Tiny Titan • Hacker News Board

Re: Tiny Titan

#41

Post by jtbigwoo » Fri, Dec 15, 2017, 3:03 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #18

adrianN wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 bucks per USB LED Light, 15 bucks per USB cable... they don't choose cheap components.

Yeah they could save a bunch on those; the USB LEDs are things they could make themselves, stick them into the gpio pins. Actually they don't need those. If your parts are more expensive than the rPI itself, you're not going to need it. Those cases aren't cheap either.

I help to run a once-a-week STEAM program for kids. Here's what we've found about cheap tools.

+ When they are new to a program, kids and parents care about how tools look. We have a nicely organized wall of tools and six identical work tables. It helps get participants excited and helps convince parents that the program is legitimate.

+ Once they buy in, kids don't care about how a tool or project looks. Some of our most popular projects are built from scrap wood or cardboard.

+ Even after they buy in, kids get easily frustrated when a tool doesn't work.

I think it makes perfect sense for the Titan team (or anyone without a pre-existing relationship to a group) to make everything nice-looking since it helps to establish credibility. If you're making something at home or you've already established credibility, you could absolutely cut some corners by using cheaper parts or making parts yourself. Make sure to use quality parts, though. If you rig something that constantly requires little fixes or nudges to stay running, your audience is going to quickly lose interest.

Re: Tiny Titan

#42

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Fri, Dec 15, 2017, 3:21 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #39

vinceguidry wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is right there at the top of the article: that it's for the classroom.

Yes, so what will the target-audience learn over the virtual experience? Other than that they can't run this at home because of the cost?

Their home computers probably don't run Linux, for one. They also don't have to worry about syncronization over the network, and they don't have much opportunity to learn about hardware and maker skills.

I think you initially misunderstood this to be a consumer-oriented project instead of a classroom-oriented project, but doubled down when you were corrected.

Re: Tiny Titan

#43

Post by jtbigwoo » Fri, Dec 15, 2017, 3:28 PM UTC

As someone who about programming and electronics, but knows very little about parallel computing, is this a good place to start? Does anybody have other resources or projects to recommend?

Re: Tiny Titan

#44

Post by harwoodr » Fri, Dec 15, 2017, 3:35 PM UTC

It would be interesting to see if this can be extended to use a raspberry pi GPU library, like QPULib or the like.

https://github.com/mn416/QPULib

Re: Tiny Titan

#45

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Dec 15, 2017, 3:45 PM UTC

thinkMOAR wrote: post #36

rbanffy wrote: post #26

I'm thinking about building one, but with Pi Zero's and USB networking. The ClusterHAT guy wrote software to netboot the nodes off a cluster controller's SD through the USB network. With that, you don't even need an SDcard for each node. I was thinking about also adding a LED bar with one LED for each GPU SIMD element, refreshing a couple times per second and lighting up for the units used above a certain threshold.…

"With that, you don't even need an SDcard for each node." neat stuff, i didn't know that, going to read up.

I imagine that, if it doesn't already do that, it'd be easy to make all nodes share a read-only file system for system and programs and have node-specific /etc, /var, and /home

Re: Tiny Titan

#46

Post by zeveb » Fri, Dec 15, 2017, 3:53 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #42

amelius wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so what will the target-audience learn over the virtual experience? Other than that they can't run this at home because of the cost?

Their home computers probably don't run Linux, for one. They also don't have to worry about syncronization over the network, and they don't have much opportunity to learn about hardware and maker skills. I think you initially misunderstood this to be a consumer-oriented project instead of a classroom-oriented project, but doubled down when you were corrected.

> Their home computers probably don't run Linux, for one.

Glib reply: why not?

Serious reply: VirtualBox is available for Windows, macOS & Linux alike, and is free. Surely that's acceptable?

Re: Tiny Titan

#47

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 15, 2017, 3:54 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #42

amelius wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so what will the target-audience learn over the virtual experience? Other than that they can't run this at home because of the cost?

Their home computers probably don't run Linux, for one. They also don't have to worry about syncronization over the network, and they don't have much opportunity to learn about hardware and maker skills. I think you initially misunderstood this to be a consumer-oriented project instead of a classroom-oriented project, but doubled down when you were corrected.

[deleted]

Re: Tiny Titan

#48

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Fri, Dec 15, 2017, 3:58 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #46

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their home computers probably don't run Linux, for one. They also don't have to worry about syncronization over the network, and they don't have much opportunity to learn about hardware and maker skills. I think you initially misunderstood this to be a consumer-oriented project instead of a classroom-oriented project, but doubled down when you were corrected.

> Their home computers probably don't run Linux, for one. Glib reply: why not? Serious reply: VirtualBox is available for Windows, macOS & Linux alike, and is free. Surely that's acceptable?

Glib response: because Windows is the dominant OS and my statement is statistically likely

Serious response: I'm of the opinion that you don't learn much about Linux by using it in VirtualBox.

Re: Tiny Titan

#49

Post by zeveb » Fri, Dec 15, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #48

zeveb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their home computers probably don't run Linux, for one. Glib reply: why not? Serious reply: VirtualBox is available for Windows, macOS & Linux alike, and is free. Surely that's acceptable?

Glib response: because Windows is the dominant OS and my statement is statistically likely Serious response: I'm of the opinion that you don't learn much about Linux by using it in VirtualBox.

I meant running multiple VMs in VirtualBox to simulate a distributed system as an alternative to buying multiple Raspberry Pis, not running Linux in VirtualBox.

The really cool thing, though, about multiple Raspberry Pis is that the systems really are running in parallel, rather than faking it with multitasking. That's definitely worth something in an educational context.

Re: Tiny Titan

#50

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Fri, Dec 15, 2017, 4:06 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #49

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glib response: because Windows is the dominant OS and my statement is statistically likely Serious response: I'm of the opinion that you don't learn much about Linux by using it in VirtualBox.

I meant running multiple VMs in VirtualBox to simulate a distributed system as an alternative to buying multiple Raspberry Pis, not running Linux in VirtualBox. The really cool thing, though, about multiple Raspberry Pis is that the systems really are running in parallel, rather than faking it with multitasking. That's definitely worth something in an educational context.

Ah, I see what you mean. That makes more sense.

Still, I think there's value in having this cool looking machine to fiddle with over the computer they're used to messing with all the time. I think it likely to engage more.