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I kind of get the impression that a lot of their sales went to the uber-geek crowd that already spends lots of money on gadgetry (such as myself). I'm sure it w

by B-Con 14y ago

I kind of get the impression that a lot of their sales went to the uber-geek crowd that already spends lots of money on gadgetry (such as myself). I'm sure it was still a learning tool for them, but whenever I see phrases like > The Pi has been used as a tool to teach and learn programming I can't help but think that the vast majority of buyers already knew a lot of what they were doing. But... I could be wrong. Regardless, it was a good product and had wild success. I'm glad they made it.

davidroberts 14y ago
It's an incredibly fun plaything for geeky people like me, but also educational. I'm learning Python, and I have mine always running and set up so I can ssh to it anywhere from my cellphone. I fire up emacs through ssh and work on my Python programs when I'm commuting by bus or train. I also have it set up with CLISP and Scheme for when I want to mess around with those. But the funnest thing is that I used samba to mount the music directory on my desktop, so that I can ssh in and play music from my cellphone from anywhere (it's connected to the speakers and TV in my living room). I also use it to play videos from the video library on my desktop.
- shrikant 14y ago
  In addition to the NFS mounts (instead of Samba -- no Windows at home!), I took a slightly different route [1] and set up a DLNA server on it, so I can play my media using the various phones and tablets around the house. It works brilliantly well -- if you have a DLNA-compliant TV, you could use that as well to stream media from what is basically a wireless media centre. [1] http://shr1k.github.com/post/2013/02/16/setting-up-a-raspberry-pi-powered-headless-media-server-and-nas/ http://shr1k.github.com/post/2013/02/16/setting-up-a-raspber...
fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
>I kind of get the impression that a lot of their sales went to the uber-geek crowd What's wrong with that? Why does a teaching tool need to be a near-useless way too expensive hunk of shit that nobody would want because it has no utility outside a narrow range? I've incorporated the Rpi into a course. The only thing inconvenient about its popularity is that they are sometimes out of stock. But, on the other hand, its sales volume probably helps keep the cost low; and the popularity means that there are many fun examples, and lots of free help developing curriculum and tutoring students.
mhandley 14y ago
I started off using them for robotics - they make excellent WiFi-enabled controllers for the robots we use on our university undergrad first-year programming course. Having gained experience with them in that context, I introduced them in my 12-year old son's school. The kids love them - they're small enough and cheap enough we can let the kids take them home (if a few don't come back it doesn't matter). That makes all the differnce - you can't learn programming in a couple of hours a week at school, but if you can start there and take the same computer home, you're far more likely to put in the hours to get good. And, at least as good as the hardware, is the community that's grown up in the last year. Loads of excellent educational material is now freely available, and aimed at school kids. So much easier to get the teachers on-side when you can point them at all this material.

by B-Con 14y ago

davidroberts 14y ago

It's an incredibly fun plaything for geeky people like me, but also educational. I'm learning Python, and I have mine always running and set up so I can ssh to it anywhere from my cellphone. I fire up emacs through ssh and work on my Python programs when I'm commuting by bus or train. I also have it set up with CLISP and Scheme for when I want to mess around with those. But the funnest thing is that I used samba to mount the music directory on my desktop, so that I can ssh in and play music from my cellphone from anywhere (it's connected to the speakers and TV in my living room). I also use it to play videos from the video library on my desktop.

shrikant 14y ago
In addition to the NFS mounts (instead of Samba -- no Windows at home!), I took a slightly different route [1] and set up a DLNA server on it, so I can play my media using the various phones and tablets around the house. It works brilliantly well -- if you have a DLNA-compliant TV, you could use that as well to stream media from what is basically a wireless media centre. [1] http://shr1k.github.com/post/2013/02/16/setting-up-a-raspberry-pi-powered-headless-media-server-and-nas/ http://shr1k.github.com/post/2013/02/16/setting-up-a-raspber...

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago

>I kind of get the impression that a lot of their sales went to the uber-geek crowd What's wrong with that? Why does a teaching tool need to be a near-useless way too expensive hunk of shit that nobody would want because it has no utility outside a narrow range? I've incorporated the Rpi into a course. The only thing inconvenient about its popularity is that they are sometimes out of stock. But, on the other hand, its sales volume probably helps keep the cost low; and the popularity means that there are many fun examples, and lots of free help developing curriculum and tutoring students.

mhandley 14y ago

I started off using them for robotics - they make excellent WiFi-enabled controllers for the robots we use on our university undergrad first-year programming course. Having gained experience with them in that context, I introduced them in my 12-year old son's school. The kids love them - they're small enough and cheap enough we can let the kids take them home (if a few don't come back it doesn't matter). That makes all the differnce - you can't learn programming in a couple of hours a week at school, but if you can start there and take the same computer home, you're far more likely to put in the hours to get good. And, at least as good as the hardware, is the community that's grown up in the last year. Loads of excellent educational material is now freely available, and aimed at school kids. So much easier to get the teachers on-side when you can point them at all this material.