[vox] Upcoming Meeting! September's "Hack LUGOD and Trivia Quiz!"

[Timothy D Thatcher]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 4:43 PM Theodore Sternberg <strnbrg59 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 3:46 PM Brian E. Lavender <brian at brie.com> wrote:
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>> Raspberry Pi is
>> interesting, but mine collects dust now. If you buy a Pi, you have to
>> buy a power supply, an SD card, a keyboard, an HDMI cable, a powered USB
>> hub. You can get a Lenovo laptop that runs linux for 150 bucks. Or, the
>> Chromebook. I have yet to try the Chromebook for Linux laptop.
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> You forgot to mention, $10 for a lucite case.  RPi is indeed silly as an alternative to a general-purpose PC, and I've always been puzzled that the inventor of the RPi has marketed it that way.  But it's great as a specialized appliance, which is what I've done with it: digital piano controller, controller for non-wifi printer, controller for dumb TV, etc.  I would fight hard to win one of the RPis Tim's giving away, if I weren't barred, as an officer of the club, from competing for them.

You can get a pretty complete basic starter kit for a Pi 3 for
anywhere from $50-$90, and as low as $35 for a Pi 0+W. Most kits come
with at least an SD card, power supply, and case, and for the Pi0/0+W
usually with the miniHDMI to HDMI adapter they need. You don't really
need a USB hub for a full-sized Pi to be functional, especially since
they started packing 4 USB ports instead of 2. The Pi 0 & Pi 0+W do
both need one, though.

But all in all I think that's a pretty reasonable price range to have
around as a mini test environment, to run a small local server, or to
set up for a kid with some educational software and free games to play
around with . :) You're right that it's not really a great general-use
PC for an adult, but as a secondary/tertiary machine to experiment
with, it's hard to beat the cost and flexibility.

I may have another spare Pi 0 (without wifi) if you're interested,
Ted, but you'll be on your own for everything except the bare board!
I'll see what I've got and bring it to the meeting with the other
loot.