Re: [LUG] Raspberry Pi for the boy's 8th birthday!

[Michael Everitt <michael@xxxxxxxxxx>]

    Breaking list-etiquette for brevity ..
      
      Whilst I would have certainly agreed with your points John about 5
      years ago, the Pi landscape has changed a lot in the past 3 years,
      and with respect to your son, isn't quite as bad as I noted when
      the Pi Model A+ first launched, with all its limitations...
      
      The Pi4B is now quad-core, of a sensible capacity, and the
      peripherals are now on a sensible bus, not the single USB lane
      advertised by the old ARMv6 core.
      A -lot- of effort has gone into upstreaming support for the Pi's
      GPU, and in many circumstances, video acceleration is on-par with
      an old laptop, and in other circumstances, better, depending on
      your choice of 'ancient hardware'.
      Added to this, there are LOTS of projects making use of the Pi in
      a 'PiTop' type form-factor, which brings in all the necessary
      peripherals in a fun package! And no desktop 'brick' PSU in sight
      ..
      
      I have a good variety of 'old'/modest tech, and each has it's own
      use and limitations. True, I have about 7 headless ARM units (only
      one Pi at present...) and I am targetting the new Pi Two-Zero-W
      for a wireless "magic-mirror" project, because it is low-power and
      small (yes, I bought an expensive-at-the-time, TFT touch-panel
      a-la tablets galore) which is the display tech.
      I have a couple of 10" "netbooks" which are ideal for 'working on
      the train' as the modest 15" laptop will not fit on most craft
      running around the country of late.
      
      All that said, my modest AMD APU laptop struggles with YouTube and
      particularly Twitch, but will just about run Steam and modest
      games with its 16G RAM - that said, I do hammer it with hundreds
      of windows open at once (Chromium, Thunderbird plus various chat
      platforms, Discord, etc).
      
      Very much horses for courses then - if it was a student we were
      talking about, I think we've had the discussion that buying the
      best laptop you can afford is always the best option, but there
      are plenty of activities centred around Linux and the Pi platform
      (Amongst others) which you can get involved in around Devon even
      (I attended three...) for young people exploring tech and embedded
      computing (A topic just barely coming to life in the late 90s when
      I went to university). So, whilst if you want to do the basic
      computing tasks that any modern tablet/phone will do best, use
      those, but a Pi will offer much more than that, and nicely
      in-between a 'pro'/gaming laptop with all its bell and whistles
      (and associated costs!).
      
      The Pi was always a 'learning' platform, and the ecosystem around
      that reflects that. So don't discard it out-of-hand, despite its
      .. quirky.. hardware choices!
      
      </my 2dollar>
      Regards,
      
      Michael / veremitz.
      PS. As an anecdote, if you want to get complicated, there are lots
      of more-capable cheap ARM devices out there, but 'support' varies
      wildly. This, in itself, is quite an instructive learning process,
      but certainly not for the feint-hearted...

On 28/06/2022 17:55, John PNZ wrote:

> Hi Roly,
>
> Your firefox and video and iplayer and youtube and Minecraft and such
> all need a monitor, keyboard and mouse. For every one of those, a six
> year old cheap third hand laptop is a better option than any pi.
> Especially Minecraft, the pi version of Minecraft is small small small
> compared to the regular release. Your left Steam off your list of what
> he’ll like to use, too – Kerbal Space Program, Universe Sandbox, Space
> Engineers, No Mans Sky, Shapez, Cells to Singularity are all Steam
> games that 8 year olds enjoy. Steam needs more processing power than
> either the pi or the cheap third hand laptop can deliver.
>
> There is one thing a pi does which a laptop (or desktop) doesn’t do,
> and the pi does it spectacularly well. It gives access to the GPIO
> ports. They let the pi sense the surroundings and change the
> surroundings, you could run one of Elon Musk’s Starships in realtime
> with a pi. You can detect the outside world and flip relays to
> electrocute mice with it. The GPIO options are amazing.
>
> The one other thing the pi does that nothing else will is it runs
> Wolfram’s Mathematica for free, it comes pre-installed on the
> Raspberry OS.
>
> If your 8 year old yearns to read and write from IO ports or to
> manipulate undergraduate math equations then a pi will keep him off
> consuming the Internet for weeks at a time. That is a laudable aim but
> it’s a bit ambitious.
>
> My 11 year old at my shoulder who dictated bits of this says he had a
> laptop at 8 and would not have wanted to swap it for a pi. He does
> have a pi now (and a new laptop) and he did a course online to get
> practice and experience with the GPIO. He’s never used the pi for
> firefox and video and iplayer and youtube and Minecraft but he’s
> picked up a lot of soldering skills and linux and python from running
> his pi as his home webserver.
>
> A headless pi is a good place to learn linux, an arduino or BBC
> Microbit is an alternative good place to learn GPIO coding (but I’d
> not take one in preference, they’re harder to work with). A laptop is
> the right tool to run anything GUI+Internet whatever age you’re aiming
> at.
>
> On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 at 17:02, Roland Tarver via list <list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Hello folks,
> >
> > I hope you are all good. Rarely post here, but hopefully you would not mind pointing me in the right direction please?
> >
> > It's time to get my son into computing. He is 8 years old in August. Given that he has a nerdy dad (me!); I am going to get him a pi - if I can. lol!
> >
> > I've done some digging about the net and noted a huge stock shortage, which I'm guessing is no surprise to those here. However, I have had some success on ebay. There is new a Pi 4B 4GB for under £100.
> >
> > I was about to pull the trigger; but before doing so I thought I would ask here for any advance surrounding any issues of which I may not be aware. Sadly, these days, I do not have time to be as nerdy as I would like - and my knowledge is pretty poor.
> >
> > I do have a little experience however. I have a piNas thing which I set up a good few years ago and its still runnning headlessly in the cupboard. lol.
> >
> > My son will use the pi for:-
> > 1. His homework - largely done through various websites; all of which work fine in firefox on my MS laptop (dont hurt me! hahaha - I just have not got round to installing something sensible on it yet! lol). (He currently uses my laptop for his home work.)
> >
> > 2. Videos.
> >  - bbc i-player (i have read there could some issues getting this working?)
> >  - you tube (should "just work" in a browser?)
> >
> > 3. Programming
> > He uses that scratch thing in school; to me it looks a bit of a faff if im honest. I was just going to start off with some python - or at least a normal programming language - rather than scratch. I learnt on the bbc micro back in the day - worked for me lol. RTB - Gordon? lol
> >
> > 4. Games
> > He is dead keen for a bit of minecraft! lol (he has never played it; just seen it at his mates house). I am aware of the pi edition of minecraft.
> >
> > I have no specific questions, but any general comments or advice would be gratefully recieved. Thank very much.
> >
> > Cheers roly :-)
> >
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> > --
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> >       
>

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