learning than you could get with a typical cheap Chrome Book. How many households in this situation have an e…

1) You can hook this up to a TV.

2) Webcam isn't strictly necessary: You'll be able to "see" your teacher, type in chat, virtually raise your hand, etc.

3) This enables more advanced STEM (The "T" portion, really) not because it's a desktop but because of the built-in 40-pin connector opening it up to the massive catalog of projects that exist for the Pi platform already.

4) Perfect is the enemy of the good: You're complaining this isn't a perfect solution for those lacking resources. It's not. But it is significantly better than nothing, or a phone with a 5" screen and no keyboard.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#493

Post by esclerofilo »

baq wrote: post #428
ineedasername wrote: post #265

This blows my mind. I know, it's much more incremental than it is revolutionary, but I think the form factor achieves a much greater degree of access for many people than a typical Pi whose bare hardware may be a lot more intimidating. Now, it's "just" a computer, which happens to expose a 40-pin connector for the standard Pi hardware fun. And unlike other options you might find, this has the massive built-in communi…

...I don't know. I mean, I've had an Atari 65XE myself when I was a kid, but tvs are much bigger nowadays, less accessible and HDMI cables are much more difficult to run through the room (stiffness and length limits are real issues); OTOH keyboards and mice are easy to come by. The hard part of the Pi is the display. The kit also doesn't include a cam nor a headset, nor even a mic. This is super important for online…

A Pinebook is probably the closest you can get to a Pi-book, and it already exists.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#495

Post by chrisweekly »

itsoktocry wrote: post #206
minerjoe wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E-waste is a massive problem nowadays. Why not assemble the lab out of "old" computers? They might take a bit more electricity to run, but, at least in the US, you can get truckloads of computers that were destined for the scrapyard, for free. One local school here threw away 50+ small dell quad-core i5's in their quest to make sure they spend their money wisely. I've assembled a small lab, with many computers, laser…

> One local school here threw away 50+ small dell quad-core i5's in their quest to make sure they spend their money wisely. I think broad computer illiteracy in the general population has convinced people that you "need" a new, powerful computer. In reality, 95% of the population can get away with any decent computer from the last 10 years. Grandma isn't training a neural net, she's checking Facebook. I continue to u…

You said it. Heck, my 2012 macbook pro retina (15) is still usable as a daily driver .

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#496

Post by chrisweekly »

minerjoe wrote: post #171
brainless wrote: post #119

As an engineer/founder from India who dreams of access to the Internet for everyone on this planet, these are the efforts that make me smile. I am in the process of sorting out my financial situation - tough founder luck. But I am happy to order a few of these (and monitors) and rent a small garage to give local kids a free computer lab to learn. (Kolkata, India)

E-waste is a massive problem nowadays. Why not assemble the lab out of "old" computers? They might take a bit more electricity to run, but, at least in the US, you can get truckloads of computers that were destined for the scrapyard, for free. One local school here threw away 50+ small dell quad-core i5's in their quest to make sure they spend their money wisely. I've assembled a small lab, with many computers, laser…

I like what you do and why you do it; do you have a blog or website?

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#497

Post by samstave »

ineedasername wrote: post #265

This blows my mind. I know, it's much more incremental than it is revolutionary, but I think the form factor achieves a much greater degree of access for many people than a typical Pi whose bare hardware may be a lot more intimidating. Now, it's "just" a computer, which happens to expose a 40-pin connector for the standard Pi hardware fun. And unlike other options you might find, this has the massive built-in communi…

A couple things - I worked at intel during the time we were trying to prove a sub-$1000 PC was even possible (hence celeron)....

But you know what would be really interesting with these guys - is if they would auto-hive once online - and would just have access to whatever apps were avail - say, you pick a role or profile (switchable) for the unit...

"e-learning box" or "games" or "news" or "community" such roles/profiles

And it would join that hive and then auto pkg whatever apps it needed to to provide access to those communities or content...

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#498

Post by [deleted] »

867-5309 wrote: post #487
rini17 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so problematic today, there are multiple TVs in most families now. And old functioning, like, 1280*1024 LCD monitors can be had for free.

it's more likely an old keyboard is lying around. a Pi4 and cheap enclosure could then be picked up for half this price

[deleted]

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#500

Post by peter303 »

It blows my mind that for $150 (adding monitor) I can have a general purpose UNIX computer more power than VAX 11/780s and Sun-3s I did my PhD research on in the 1980s. ($150 = $40 1980s dollars).
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