The Raspberry Pi is succeeding in ways its makers almost imagined

The Register ^ | 8/27/15 | Mark Pesce

[markomalley]

“Grandpa is getting pretty old. Out there all alone on that farm, he has no one to look in on him, just to see if he’s ok. He’ll use the landline, but he’s beyond of the range of mobile, and he’s never been really great with computers. No Skype or emails. Grandpa does have internet. So I built this for him.”

The girl points down to a small box with a few wires coming out.

“I can bring up a web browser, and take photos inside grandpa’s house. Has he moved his coffee cup today? Is the telly on? At least then we’ll know he’s okay. And I can even type messages” - she changes focus to a textbox inside a web form - “that show up on top. We used ImageMagick for that part...here, you can see it in our code.”

Fingers fly across the keyboard, and now I’m reading the source code for an index.php page, another marriage of convenience between HTML and PHP. How’d this girl - all of eleven years old - learn to do this?

“A lot of it was trial and error.” Both she and her project partner blush a bit. “The PHP bits were kinda hard. But we found a lot of stuff on Google,” she confides.

After assuring her that grownups also find answers to their coding problems on Google, I had a good look at the code. Nothing spectacular, but readable enough.

Neither girl had written a line of code before this. They knew nothing about how to build a computer-controlled camera, or drive a computer-controlled display. But with Google’s help - and Raspberry Pi - they prevailed.

When the Raspberry Pi shipped to a planet excited geeks in the middle of 2012, it changed the way we taught IT. That had always been the intention of creator Eben Upton. Give the kids the goods and they’ll do the rest.

At first, it seemed as though the grownups were more excited than the kids, creating all sorts of wacky Pi-based projects. Fortunately, those grownups - eager for the respect of their peers - shared everything they learned, posting to blogs, StackOverflow, and thousands of other websites. Want to know how to blink an LED? Drive a motor? Read a sensor? Set up a web server? Within the first year, all of that was out there, all of it indexed, searchable, and useful to kids.

I was one of the lucky few who got their hands on one of the first Raspberry Pis to hit Australian shores. That first Pi gave me all sorts of ideas of a world where powerful computers had become cheap enough to put almost anywhere. It’s giving kids the same ideas.

For the last few years I’ve been a judge for Young ICT Explorers, a nationwide competition and celebration of kids who get bitten by the IT bug. Back in 2013, we saw a range of web-based projects, with one or two Arduinos thrown into the mix. Last year, a few more Arduinos, and a single Raspberry Pi project. That project - with the most sophisticated crontab I’d ever seen, and also built by an 11 year-old - won the big prize.

This year, that project would barely rate.

Look here, these kids are using sensors on a Raspberry Pi to read the air quality of the room, alerting asthmatics to seek an environment less likely to give them breathing problems. Over there - because sometimes the referees miss goals - a netball-crazed 11 year-old girl used an ultrasonic sensor and Raspberry Pi to create an automatic scoring system.

Consider three ten year-olds who fussed and fiddled with LittleBits - a mashup of Lego with the Internet of Things - until they found just the right combination of pieces to create a system that allows you to know whether that sushi tray gliding by on that continuous track has been sitting around a little too long to be safe to eat. (Their inspiration was a teacher who’d gotten sick from bad sushi.)

Each of these projects solve a real-world problem. They’re not speculative: they’re prototypes. The Raspberry Pi has proven to be more than just a way to get kids into IT. It’s broadened their canvas of possibilities. They can look at a problem, dream up a solution, and make it so.

Fifteen years ago, I wrote that kids, raised in an era of pervasive interactivity, would expect the entire world to interact with them. I hadn’t realised we’d give those kids the capacity to create the world. But that’s where we are now.

Completely at home with Raspberry Pis, these kids Google around for the things they don’t know how to do - because when you’re 11, you don’t know what you can’t do. They are inventing the future, and for them it’s just child’s play. ®

[markomalley]

Let me guess: you want to know what a Raspberry Pi is, right?

Raspberry Pi is a low-priced ($35-$40), credit-card sized single board computer that was originally developed to teach schoolchildren basic computer science skills.

As with these type of things, it has become very popular among hobbyists for building all manner of computer projects. The example given above is but one. It is very popular with home automation projects (remote control of lights, air conditioning, etc.) and the like.

Not something for everybody, admittedly, but still, your inner geek has got to say "cool."

[GeronL]

That IPhone looks ancient :p

[HonkyTonkMan]

Waiting for the apple fan boyz to brag how much better the iphone in this picture than the Rasp Pi. I mean it has a protective case AND a UI!!!

Anyhow...good post....Rasp Pi, Adurino are fantastic and actually easy to use. Been building with them for a couple of years. Low cost, very flexible, lot of possibilities.

[Boogieman]

I actually finally thought of a good project that I can justify buying a Pi to use (and a 3d printer too).

I don’t want to give away too many details, because it might be a product I could patent, but I want to use the Pi to control a device with motors that move a mounted piece of equipment, like a camera, on 3 axes of motion. Then the Pi would connect wirelessly to an app on a handheld which had the pan and zoom controls, and controls for a few other things that the software on the Pi would control. I would also need the Pi to transmit video output to an external screen.

Seems pretty do-able to me but I’ll probably save it for a winter project when I’m stuck indoors with a lot of time on my hands to putz around.

[SaveFerris]

bkmk

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Don’t like the seeds in raspberry pie. I’m holding out for Blueberry Pi.

[Fiddlstix]

Bookmark

[Bobalu]

The Pi2 makes a marvelous industrial controller!

For what this girl did for her Gramps a super cheap Android phone would have been a better deal.

I’m using them around here for remote cams.

Been playing with the idea of writing a Java app to make a P2P backup for FR. Everyone goes to walmart and grabs a cheap phone and sticks the app on it and it connects to their wifi and you have a distributed backup for FR.

The cheap Androids I got have a dual ARM core at 1.4Ghz ... plenty of oomph and they come with a 4GB sd card and that’s plenty of data space for such an app.

[Bobalu]

Lots o fun for sure!

You don’t need to be a genius to do these things either...hey, If I can do it...so can the average Freeper. :-)

[JJ_Folderol]

I’m currently reading/responding/browsing the net on a Raspberry Pi 2.

[Bobalu]

The iPhone is better but the Apple gear is locked down tight....better to use a lesser and cheaper system that is totally open.

[OK, the GPU in the Pi is not fully open source but it’s still usable as a black blob]

[Bobalu]

I gave a demo of the Pi2 last month at my local Ham Radio club meeting. Everyone had fun! I love showing folks how easy it is to do this stuff.

[Kirkwood]

Can you attach a port extender to it to get more usb ports?

[Cboldt]

There is a banana pi.

[Daffynition]

It better be made w/ Wild Maine Blueberries!

[Bobalu]

Yes, I use a 10 port USB hub and all ports work fine.

I recommend a powered hub with at least 2.5 amps. The hub will power the Pi at the same time so you can run without a separate supply.

[Cboldt]

What are you running for an OS?

Home network is mostly Gentoo. I'm thinking about doing a mail/file/print server on one of these small computers. Nothing urgent, just watching things evolve, but I like the idea of low power for those functions. Low traffic (small network), so speed is not much of an issue. Using an old laptop for that function now (880 days uptime).

[JJ_Folderol]

>>> Can you attach a port extender to it to get more usb ports? <<<

The Pi 2 has 4 USB ports but I’ve added an extender for 4 more ports. No problem: the UNIX operating system picks it up and integrates it into the system automatically on power-up.

[Kommodor]

Yes, but if you shoot deer with it, the DNR’s gonna come after you :P

[married21]

My kids’ middle school has a Raspberry Pi club.