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Author Topic: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.  (Read 7357 times)

tickmike

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Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« on: November 09, 2013, 09:06:36 PM »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03hddv4/Click_02_11_2013/

Another credit for that small computer  ;) from   Steve Wozniak  co-founded Apple Computers. Nice one...  :clap2:
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #1 on: November 12, 2013, 11:49:37 AM »

The iplayer link doesn't seem to work at the moment, Not Currently Available?

But no matter, thanks for reminding me that I've still not got a Pi.  An important item I ought to be mentioning in my letter to Santa?   There's been some hints from familly members that he may be looking for ideas  :)
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roseway

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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2013, 12:57:51 PM »

The link works OK now.

I've got a Pi, and it's quite fun to play with. The slowness of it becomes quite tedious if you want to do 'normal' computing with it, but that aside, it's very capable. Go for it. :)
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  Eric

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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #3 on: November 12, 2013, 04:06:35 PM »

Its certainly not what you'd call "speedy" on any sort of GUI, but if you buy the MPEG-2 and VC-1 codecs (£3 or so?) then one of the minimal GUIs on the (native) XBMC build turns the Pi into a very portable (& reasonably capable) media centre which only uses 10W for full 1920x1080p video.

I appreciate that was never the original intent but its certainly the number one use.

Edit - I think that the fact its hideously slow for most GUIs detracts from its original purpose. I can't see many kids looking at it and thinking much else than "its half the size of my mobile and its this slow?". Sad but true when the programming tools bundled with a Pi build are pretty much all GUI-focused. Yes its got GPIO pins but that in itself isn't going to make me want to work with a Pi. More likely I'd do any necessary coding/testing on a PC and then port it across/interface with GPIO stub. I suspect that wasn't the intention but it is the reality :(
« Last Edit: November 12, 2013, 04:23:19 PM by rizla »
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #4 on: November 12, 2013, 04:26:25 PM »

The link works OK now.

I've got a Pi, and it's quite fun to play with. The slowness of it becomes quite tedious if you want to do 'normal' computing with it, but that aside, it's very capable. Go for it. :)

Yes, the link works now.  Maybe it always did, my bad?

Anyways, letter written and sent by email to a well known Elf.    Past experience suggests that if I am on VERY good behaviour between now and Christmas day, there may be a favourable response.    ;D

We should not regard slow CPU and low memory as a drawback, rather as a challenge.  My own last 'embedded' project (not that long ago either) involved a PIC microcontoller with (IIRC) 300-odd bytes (no not MB, not even kB) of RAM, 8K flash EPROM, and clocked at 4MHz.  That was sufficient to build a hand held widget with real-time user interaction, a software character generator with a software-multiplexed LED matrix, and software-generated sound effects via a dumb Piezo speaker.  So, how many orders of magnitude improvement can I expect from a Pi..? :P
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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #5 on: November 12, 2013, 04:51:52 PM »

Its not a slow CPU, its simply that for GUI functions then the CPU is what acts as the GPU. It can't cope with 1920x1080 (for example), which is what most monitors now default to - by that I mean it WILL annoy you after 20-30 minutes maximum.

The CPU (once you give it the MPEG2/VC-1 serial numbers) is more than capable of full motion video @ 1920x1080 but for any GPIO task it is massively over-specced.

The problem is that the GUI bundled "learn to program" stuff is very slow for its intended purpose and hence people are utilising the video compression (MPEG2/VC-1) capture/playback capabilities to put it to more productive use. El Reg (and others) have Pi's in the sky if you'll pardon the bad pun as that is what this is good for.

Personally I think that a Pi, large SDHC class 10 card and a network connection would make a tremendous alarm system.
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roseway

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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #6 on: November 12, 2013, 04:58:25 PM »

My own project was to use it as a low power DSL monitoring device using DSLstats, but to do that I first had to install the development system (Lazarus) and then build the program. This is fairly heavyweight stuff, and it took a long time, but it got there. Having done this, the program runs perfectly well.
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  Eric

sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #7 on: November 12, 2013, 05:07:36 PM »


Personally I think that a Pi, large SDHC class 10 card and a network connection would make a tremendous alarm system.
Funny you should say that, some kind of networked alarm/surveillance system, with intelligent peripheral sensors, is an idea has been germinating at the back of my mind for a while now.

No concrete suggestions yet, so don't ask me what I'm talking about, just a hunch that I might be about to have a great (or not) idea as to where a Pi or two might fit in.   ???
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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #8 on: November 12, 2013, 05:17:22 PM »

Would you do the majority of the coding again on the Pi is the question?

Or was it a port of existing code?

I think the Pi is a good idea but I'm not convinced it appeals to the education market. By that I mean average kids rather than enthusiastic teachers.

Pretty sure the clever kids are looking at apps on Apple/Android and thinking "I'll have some of that revenue" rather than "Oh so I can get this to control (trivial) RL stuff".

Our oldest daughter is in her last year of school and I can say with some experience that the very last thing the English education system needs is "innovation". They could try teaching kids (and teachers under 30) the basics - like reading/spelling/basic arithmetic, but that won't ever happen as its never been necessary to get above 40% before so they don't know how to do it on such a scale now.

Programming? Heh, as if.

Edit - oh and we've come across at least 4 teachers who should have been sacked due to incompetence. They were all allowed to resign and keep their gold-plated pensions despite (in the words of one tribunal. not instigated by us but we gave written evidence) "this teacher has systematically failed children for 20 years". The NUT in England is the problem, simple as that.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2013, 05:27:46 PM by rizla »
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guest

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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #9 on: November 12, 2013, 05:22:35 PM »


Personally I think that a Pi, large SDHC class 10 card and a network connection would make a tremendous alarm system.
Funny you should say that, some kind of networked alarm/surveillance system, with intelligent peripheral sensors, is an idea has been germinating at the back of my mind for a while now.

No concrete suggestions yet, so don't ask me what I'm talking about, just a hunch that I might be about to have a great (or not) idea as to where a Pi or two might fit in.   ???

Was it you that had the "garden-camera" on here?

If so then I think someone has already done that sort of thing - you'd have to go search but IIRC there's a post on some Pi forums along the same lines.
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #10 on: November 12, 2013, 06:01:54 PM »

Not me, but I remember the post.  Was it tick mike?

I'm more thinking along the lines of an intruder alarm.

Not one that makes a noise, or at least not for a while, as that might encourage neighbours to intervene, and get hurt (if they take any notice at all).  It also alerts the villains to the fact they have been detected, thus they may hide their faces and be harder to identify

Not one that dials 999 because it is pointless, the police rarely respond to house alarms.

More along the lines, one that silently tracks the intruders from room to room, uploading realtime pictures and audio, and probably also sending also me text messages & pics to mobile phone(s). That may then allow me to make a more persuasive call to police from wherever I may be and, if the villains are later identifiable, there would be some chance of recovering any stolen goods.  Most of all, at least it wouldn't come as an outright shock when I returned home to find my Raspberry Pi alarm system had been stolen.   :D

I'm sure it has all been done before, you can probably buy one from Argos for a fraction of the price I'd spend.  But that won't stop me wanting to do it all over again, my way.   8)
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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #11 on: November 12, 2013, 06:16:27 PM »

In that case get the dual infra-red and microwave sensors to prevent false alarms or card/remote storage issues.

The police are utterly useless IME - and I was first robbed at 6 years old, and had my front teeth caved in at 23 when walking home at 5pm. Four seperate police "areas", all useless - bar one incident where I agreed to give evidence and had to move house 3 times in 12 months, but that was "my problem" in terms of costs,

There's been various burglaries and work-related stuff along the way (been a "victim" of crime 7 times now) and on no occasion have the police been anything other than useless tossers. Some guy tried to stab me at work, I threw him down 4 or 5 steps and he ran off. Police try to charge me to get a clearup point (you are all aware the police get bonuses for charges, not convictions mmm?). After that I have no time for them and if you have better luck then +1

Rant over but if you expect action from the police then dream on, they're not much better than the scum they're supposed to deal with.

Edit - also if you want the video to be admissable in an E&W court then it has to meet certain standards. For example I think MPEG2 only became admissable recently - prior to that it was MJPEG. Basically for video from these system to be admissable in court then there needs to be a LOT more keyframes than you'd find on normal video.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2013, 06:31:21 PM by rizla »
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #12 on: November 12, 2013, 06:38:43 PM »

Or I could just build a media server like everybody else  :lol:
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sheddyian

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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #13 on: November 12, 2013, 08:30:09 PM »

It was me who had (still has!) the garden cam, although it's not running on a Raspberry Pi - it's on an old laptop running Windows XP & IIS!  :-X   But I did talk at some length of moving it over to a Pi, and even bought one (and a Camera module) and started tinkering, so you may well be remembering that.

I haven't progressed any further due to time constraints, but also because the garden has been a disaster for a 2nd year running, and I may turn the camera off this year.  The earlier years with no camera, I've had wonderful displays of wild flowers.  Since the camera, it's been dreadful. 

I therefore blame the electric rays from the camera lens for wrecking my garden  :D

I have however got another Raspberry Pi that I too use as a media centre.  Since the last update it's been very fast, not only providing decent playback but also very nippy through the menus etc.

Looking at the changelog for RaspBMC, I noticed that a minor overclock was introduced, then removed a few days later.

I'd previously had trouble overclocking my Pi, but after all the updates I manually edited the config file

If it's of any interest, these are the settings I've found stable for me, on my early version 256MB Pi :

arm_freq=850  (default is 700, tho I think Raspbmc usually runs at 800)
core_freq=375   (default is 250)
force_turbo=1

I wonder how much difference is attained with the desktop environment by overclocking a little bit?

Ian
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tickmike

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Re: Steve Wozniak Talks About The Raspberry Pi.
« Reply #14 on: November 12, 2013, 11:20:22 PM »

Not me, but I remember the post.  Was it tick mike?

No not me, My pi is still in the box. :o and it was one of the first ones.  :( busy building  ;)
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