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Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

raspberrypi.org

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Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#591

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…

My biggest beef with RPI is how much effort it takes it set it up as headless machine. Expectation was just plug USB-C cable and shell away. Nope. Connect to Wifi first. Then to use it's serial ports there's ton of conflicting info that I've gave up after spending days on it.

Finally no way to run headless if you wan't 64bit OS.

It's good computer for r/iamverysmart type of people, but not to be actually productive hacker.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#592
One thing I do NOT like is their continued reliance on SDcards -- after a while of 'normal' use (maybe a couple of years?) I've found the SDcards in my RPis tend to go south. It seems to be it would have been so much better to just have one USB 3 slot dedicated for a USB3 Flash thumb drive, which could be slipped inside. Another small thing: it would be nice if the kbd had a ThinkPad 'stick' mouse --- which is much more convenient than having to have an external mouse. But, hey, nobody is stopping 'somebody' from doing that, eh?

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#593
post #235

This is beautiful, and it really has the vibe of the 80s home computers on which I learned how to program. What those computers also had, though, was that they immediately booted to a programming interface and a small but well defined set of capabilities explorable through coding. Wanted to do calculations? Code. Wanted to do graphics? Simple enough, but also required coding. Sound, same. You wanted to load a program…

Raspberry Pi can run Squeak, which is a full-blown Smalltalk-80 environment, not unlike the one Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg taught kids to use in their Dynabook work. You could configure a Pi to boot directly into Squeak and it would be the spiritual successor to that kind of environment.

There are also other good educational alternatives that aren't entirely immersive but run well on the Pi (Scratch, Python's Turtle module, Mathematica and its interactive notebook (free on the Pi), etc.).

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 40 pin connector is a big STEM deal. First peripheral I would sell is an add on breadboard station with lots of good sensors, lights, input controls, motor drivers and such that is buffered to prevent damage and start producing education kits.

> That 40 pin connector is a big STEM deal. yes really, this is nearly spectrum-opposite of a chromebook (desgined to keep you in a prebuilt ecosystem)

If you can write code to drive hardware from pinouts I think you can click a button to enable Linux apps.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#595
post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'd assert that TV's are commonplace. This, just like the BBC Micro, ZX80/1 and C64, can easily be used with a TV.

I thought new trend is getting rid of TV's until so many visitors asked us "where's your tv!?".

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

My biggest beef with RPI is how much effort it takes it set it up as headless machine. Expectation was just plug USB-C cable and shell away. Nope. Connect to Wifi first. Then to use it's serial ports there's ton of conflicting info that I've gave up after spending days on it. Finally no way to run headless if you wan't 64bit OS. It's good computer for r/iamverysmart type of people, but not to be actually productive h…

> no way to run headless if you wan't 64bit OS.

Could you expand on that a bit more? I'm currently running a Pi3B+ 64bit Raspbian headless and have had no problems so far. Does the Pi4 not allow 64bit headless?

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

That 40 pin connector is a big STEM deal. First peripheral I would sell is an add on breadboard station with lots of good sensors, lights, input controls, motor drivers and such that is buffered to prevent damage and start producing education kits.

official Raspberry Pi Sense HAT https://www.microcenter.com/product/453920/raspberry-pi-sens...

5x5 RGB LED matrix, gyro, accelerometer, magnetometer, thermometer, hydrometer, barometer, joystick sensor, all for ~$30 USD

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people’s TVs at this point are basically a 1080 monitor hooked up to a computer (cable box) so I don’t see this as a big challenge. If a monitor is needed they are quite inexpensive at this point compared to what they used to cost.

Is cable that common? Assuming you mean cable tv, it seems that at peak it was only just over half of all homes that subscribed and is falling. Presumably this is due to Netflix et al. However wiki numbers stop a few years back. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_television_in_the_Unit...

The point about it being hooked up to a cable box isn't particularly relevant unless you're only watching OTA digital TV all your media comes from what can be roughly described as a computer attached to a monitor. And even if you are just watching digital OTA TV any relatively modern TV will have an HDMI port.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop PC

#599
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would mean performence more then doubled on a yearly basis. How do you figure? They were released 30+ years apart. 2^30 would be a billion times faster. Instead it's something under 19 doublings, nowhere close to doubling every year for 37 years.

I think it's just the case of random boomer think 1980 was 20 years ago :)

I make that mistake and I'm only a boomer for the derogatory gen-z definition that includes anyone older than 25.
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