Oh boy, this reminds me so much of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Almost every geek cries out "I want this thing now and play around with it." But the inventor is like "No, no, its all for the kids. You can't have it."
The OLPC Hardware could have been a huge commercial success if it had been gone into production soon after the orignal presentation. But no, it needed Acer and their EEE-PC to satisfy that demand.
Why develop a "universal purpose something" specifically for children? You're not a child anymore so its way easier to build something YOU want than imagine what exactly a child wants or needs. In fact, I'm sure this guy wants the USB-PC more than anyone else on the planet. Also, if you mass produce you bring down prices anyway.
But most important, everyone knows what children want in general: They want to be just like their adult idols!
Don't tell kids: "This is for you. I wish I had it when I was a kid. Now, have fun, while daddy works on his Mac."
> 1) How long do you think it will be before the boards become available?
I'd say three or four months. As you can see from the screenshots, we
have usable Linux, but we're waiting to get final versions of the the
chip from our supplier.
> 2) Are there any plans for a version with onboard ethernet?
I don't think we're likely to do onboard Ethernet; we will have an
onboard 3-port USB hub so people can add an external adapter.
> 3) Are there any plans for a version with onboard wifi?
Yes. The final version (though maybe not the first distributables)
will have onboard WiFi (probably 802.11n) in the price point.
> 4) What are the power requirements, both under load and at rest?
At rest I'd say 50mW (we could trim this if it was really important,
but it gets a bit fiddly below this point), under serious load
(original XBox class graphics or 1080p30 H.264), 700mW.
I'm looking at this as a replacement for the Bifferboards [1] I often use in projects, they're similarly priced (£35), but significantly lower specification.
At rest I'd say 50mW (we could trim this if it was really important,
but it gets a bit fiddly below this point), under serious load
(original XBox class graphics or 1080p30 H.264), 700mW.
I wonder if this means you actually can power it from HDMI's 5V pin (which is limited to 50mA ie 250mW) for some uses?
After my initial excitement of "wow, cool" and "wow, tiny" and "wow, cheap" wore off, I'm also becoming skeptical about what niche this fills for educators.
Why? Because an old PC with equivalent specs is essentially free (anything from ~2000 onwards.) Thousands of them, desktop and laptop, will be being recycled or landfilled every day.
Linux on x86 hardware is standard enough that you can effectively call it a standard platform for developers, already, same as this.
The remaining key advantage (I guess) is size. And maybe the fact that it's easier to get kids excited about playing with a tiny brand new board than with a 10 year old computer.
It may cost more than $25 per computer to collect computers being recycled, evaluate them for suitability, clean them up, and install a fresh copy of Ubuntu on them.
Also, the size difference could be significant, as well as allow novel ways of using it. For instance, if the goal is to get this machine into areas outside cities were computers are more common, shipping costs could be significant if recycled desktops/laptops are used instead.
I can imagine that you can conduct a class where kids take these computers home, along with a school-supplied keyboard, for use with the TV set they have at home, to work on computer (programming) assignments. This would allow the school to avoid the cost of acquiring monitors.
As an educator, I would LOVE to have access to these. One of the hardest things I have found is to provide a development environment for the kids at home that is the same as they have at school. You can tell them to install Ubuntu and Greenfoot on their machine at home, but there is no way to help them get things set up, or fix configuration problems unless you have access to their machine.
With this, they use the exact same machine at home and at school, and it is easy for them to carry back and forth. The only downside is that they would also be easy to lose, so there would need to be a big lanyard attached so they can wear them around their necks.
With respect to size, you could easily get a suitcase full of these into any developing country, while a suitcase full of "pentium-class machine" contains only 1. You can also own and carry these things without making yourself a target.
On the power front, the power requirements are minimal, allowing them to take advantage of the solar infrastructure in places that rely on car battery power (central america is covered in solar). Also to run on 12V SLAs which are a common feature in places with unreliable power.
You might be surprised to learn that your city may have a recycling contract with the landfill. Those thousands of landfilled PCs are effectively unavailable to you or anyone else, no matter how feel-good the project.
I think this is a Good Thing and I hope it becomes available to everyone.
I'd say that is definitely true, especially in America and the like.
In the developing world though, I imagine there are some huge advantages to the power consumption of this. These may make it feasible to run a computer lab off of solar panels.
There are already computers that draw low enough currents to do this now but they are quite expensive. ($3-500 as I recall)
I don't think there is any possibility that you could provide a large number of students recycled computers with similar hardware capabilities for essentially free.
Well, I think the immediate advantage is that you can make sure that every PC has the same hardware configuration, which makes 'fleet' management much easier. Also, now the school pays for screens and keyboards that stay, but when they decide to upgrade the computers in three years time, it only costs $25 per student to do so.
I honestly don't see how this is gong to encourage people, especially kids, to further wonder about how computers work, and what actually happens. It's smaller, and if anything even less accessible than a desktop machine.
I learned about computers and computing by building my own from a Z80, 8KB RAM, 8KB ROM, random logic, etching my own circuit board and soldering the components and sockets in place.
Very cool, but i'm not sure how he can get it to an actual cost of $25 unless it's heavily supported by donations, grants, "give one get one" etc. For small runs (<10K?) the cost of production has to be a large multiplier on that.
Other options in this space (far more expensive! but similar ARM on a board style)
The cost of $25 looks a bit more believable compared to similarly specced devices like the VT8500/WM8505 series <$100 netbooks/tablets[1], or the FriendlyARM Mini2440 which sells on ebay for $98 as a bells-and-whistles development board.
The board he's built would have lower BoM cost than either of those. And if he's manufacturing them in similar quantities then maybe he can get the cost down.
If he's looking at production runs of similar numbers to wireless routers then I think $25 is completely believable, as cheap end wireless routers approach that cost new now.
Gumstix is way overpriced. If this really does come out for $25, it will be really disrupt the hobbyist embedded market. The closest similar systems are Bifferboards (http://bifferos.bizhat.com/ 35 pounds for 150mhz 486) or the Teensy++ ($24 for an AVR).
If a tiny ARM-based Linux computer is appealing, there are a number you can buy now based on the Marvell Plug design. I use a TonidoPlug[1] with Ubuntu for an ultra-cheap backup and media server. Only uses ~5-10 watts so you can have it on 24/7 at virtually no electricity cost.
This is interesting because it supports connecting a monitor and keyboard, and is designed to be used as a desktop/gaming machine, rather than as a home server.
If you want to teach kids about hardware, wouldn't it be better to supply them with something slightly larger where they can install the CPU, RAM, etc. Perhaps supplied as a kit. At least that way they can at least identify the different components that make a computer what it is. They might also have a choice between selection different components, say a memory card vs. a small laptop hard drive, network cards, etc. As a learning tool, I think that'd be better value for $25 than a tiny USB stick sized thing. I think the fun of assembling would outweigh the coolness of being tiny.
Sorry, but how does this teach kids how computers work? What you do is educate them about boolean algebra, then explain how different boolean components can be bought in a microchip. After that you explain how large combinations of those make up something which can process 0's and 1's and thus (which they should already know by then) strings of 0's and 1's.
The brighter kids will already start trying to make something 'work' out of that. You continue further about how a CPU works, completely in the language of boolean components. And then they get to design and build one themselves.
That will really teach and show them there is no magic and how it works. Even with the insanely small and complex systems you have now, you can rest assure that in the core they are basically just like the one you made when you were in school.
This kind of practical way of working with hardware (even simulated), gives a lot more pleasure and teaches kids computer hardware design, cpu design, microcodes, assembly and tons more.
I was taught from 'Micro computers' by A.J. Dirksen (ISBN 9789021015934); it (+ the teacher) gave me enough insight to quickly learn Z80 assembler, 68k assembler and add / replace hardware on my '80s computers.
EDIT: I forgot; it would be really stupid to not release this to the masses. Everyone wants one, but only the kids can it; I agree with the rest here; that makes no business sense. Charities are businesses too.
This is neat. Now we need some Linux environments for kids to make cool stuff. LÖVE [1] is a neat Lua-powered game development library, but it's fairly source-code oriented, which may be a barrier for some kids. When I first learned programming, Game Maker [2] was extremely useful. It had a drag-and-drop GUI which was easy enough to mess around with until figuring out how to do things in it's built-in (and extremely forgiving) programming language.
I've used Greenfoot [1], BlueJ [2] and Processing [3] successfully with High School kids, and they all run on Linux. Squeak Smalltalk [4] is another possibility. I've had pretty good luck with Game Maker, but have not tried LÖVE.
I like the idea, but I don't think the place for this device is in schools.
In fact, I hope computer science never gets into high school curriculum, it will only make students hate programming. Just look at math. Programming is even harder; and chances are if you're a programmer you're not really likely to become a high school teacher. Conversely most high school teachers will not know how to program.
> Just look at math.
> Programming is even harder;
Wow. There's someone who has a substantially different idea from mine as to what constitutes math, what constitutes programming, and what constitutes "hard."
> ... chances are if you're a programmer you're
> not really likely to become a high school teacher.
Ditto mathematician. Most high school teachers I know of who are teaching math have no idea what math is really about.
> Conversely most high school teachers will not
> know how to program.
"I hope computer science never gets into high school curriculum, it will only make students hate programming. "
I'm a bit of touch at 41, but are you sure that it isn't already available as an elective for students? Perhaps you meant making it mandatory, which I agree would probably not be very productive.
I took programming in High School, but back then it was all using BASIC. We learned the concepts of variables, memory, loops, and even simple algorithms. And if we finished our homework ahead of the rest of the class, we got to play games. Quite the motivating factor for me at the time.
Computer science is an optional part of the high school curriculum in Israel. Depending on which matriculation exams you take, the classes teach basic .NET, Java, or Assembly.
There's room for improvement, but the classes are widely successful. I have a number of friends who learned to program from high school alone, without a serious effort to learn additional material by themselves.
I had computer science and electrical engineering in my high school, they taught the CS majors c++ and the EE majors do networking (what was then the ccna) and both of us got digital logic. I was an EE who loved both, I'm very very happy I had this available to me. So were most of my friends. It was the first kind of classes where we could be good at it and see a purpose.
But programming is easier to teach, because you have visible results. It's much easier to get kids excited about writing a Tetris clone than calculating a derivative.
This is a $100 mobile phone without the baseband, WiFi, Bluetooth, screen, casing, battery, sensors, buttons, microphone, and speaker. I guess $25 sounds about right.
It would be better to give away cheap feature phones and a pair of headphones. Connectivity and content is more important than the size of the display. Even a system that can only do audio would be an amazing educational tool with the right content. An mp3 of a story or a lesson is content rich, a small file, and very cheap to play.
[+] [-] FrojoS|15 years ago|reply
The OLPC Hardware could have been a huge commercial success if it had been gone into production soon after the orignal presentation. But no, it needed Acer and their EEE-PC to satisfy that demand.
Why develop a "universal purpose something" specifically for children? You're not a child anymore so its way easier to build something YOU want than imagine what exactly a child wants or needs. In fact, I'm sure this guy wants the USB-PC more than anyone else on the planet. Also, if you mass produce you bring down prices anyway.
But most important, everyone knows what children want in general: They want to be just like their adult idols! Don't tell kids: "This is for you. I wish I had it when I was a kid. Now, have fun, while daddy works on his Mac."
[+] [-] woadwarrior01|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonty|15 years ago|reply
[1]: http://bifferos.bizhat.com/
[+] [-] angusgr|15 years ago|reply
I wonder if this means you actually can power it from HDMI's 5V pin (which is limited to 50mA ie 250mW) for some uses?
[+] [-] angusgr|15 years ago|reply
Why? Because an old PC with equivalent specs is essentially free (anything from ~2000 onwards.) Thousands of them, desktop and laptop, will be being recycled or landfilled every day.
Linux on x86 hardware is standard enough that you can effectively call it a standard platform for developers, already, same as this.
The remaining key advantage (I guess) is size. And maybe the fact that it's easier to get kids excited about playing with a tiny brand new board than with a 10 year old computer.
[+] [-] hrabago|15 years ago|reply
Also, the size difference could be significant, as well as allow novel ways of using it. For instance, if the goal is to get this machine into areas outside cities were computers are more common, shipping costs could be significant if recycled desktops/laptops are used instead.
I can imagine that you can conduct a class where kids take these computers home, along with a school-supplied keyboard, for use with the TV set they have at home, to work on computer (programming) assignments. This would allow the school to avoid the cost of acquiring monitors.
[+] [-] cicero|15 years ago|reply
With this, they use the exact same machine at home and at school, and it is easy for them to carry back and forth. The only downside is that they would also be easy to lose, so there would need to be a big lanyard attached so they can wear them around their necks.
EDIT: I added some explanation of the problem.
[+] [-] daniel_reetz|15 years ago|reply
On the power front, the power requirements are minimal, allowing them to take advantage of the solar infrastructure in places that rely on car battery power (central america is covered in solar). Also to run on 12V SLAs which are a common feature in places with unreliable power.
You might be surprised to learn that your city may have a recycling contract with the landfill. Those thousands of landfilled PCs are effectively unavailable to you or anyone else, no matter how feel-good the project.
I think this is a Good Thing and I hope it becomes available to everyone.
[+] [-] nicpottier|15 years ago|reply
In the developing world though, I imagine there are some huge advantages to the power consumption of this. These may make it feasible to run a computer lab off of solar panels.
There are already computers that draw low enough currents to do this now but they are quite expensive. ($3-500 as I recall)
[+] [-] greendestiny|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] demallien|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pshapiro|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ColinWright|15 years ago|reply
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2517136
I honestly don't see how this is gong to encourage people, especially kids, to further wonder about how computers work, and what actually happens. It's smaller, and if anything even less accessible than a desktop machine.
I learned about computers and computing by building my own from a Z80, 8KB RAM, 8KB ROM, random logic, etching my own circuit board and soldering the components and sockets in place.
Should kids do that these days? Would it help?
[+] [-] brianwhitman|15 years ago|reply
Other options in this space (far more expensive! but similar ARM on a board style)
http://gumstix.com/store/catalog/index.php (although sadly they don't seem to carry the basix/connex, which are the same kind of power class as this)
http://beagleboard.org/
[+] [-] angusgr|15 years ago|reply
The board he's built would have lower BoM cost than either of those. And if he's manufacturing them in similar quantities then maybe he can get the cost down.
If he's looking at production runs of similar numbers to wireless routers then I think $25 is completely believable, as cheap end wireless routers approach that cost new now.
[1] http://s.dealextreme.com/search/wm8505
[2] http://www.friendlyarm.net/products/mini2440
[3] http://cgi.ebay.com/320583793422
[+] [-] sedachv|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangrossman|15 years ago|reply
1: http://www.tonidoplug.com/
[+] [-] wtracy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pornel|15 years ago|reply
Idling MacBook Pro (screen off) uses 8-9W according to Apple (http://images.apple.com/environment/reports/docs/MacBook-Pro...).
If you already have laptop running most of the time, addition of such device probably doesn't save much (if anything).
[+] [-] reginaldo|15 years ago|reply
http://hunterdavis.com/archives/843
[+] [-] tropin|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeza|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] regularfry|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tluyben2|15 years ago|reply
The brighter kids will already start trying to make something 'work' out of that. You continue further about how a CPU works, completely in the language of boolean components. And then they get to design and build one themselves.
That will really teach and show them there is no magic and how it works. Even with the insanely small and complex systems you have now, you can rest assure that in the core they are basically just like the one you made when you were in school. This kind of practical way of working with hardware (even simulated), gives a lot more pleasure and teaches kids computer hardware design, cpu design, microcodes, assembly and tons more.
I was taught from 'Micro computers' by A.J. Dirksen (ISBN 9789021015934); it (+ the teacher) gave me enough insight to quickly learn Z80 assembler, 68k assembler and add / replace hardware on my '80s computers.
EDIT: I forgot; it would be really stupid to not release this to the masses. Everyone wants one, but only the kids can it; I agree with the rest here; that makes no business sense. Charities are businesses too.
[+] [-] wccrawford|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angusgr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdenya|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nl|15 years ago|reply
That's what it looks like if you look at the pic on http://www.raspberrypi.org/
[+] [-] kqr2|15 years ago|reply
The preliminary specs are listed on the website:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/
[+] [-] jamesgeck0|15 years ago|reply
1. http://love2d.org/
2. http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker
[+] [-] cicero|15 years ago|reply
1. http://www.greenfoot.org/ 2. http://bluej.org/ 3. http://processing.org/ 4. http://www.squeak.org/
[+] [-] hasenj|15 years ago|reply
I like the idea, but I don't think the place for this device is in schools.
In fact, I hope computer science never gets into high school curriculum, it will only make students hate programming. Just look at math. Programming is even harder; and chances are if you're a programmer you're not really likely to become a high school teacher. Conversely most high school teachers will not know how to program.
[+] [-] ColinWright|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Starmonkey|15 years ago|reply
I'm a bit of touch at 41, but are you sure that it isn't already available as an elective for students? Perhaps you meant making it mandatory, which I agree would probably not be very productive.
I took programming in High School, but back then it was all using BASIC. We learned the concepts of variables, memory, loops, and even simple algorithms. And if we finished our homework ahead of the rest of the class, we got to play games. Quite the motivating factor for me at the time.
[+] [-] nyellin|15 years ago|reply
There's room for improvement, but the classes are widely successful. I have a number of friends who learned to program from high school alone, without a serious effort to learn additional material by themselves.
[+] [-] wizard_2|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianN|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wlll|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrshoe|15 years ago|reply
;)
[+] [-] brianjolney|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fosk|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inoop|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 7952|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diya|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] anti_veeranna|15 years ago|reply