Awesome work -- way to have a vision and see it through to the end. That process will make you a success in life and you'll learn a lot, too!
The most unhinged video wall, made out of Chromebooks
51–60 of 64 posts
Re: The most unhinged video wall, made out of Chromebooks
#52Congrats on delivering this fun project! I do a lot of work with synchronizing media content across devices so it’s always fun to see the solutions people come up with. You probably came across them in your research, but the industry standard way of creating a synced video wall like this is with BrightSign media players. The total cost for purchasing them and the screens would for 20 displays could easily end up in t…
Thank you! I didn’t get the chance to mention them in the blog post, but yes we checked out the price tags on the commercial solutions :) It’s crazy! I’ve always wondered how much of the cost is hardware vs software… and I would imagine professional digital signage is also designed for reliability longevity and all that.
Why waste old chromebooks for fun when you could donate them to the 3rd world schools for children? Thinkpads 11e are still proper hardware, I own one. Just install the latest Lubuntu and donate to people in need rather than disposing them. It's sad that huge number of the 1st world hardware is being thrown away rather than upcycle and serve the poor people in the 3rd world.
Re: The most unhinged video wall, made out of Chromebooks
#53Super cool! We needed to do something similar one time with 5 large touchscreen tvs that were arranged as a table, where each side needed to be a separate touchscreen application with them all playing a synchronized video in the background but users could interact with things flowing from one end to the other and could send objects from their other apps in any direction to other apps, like users sending things they f…
It's called distributed computing (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing) and it's long doable using Linux/BSD.
Re: The most unhinged video wall, made out of Chromebooks
#54Lenovo Thinkpad 11e aren't junk. I own one with Ubuntu and it still serves me well. Why people in the 1st world disassemble them or throw away rather than upcycling by upgrading OS and donating to the children of the 3rd world, like OLPC used to do? Still half of population doesn't have access to computers. This is hugely missed opportunity to help poor children!
> Why people in the 1st world disassemble them or throw away rather than upcycling by upgrading OS and donating to the children of the 3rd world, like OLPC used to do?
It wouldn't surprise me if, with the worldwide rise of smartphones, children in the developing world don't want computers.
Also, much of the developing world has plenty of buyers of new computers, and undoubtedly a significant aftermarket for the resulting used computers (just like in the developed world), so they probably don't need our donated old computers nearly as much
Re: The most unhinged video wall, made out of Chromebooks
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
The deprecation of OMXPlayer has been problematic for one, since I rely on some custom applications which need to be able to have some fairly precise/low latency requirements between when you tell it to start playing vs when the playback actually starts, etc. I haven’t found a suitable mechanism which meets our reqs on a Pi for controlling/playing videos yet since that deprecation. The lack of a regular HDMI output i…
> The deprecation of OMXPlayer has been problematic for one, since I rely on some custom applications which need to be able to have some fairly precise/low latency requirements between when you tell it to start playing vs when the playback actually starts, etc. I haven’t found a suitable mechanism which meets our reqs on a Pi for controlling/playing videos yet since that deprecation. Yeah. The Pi3 -> Pi4/5 jump was q…
Sounds great! I think I’ve actually stumbled across info-Beamer before. We use pretty much the exact same approach in re: configurable zip deployment for BrightSigns.
It would be great to chat some time!
I’ll shoot you an email.
Re: The most unhinged video wall, made out of Chromebooks
#56Lenovo Thinkpad 11e aren't junk. I own one with Ubuntu and it still serves me well. Why people in the 1st world disassemble them or throw away rather than upcycling by upgrading OS and donating to the children of the 3rd world, like OLPC used to do? Still half of population doesn't have access to computers. This is hugely missed opportunity to help poor children!
> Why people in the 1st world disassemble them or throw away rather than upcycling by upgrading OS and donating to the children of the 3rd world, like OLPC used to do? It wouldn't surprise me if, with the worldwide rise of smartphones, children in the developing world don't want computers. Also, much of the developing world has plenty of buyers of new computers, and undoubtedly a significant aftermarket for the resul…
I'm not sure. Only about 34 per cent of schools in India have internet facilities and more than 50 per cent do not have functional computers (https://theprint.in/india/education/only-34-indian-schools-h...). This is hundreds of million of people only in India and there is Africa & Southern Asia hugely in need too.
Re: The most unhinged video wall, made out of Chromebooks
#57[dead]
Re: The most unhinged video wall, made out of Chromebooks
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you! I didn’t get the chance to mention them in the blog post, but yes we checked out the price tags on the commercial solutions :) It’s crazy! I’ve always wondered how much of the cost is hardware vs software… and I would imagine professional digital signage is also designed for reliability longevity and all that.
Why waste old chromebooks for fun when you could donate them to the 3rd world schools for children? Thinkpads 11e are still proper hardware, I own one. Just install the latest Lubuntu and donate to people in need rather than disposing them. It's sad that huge number of the 1st world hardware is being thrown away rather than upcycle and serve the poor people in the 3rd world.
Getting laptops to third world countries is a real challenge. Customs agents see the computers, unaware of their age or value, and they get held, go missing until they are bribed, or just outright stollen.
Where I previously worked, we had a server room with over a hundred laptops, many late intel MacBook pros much better than the computers coworkers in India were using, but we just could not get them there from the US. The best we could do is ask coworkers traveling to visit the India team if they were willing to carry an additional laptop through customs. But a work laptop, personal laptop, and now a second "personal" laptop, even just three devices, would sometimes cause them a headache. If the logistics were easier, I am sure more of what you are proposing would happen.
Re: The most unhinged video wall, made out of Chromebooks
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why people in the 1st world disassemble them or throw away rather than upcycling by upgrading OS and donating to the children of the 3rd world, like OLPC used to do? It wouldn't surprise me if, with the worldwide rise of smartphones, children in the developing world don't want computers. Also, much of the developing world has plenty of buyers of new computers, and undoubtedly a significant aftermarket for the resul…
I'm not sure. Only about 34 per cent of schools in India have internet facilities and more than 50 per cent do not have functional computers ( https://theprint.in/india/education/only-34-indian-schools-h... ). This is hundreds of million of people only in India and there is Africa & Southern Asia hugely in need too.
> Only about 34 per cent of schools in India have internet facilities and more than 50 per cent do not have functional computers
India is an economically powerful country that has nuclear weapons, a robust manufacturing sector (including computing technology), and a space program. They are building a cross country freeway network and their major cities have metro and transit systems that are more advanced than those in most major American cities.
India is not comparable to less developed countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and in fact India's corporations outsource a lot of production to those countries for their extremely low-cost labor, just as the West does with East Asia.
That only 34% of its schools have internet facilities and 50% don't have functional computers is the result of India's massive wealth and social inequality and it's large disparity in standard of living.
This is the result of the policy priorities of Indian politicians and voters, not something that will be fixed by donating used laptops from the West.
If anything, the West seems to be on a trajectory toward developing a huge disparity in the standard of living, like India.
Re: The most unhinged video wall, made out of Chromebooks
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why waste old chromebooks for fun when you could donate them to the 3rd world schools for children? Thinkpads 11e are still proper hardware, I own one. Just install the latest Lubuntu and donate to people in need rather than disposing them. It's sad that huge number of the 1st world hardware is being thrown away rather than upcycle and serve the poor people in the 3rd world.
Getting laptops to third world countries is a real challenge. Customs agents see the computers, unaware of their age or value, and they get held, go missing until they are bribed, or just outright stollen. Where I previously worked, we had a server room with over a hundred laptops, many late intel MacBook pros much better than the computers coworkers in India were using, but we just could not get them there from the…
Laptops valued under Rs 50,000 are exempt from duty in India.
Laptops between Rs. 50,000 and Rs. 70,000 come under 10% duty.
Laptops over Rs 70,000 come under 18% + 18% GST.
This is a lot.
However, if your laptop meets these criteria, you can forgo paying duties:
- it is used or opened with signs of wear or tear,
- it has an older invoice (3+ years) showing purchase outside India,
- it has repair or warranty documents from previous use abroad.