Raspberry Pi

[KlaxonCow]

Thanks for the heads up.

Not just for updating the firmware via Raspbian, but also because this reminded me to check if Ubuntu now officially supported the Raspberry Pi 4 - which it does - so I switched my other SD card to Canonical's official port (as the previous unofficial hack I was using had to put certain packages on hold and couldn't update the firmware because, you know, it was a hack to make things nominally work and any "core" updates could totally screw that up, so moving to the official port means I can fully update everything. Also, I get the raspberry icons on boot now, which the hack never did, which is cool).

(Although, I can't remember how I got xRDP working before to remote into the Pi again. I had to do some tweaks - following instructions from the Internet - to get it working last time, but I can't find that page anymore. Which is annoying, because my only spare monitor is crap and ancient (it's only 4:3, just to put how crap and ancient I mean into context), and there's all that messing around with wires to add a mouse and keyboard. Being able to remote in from some decent hardware - my laptop - is a way more convenient experience. Never mind. I'll eventually find that page and get it working again.)

Also, though network booting has been added, they've still not got the USB booting to work yet. So you've still got to boot off an SD card and then transfer over to SSD on USB.

[KlaxonCow]

Even though I have a Raspberry Pi 4, the Raspberry Pi 400 is calling to me:



Basically, a Raspberry Pi 4 in a Raspberry Pi keyboard.

But the trick is that it somewhat turns the Pi into a "microcomputer" of old, as a keyboard unit with a computer inside that you just hook up to a TV / monitor and plug it in, which is very nostalgic.

It even comes with a "User's Guide".

[Misfit]

Even though I have a Raspberry Pi 4, the Raspberry Pi 400 is calling to me:

I saw this in the regular PiHut tempt me to buy things email this morning.

Nice and as you say very tempting.

Haven't got a clue what I'd do with it though!

[VNVObit]

Even though I have a Raspberry Pi 4, the Raspberry Pi 400 is calling to me:

I saw this in the regular PiHut tempt me to buy things email this morning.

Nice and as you say very tempting.

Haven't got a clue what I'd do with it though!

That's a common complaint (like it have no use for it)

hopefully it'll evolve and have a few more features (SSD for me, even a M2 daughterboard , as suggest by WiteWulf on twitter)
certainly appeals to those who had a home computer in the 80s

[KlaxonCow]

Yeah, I think they should - in the spirit of the Raspberry Pi - have it that the back comes off easily and encourage folks to "mod" their Pi 400s.

Leave a space - and the connector on the Pi - open for folks to install an SSD inside the machine. Stuff like that.

I haven't seen inside, but it should really be a standard Pi, with extender cables running from the board to the back panel. So that you can crack open the keyboard and then access the Pi and "mod" it in the usual ways, then close up the case.

I mean, one thing I notice is that, if you can't do something like that with the 400, then where's the camera connector? That's on a Pi but not on the back panel.

In other words, the ideal for this would be to treat the Raspberry Pi keyboard as essentially a case for a standard Pi (but with extra room inside it for an SSD and perhaps an extender board or two, as the Pi isn't very big, so there should be room to spare inside the box). And, like all Raspberry Pi stuff, you can crack it open easily to play with things. "Mod" your 400.

So, going forward, if they haven't got this already, they need to make the back of the 400 (or future 800 or whatever) easily pop off. That it's designed with the idea that folks pop off the back, access the insides and "mod" their Pi. Just like with any other Pi.

And that it's just extender cables from the Pi inside to the ports on the back panel, so you can just plug things in / pull things out of the Pi inside, as needed. Indeed, the perfect ideal would be that the back panel and extender cables are their own unit, so you could potentially pop that out and swap it for a different back panel. Or at least leave room for a "user port" at the back - a plastic cover that you can pop out - so that if you do install an extender board or something in there, then it can have its own ports out the back too.

I guess the worry is that, putting this together, they've forgotten that aspect of the Pi. That it should be "open it up to see how it works" and that you can "mod" things as you like. Don't hide the device inside - the Pi is an "open" thing, right? - but almost encourage folks to pop off the back and "mod" the insides as they need.

[WiteWulf]

The only notable difference to a regular Pi inside is that it supports proper 802.3af power over ethernet. That's going to make these things *really* useful for use in lab environments as linux desktops or VDI clients. It's a very nice piece of kit, imho.

[skab]

Oh. Want.

And no, no idea what to do with it, actually, but who cares?

Also no idea how it's built inside. I doubt it's a normal Pi with an extender board, it's probably just a completely new board. Or maybe something inbetween, it could be a special breakout board for the new Compute Module 4, which would be neat, but I guess it's just a new standalone thing.

But that't not bad at all. As a dirt cheap compact computer, this thing is just great. And yes, I love the keyboard-computer form factor since I'm old just like you guys and grew up with that shit

[merman]

Typical. I put a Pi 4 on my birthday list and they come out with something new.

Great idea though - get those old unwanted monitors recycled and give the kids something to learn on.

[Kelloggs]

It's a completely new board in there, a rev.6, with the second USB2 port routed to a keyboard controller chip to control the keyboard. There doesn't appear to be a camera connector or a display connector (other than, obviously, 2x MicroHDMI ports) but there is a new Ethernet controller chip, which is capable of PoE. However, (all of this is from my readings on t'Internet) the Raspberry Pi itself doesn't take power from anywhere but its USB C port.

To me, it seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity. If it had been a keyboard kit, with necessary cables to put your own Pi4 in, you could have got an 8GB version (yes, it's only 4GB) and Done It Yourself, and I'd have happily paid £40-50 for that. As it is, it's a bit... odd. It is 1.8GHz, though (up from 1.5), with a Big Metal Heatsink inside.

Oh, and there's enough room for full-size HDMI, but...

[skab]

One board, teardown here:

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/ ... and-review

[Misfit]

It's a completely new board in there, a rev.6, with the second USB2 port routed to a keyboard controller chip to control the keyboard. There doesn't appear to be a camera connector or a display connector (other than, obviously, 2x MicroHDMI ports) but there is a new Ethernet controller chip, which is capable of PoE. However, (all of this is from my readings on t'Internet) the Raspberry Pi itself doesn't take power from anywhere but its USB C port.

To me, it seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity. If it had been a keyboard kit, with necessary cables to put your own Pi4 in, you could have got an 8GB version (yes, it's only 4GB) and Done It Yourself, and I'd have happily paid £40-50 for that. As it is, it's a bit... odd. It is 1.8GHz, though (up from 1.5), with a Big Metal Heatsink inside.

Oh, and there's enough room for full-size HDMI, but...

You can buy a very similar keyboard if you want to do it yourself, but it has different IO.

From the teardown skab posted, it's quite a bit different to a Pi4 and whilst 'we' want lots more out of it before we even get it, from the interviews, it sounds like their hope is to get a device out to the masses where a home doesn't have a laptop/PC for lockdown school work. Can it handle Office 365? (what our kid's school uses) if so could be a great solution.

For me the lack of internal SSD possibilities is a real shame and not having standard HDMI is a bit criminal. Pretty much any TV/Monitor you walk up to is likely to have a HDMI cable you could 'borrow' for a session, but none will have a micro HDMI one. So something else to carry and you have to get behind the device to plug it in.

Anyway, I think I have a plan for one. I have A Sinden Lightgun on order and this could be the perfect device to run it off as it should be easy to move between TVs.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the- ... /1799327#/

[venusian]

This highlights what is, for me, the failure of the Pi.

How many kids have actually learnt to code with one, or started with electronics? I would guess the answer is vanishingly small - they're all doing Scratch on Wintel and then Python on PC. I used to volunteer at a Code Club and we wouldn't touch RiPi because they get broken or stolen. I ran a Summer Code Camp in my village and we used Linux on laptops because it Just Works as a single one plug tool.

The Pi has mostly gone to middle aged nerds' cupboards and media centres. The kids who can't afford access to a PC or who are only marginally interested in advance aren't spending their pocket money on a Pi. And a keyboard. And an SD card. And a screen.

Getting the hardware into a state where it's actually usable by it's target audience is a good (but late) move. Building a standard software stack that everybody uses would be the other part. I know lots of people think the Pi is fabulous but it's a missed opportunity IMO.

[KlaxonCow]

I don't know about the rest of you, but what really got me into programming was the classic Usborne coding books, the humble C64 "User's Guide" and that sort of thing.

Obviously, I needed hardware. But I started on a ZX81 and it was utter shit, even for the time. But I typed out the listings in an Usborne book and got some simple games going.

Then, when I went to the C64, having followed an Usborne book - and watched the little robots in the margin explain how computers worked - I cracked open the C64 "User's Guide" and then followed that. Making the Commodore balloon appear. Making silly noises with the SID.

But what I felt was most important was the art in those Usborne books, firing up my imagination. Like it was the illustrations in "the Mystery of Silver Mountain" - the actual adventure game itself was a bit crap and disappointing, if you were bothered to type the whole bloody thing in. Or - cool - "Space Games", even though the games were, you know, a bit crap, the promise of space games and all the cool art that made it all look super cool.

It's that old joke of buying the kids a big expensive Christmas present... and then they're more interested in "building forts" with the packaging instead.

They don't yet properly comprehend "expensive" - the value of money - but their imaginations are on fire for what you can do with a cardboard box. That cardboard box is a treasure trove of possibility. The fancy machine you got? What does it do? Oh, it has text on the screen to read and write. Yeah, that sounds like homework. But this cardboard box can be a pirate ship. Yeeargh!!

So I've always thought - about the Raspberry Pi project - that, yeah, it's cool hardware and super cheap and small. But it was never the hardware, per se, except for the fact that you needed some. It was the coding books with cool illustrations and the games, firing up my imagination.

I mean, it's not as if the limited 8-bits really had stunning graphics - my imagination was filling in the fine details - or, inside 64KB at best, games did basically only do one thing gameplay-wise. Don't get me wrong, as it was all great fun. But what I mean is that gameplay was typically summed up in one sentence "climb the ladders to reach the top and save the girl", "shoot all the enemy ships", etc. whereas, you know, games today have a hundred things going on and layers and layers of depth to the gameplay mechanics (though, granted, this doesn't necessarily make them any more fun to play).

Objectively, it was all a bit crap. But, subjectively, inside my imagination, it was universes of possibility.

And I feel that the Pi project provides good hardware, but where's the Usborne coding books, filled with cool art, to fire up the imagination? The little cartoon robots showing me how it all works? That feeling that I was uncovering mysteries and secrets, as I turned the page?

Indeed, when I was programming the ZX81 or C64, the only specification of the machine I was aware of was that the ZX81 had 1KB and the C64 had 64KB. Oh, the C64 had colours too. In that sense, the hardware was irrelevant - except that the C64 was a better "box" than the Sinclair "box". It had 64 times as many universes of possibility than the ZX81, by the numbers.

I think that a series of modern Usborne coding books - same style and very much the art is crucial - would probably be more useful to getting kids coding.

Yes, there are some kids who're in very poor families where a PC is not accessible, and it's good to have super cheap and accessible stuff like the Raspberry Pi. But most kids, even amongst the poorest, can access something - like Daddy's work laptop - and it's more about firing their imaginations to the universes of possibility that exist inside that "box" over there.

When you hand them the box, they need to see - like with a cardboard box - the forts and pirate ships within it. Then you don't have to do anything, they'll make those forts and pirate ships without you. But if you just give them a box, it's like "okay, but what do I do with this? I guess I can put it on my head and make a hat out of it. I can put my Han Solo figure on top of it and now it's a 'space car'. What can this box do?".

And you need the books that unlock the mysteries of the box. Look at page 2, that troll under the bridge. Look at page 6, you can type this stuff into the box and then you've got a "space game". Yes, it's a disappointing space game. But that's not really the point - it's the magic that you can type stuff and make space games appear.

It's not the Raspberry Pi is a bad idea or bad tech - not at all, I've just ordered a Pi 400 - but that the spark of imagination and possibility isn't, as far as I can see, being delivered alongside it. And that was, for me, the important bit. The box itself is just a box - what makes the box is that I can cast "magic" and make it into a pirate ship (for the cardboard variety), or cast "magic" and make a space game appear on the screen (for the electronic variety).

I can see the box. But where's the magic?


p.s. Yes, these days, it needn't be a book. It could be a website. An interactive tutorial, where the robots who explain things are animated on a screen. It's not that it's "treeware" that matters, of course. It's the imagination-firing content upon it that matters, and you can deliver that in a number of other mediums too. But the point is the need of its delivery. It's not so important how it gets to the kids, but it needs to be getting to the kids.

[Misfit]

p.s. Yes, these days, it needn't be a book. It could be a website. An interactive tutorial, where the robots who explain things are animated on a screen. It's not that it's "treeware" that matters, of course. It's the imagination-firing content upon it that matters, and you can deliver that in a number of other mediums too. But the point is the need of its delivery. It's not so important how it gets to the kids, but it needs to be getting to the kids.

Yes, good post, good point.

Sadly it probably needs to be some 'cool' influencer on youtube.

Even then most are lacking on the attention span to code.

[Barney]

Kids don't need to learn to code anymore. The kick we got out of it - making the machine do anything we wanted - they get from Minecraft now. I see it in my kids, they have the same passion I did, just not aimed at code.