6 ms·

What are some practical uses of having an RPi W in your pocket?

detaro 7y ago
I know some people use them to have a small linux dev environment they can access from their iPads (without internet). As a travel router for your devices to relay WLANs with captive portal (and/or handle VPN etc).
- djbeadle 7y ago
  I've been trying to do more work on my iPad Pro recently. Mostly I work over SSH but I do miss having a full desktop environment. Can you add any more details about how people use this? I assume the Pi broadcasts a WiFi hotspot and then they use some Remote Desktop software, but I'd love to know specifics of what people have found works!
  - nereye 7y ago
    Yes, the Pi can be configured to work as a WiFi hotspot and you can then connect via SSH, e.g. using Termius (or a VNC app, if one needs a graphical environment). It’s straightforward to add gcc, ghci (Haskell) and several other languages/development environments. Having said that, would also recommend the iSH app (https://ish.app/ https://ish.app/), which gives you an x86 Alpine Linux environment directly on the iPad without additional hardware.
    - oefrha 7y ago
      iSH is dog slow even on my last year’s iPad Pro 12.9’’, the most powerful iPad to date (not really surprising since iSH is based on user mode x86 emulation). So, except for novelty or tasks with absolutely no alternatives, I wouldn’t really recommend it.
      - nereye 7y ago
        I guess my point was in the context of this thread where a possible alternative is connecting to a Raspberry Pi Zero W, which itself is not a speed demon. Just to give an idea (and with all the caveats about this being a very unscientific comparison and not like for like in many ways), ‘time gcc hello.cpp’ runs in about .7s on that Pi* and 1.4s in iSH (on an Air Pad 2 from 2014). Using g++ instead, the time is 1.4s vs 1.8s. So, yes, it would be crazy to use either for compute intensive tasks but they’re serviceable and not a million miles apart in terms of performance. The command line itself and apps like vim etc. do not feel ‘dog slow’ to me but there is likely an element of subjective ness there. To be fair, I imprinted on using ANSI C on an Archimedes 310 with no hard disk where compiling would involve manually swapping 3.5” disks so this all feels like gravy... * The first compile is actually also around 1.4s on the Pi then subsequent attempts come down to .7s, on iSH it’s more or less constant.
- dTal 7y ago
  Is it just me, or does something seem horribly wrong with the world when your 4-digit-price-tag personal Unix computing device from the world's richest company needs a 5 dollar hobbyist board to be a useful Unix development environment?
  - nine_k 7y ago
    Nothing is wrong: iPad is mostly a consumption device which does not show any development interface to the user. Compare it to a music player that does not expose any music creation interface. This allows the maker of iPads to change the underlying implementation how they see fit, without making users notice anything. If iPads started to run a mickrokernel OS underneath, the UI / UX won't change at all. The expensive parts of an iPad are the screen, the battery, the QA, and the brand. The CPU is not particularly expensive, though maybe isn't a $5 part.
    - jjeaff 7y ago
      The marketing line for the iPad pro is "like a computer. Unlike any computer"
      - Semiapies 7y ago
        For most of the people it's being marketed to, a computer is not a development system, either.
    - dTal 7y ago
      >Compare it to a music player that does not expose any music creation interface. Okay, and if people were buying 4-figure Bang and Olufsen stereo systems and hooking up a 5-dollar cassette recorder as their music production system, I'd be perturbed by that as well. If it's merely a consumption device, why attempt to develop on it? If it's a serious tool, why is the $5 component needed? Most of all - why don't you have a device that actually does what you want it to, properly, and why doesn't this bother you?
  - baddox 7y ago
    Nothing seems wrong to me. Your much more expensive new luxury car probably has a good deal of computing power without a useful Unix development environment. Same goes with your expensive new television.
nine_k 7y ago
What I would rather carry in my pocket: * A bit of secure, encrypted storage for my ssh keys, important papers, and similar stuff. * A u2f token. * A password manager running in a secure, controlled environment which exposes itself e.g. as a web app. * A VPN node that exposes itself as a modem / network card. An RPi could be all these. I maybe would prefer something like USB Armory [1] for for higher security, though it lacks a wifi interface. [1]: https://inversepath.com/usbarmory.html https://inversepath.com/usbarmory.html
- viraptor 7y ago
  You can integrate the first two points soon (SSH and u2f). See https://marc.info/?l=openssh-unix-dev&m=157259802529972&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openssh-unix-dev&m=157259802529972&w=2
incanus77 7y ago
Author here. For me, it's less about a Linux environment. For that, I use VMware, Docker, or another machine, if needed. But the Pi Zero is great precisely because I'm doing more with hardware lately, and so I have 40 GPIO pins available to do hardware testing on.

I know some people use them to have a small linux dev environment they can access from their iPads (without internet). As a travel router for your devices to relay WLANs with captive portal (and/or handle VPN etc).

djbeadle 7y ago
I've been trying to do more work on my iPad Pro recently. Mostly I work over SSH but I do miss having a full desktop environment. Can you add any more details about how people use this? I assume the Pi broadcasts a WiFi hotspot and then they use some Remote Desktop software, but I'd love to know specifics of what people have found works!
- nereye 7y ago
  Yes, the Pi can be configured to work as a WiFi hotspot and you can then connect via SSH, e.g. using Termius (or a VNC app, if one needs a graphical environment). It’s straightforward to add gcc, ghci (Haskell) and several other languages/development environments. Having said that, would also recommend the iSH app (https://ish.app/ https://ish.app/), which gives you an x86 Alpine Linux environment directly on the iPad without additional hardware.
  - oefrha 7y ago
    iSH is dog slow even on my last year’s iPad Pro 12.9’’, the most powerful iPad to date (not really surprising since iSH is based on user mode x86 emulation). So, except for novelty or tasks with absolutely no alternatives, I wouldn’t really recommend it.
    - nereye 7y ago
      I guess my point was in the context of this thread where a possible alternative is connecting to a Raspberry Pi Zero W, which itself is not a speed demon. Just to give an idea (and with all the caveats about this being a very unscientific comparison and not like for like in many ways), ‘time gcc hello.cpp’ runs in about .7s on that Pi* and 1.4s in iSH (on an Air Pad 2 from 2014). Using g++ instead, the time is 1.4s vs 1.8s. So, yes, it would be crazy to use either for compute intensive tasks but they’re serviceable and not a million miles apart in terms of performance. The command line itself and apps like vim etc. do not feel ‘dog slow’ to me but there is likely an element of subjective ness there. To be fair, I imprinted on using ANSI C on an Archimedes 310 with no hard disk where compiling would involve manually swapping 3.5” disks so this all feels like gravy... * The first compile is actually also around 1.4s on the Pi then subsequent attempts come down to .7s, on iSH it’s more or less constant.
dTal 7y ago
Is it just me, or does something seem horribly wrong with the world when your 4-digit-price-tag personal Unix computing device from the world's richest company needs a 5 dollar hobbyist board to be a useful Unix development environment?
- nine_k 7y ago
  Nothing is wrong: iPad is mostly a consumption device which does not show any development interface to the user. Compare it to a music player that does not expose any music creation interface. This allows the maker of iPads to change the underlying implementation how they see fit, without making users notice anything. If iPads started to run a mickrokernel OS underneath, the UI / UX won't change at all. The expensive parts of an iPad are the screen, the battery, the QA, and the brand. The CPU is not particularly expensive, though maybe isn't a $5 part.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    The marketing line for the iPad pro is "like a computer. Unlike any computer"
    - Semiapies 7y ago
      For most of the people it's being marketed to, a computer is not a development system, either.
  - dTal 7y ago
    >Compare it to a music player that does not expose any music creation interface. Okay, and if people were buying 4-figure Bang and Olufsen stereo systems and hooking up a 5-dollar cassette recorder as their music production system, I'd be perturbed by that as well. If it's merely a consumption device, why attempt to develop on it? If it's a serious tool, why is the $5 component needed? Most of all - why don't you have a device that actually does what you want it to, properly, and why doesn't this bother you?
- baddox 7y ago
  Nothing seems wrong to me. Your much more expensive new luxury car probably has a good deal of computing power without a useful Unix development environment. Same goes with your expensive new television.

nine_k 7y ago

What I would rather carry in my pocket: * A bit of secure, encrypted storage for my ssh keys, important papers, and similar stuff. * A u2f token. * A password manager running in a secure, controlled environment which exposes itself e.g. as a web app. * A VPN node that exposes itself as a modem / network card. An RPi could be all these. I maybe would prefer something like USB Armory [1] for for higher security, though it lacks a wifi interface. [1]: https://inversepath.com/usbarmory.html https://inversepath.com/usbarmory.html

viraptor 7y ago
You can integrate the first two points soon (SSH and u2f). See https://marc.info/?l=openssh-unix-dev&m=157259802529972&w=2 https://marc.info/?l=openssh-unix-dev&m=157259802529972&w=2

incanus77 7y ago

Author here. For me, it's less about a Linux environment. For that, I use VMware, Docker, or another machine, if needed. But the Pi Zero is great precisely because I'm doing more with hardware lately, and so I have 40 GPIO pins available to do hardware testing on.