5 ms·

This is great. How is the business side of it?

dividuum 8y ago
Looking good. Once customers realize that our platform is far more powerful that just throwing a browser at everything, they get really excited. You can fully automate everything with the API, build perfectly smooth 60fps content and even play synchronized content across any number of screens. And a lot more. Coupled with the low cost and the reliability of the Pi, it really looks great. Still, getting the word out is difficult as the Pi is still considered a toy by many.
- tonyarkles 8y ago
  Just a couple of thoughts/questions if you don't mind: - How's the supply-chain side of things? For a while, vendors would only sell one Pi at a time, if they had stock at all. Have you had any problems with that? - Why do your customers know or care that there's a Pi inside? It seems like an implementation detail that only a select few would ever think to ask, unless you're telling them. "COTS ARM Cortex A53" would likely be enough to make most people's eyes glaze over before digging enough to discover that there's a "hobbyist" board inside. Edit: I looked at your website and get it :). You're selling hosting, not pre-packaged devices. That's really interesting!
  - dividuum 8y ago
    Supply for the "normal" Pi has never been a problem AFAIK. Only the Pi Zero has these problems. But as you noted: We don't sell prepackaged hardware: Only the software and service. Shipping/Warranty/Return handling seems pretty complicated and not worth the hassle (at least for now). Instead we made the installation as simple as possible and as a result users only have to unzip a single ZIP file to an empty SD card and put that in their Pi. So far even to most non-technical users managed to do that.
    - tonyarkles 8y ago
      That's awesome! Congrats! That's a really cool niche, and it sounds like you've executed on it in a pretty interesting way. Although I haven't done it recently, I did a fair bit of Lua embedded in C in my M.Sc. and found it to be a really smooth way to add a ton of power to C code without needing to do a bunch of work.
- rcarmo 8y ago
  Just saw the demos, and they look great. Back when I ran this sort of thing I moved from Pis to Android boxes for our own in-house system for SVG support (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruicarmo/albums/72157643937892615 https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruicarmo/albums/72157643937892...) but often wished I’d had a simpler, more efficient setup. How good are the Lua bindings for OpenGL ES? Are they as nice as Löve? I tried https://www.mztn.org/rpi/rpi_ljes.html https://www.mztn.org/rpi/rpi_ljes.html once, but it was a bit fiddly.
  - dividuum 8y ago
    info-beamer pi (the software that runs in the Pi and drives the output) doesn't expose OpenGL directly at a very low level. Instead it provides a higher level API to draw and move images, fonts and videos around (see https://info-beamer.com/doc/info-beamer#referencemanual https://info-beamer.com/doc/info-beamer#referencemanual for the complete API). So it's indeed similar to Löve. As a programmer you really don't have to know OpenGL to get anything done. Right now info-beamer pi doesn't have SVG support but images and even videos get you pretty far for most effects I can think of.

Looking good. Once customers realize that our platform is far more powerful that just throwing a browser at everything, they get really excited. You can fully automate everything with the API, build perfectly smooth 60fps content and even play synchronized content across any number of screens. And a lot more. Coupled with the low cost and the reliability of the Pi, it really looks great. Still, getting the word out is difficult as the Pi is still considered a toy by many.

tonyarkles 8y ago
Just a couple of thoughts/questions if you don't mind: - How's the supply-chain side of things? For a while, vendors would only sell one Pi at a time, if they had stock at all. Have you had any problems with that? - Why do your customers know or care that there's a Pi inside? It seems like an implementation detail that only a select few would ever think to ask, unless you're telling them. "COTS ARM Cortex A53" would likely be enough to make most people's eyes glaze over before digging enough to discover that there's a "hobbyist" board inside. Edit: I looked at your website and get it :). You're selling hosting, not pre-packaged devices. That's really interesting!
- dividuum 8y ago
  Supply for the "normal" Pi has never been a problem AFAIK. Only the Pi Zero has these problems. But as you noted: We don't sell prepackaged hardware: Only the software and service. Shipping/Warranty/Return handling seems pretty complicated and not worth the hassle (at least for now). Instead we made the installation as simple as possible and as a result users only have to unzip a single ZIP file to an empty SD card and put that in their Pi. So far even to most non-technical users managed to do that.
  - tonyarkles 8y ago
    That's awesome! Congrats! That's a really cool niche, and it sounds like you've executed on it in a pretty interesting way. Although I haven't done it recently, I did a fair bit of Lua embedded in C in my M.Sc. and found it to be a really smooth way to add a ton of power to C code without needing to do a bunch of work.
rcarmo 8y ago
Just saw the demos, and they look great. Back when I ran this sort of thing I moved from Pis to Android boxes for our own in-house system for SVG support (https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruicarmo/albums/72157643937892615 https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruicarmo/albums/72157643937892...) but often wished I’d had a simpler, more efficient setup. How good are the Lua bindings for OpenGL ES? Are they as nice as Löve? I tried https://www.mztn.org/rpi/rpi_ljes.html https://www.mztn.org/rpi/rpi_ljes.html once, but it was a bit fiddly.
- dividuum 8y ago
  info-beamer pi (the software that runs in the Pi and drives the output) doesn't expose OpenGL directly at a very low level. Instead it provides a higher level API to draw and move images, fonts and videos around (see https://info-beamer.com/doc/info-beamer#referencemanual https://info-beamer.com/doc/info-beamer#referencemanual for the complete API). So it's indeed similar to Löve. As a programmer you really don't have to know OpenGL to get anything done. Right now info-beamer pi doesn't have SVG support but images and even videos get you pretty far for most effects I can think of.