
Game developer David Braben creates a USB stick PC for $25 - bluesmoon
http://www.geek.com/articles/games/game-developer-david-braben-creates-a-usb-stick-pc-for-25-2011055/
======
FrojoS
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."

~~~
woadwarrior01
EEE PC was from Asus, not Acer.

~~~
FrojoS
Thanks! The two names always confuse me. Owning two Acer EEE PC didn't help
;-)

------
jonty
I dropped them an email with some questions:

    
    
        > 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.

[1]: <http://bifferos.bizhat.com/>

~~~
angusgr
_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?

------
angusgr
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.

~~~
cicero
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.

EDIT: I added some explanation of the problem.

~~~
mwarkentin
Could you set up and provide them a Vagrant box that's pre-configured?

------
ColinWright
Earlier submission, much discussion:

<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
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)

<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
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.

[1] <http://s.dealextreme.com/search/wm8505>

[2] <http://www.friendlyarm.net/products/mini2440>

[3] <http://cgi.ebay.com/320583793422>

~~~
brianwhitman
Sure... but realistically, what kind of quantities is he going to pull off?
And is he really going to contract out to a chinese factory? I mean, i'll get
a few :) but if this is for education and nothing else.... I'll check back in
a year for sure.

For now, the Trimslice is pretty exciting (and shipping, and of course in a
very different world)

<http://trimslice.com/web/>

Thanks for the pointer to the Mini2440 -- i haven't seen that one yet.

~~~
angusgr
_what kind of quantities is he going to pull off?_

I don't know, I mean presumably he's thinking OLPC-esque. I could see this
being at least as popular as the WM8505/VT8500 devices just on price (price
having being those devices _only_ selling point), and then the education angle
picking up some more bulk deals with education departments.

 _is he really going to contract out to a chinese factory?_

Does anyone not contract out to a Chinese factory of some kind, these days?

 _For now, the Trimslice is pretty exciting_

That is exciting, I hadn't seen those before! Thanks for the link.

Of course, as you say that is a "different world". The Trimslice is four-
generations of ARM along the line, in x86 spec equivalents it's a Pentium III
compared to a Core 2 Duo.

~~~
steevdave
I have a Trimslice Dev-Kit (I'm a Gentoo developer) and I have one of the 32GB
on order. There are probably other things incorrect in your comment but the
main point I want to address is the "equivalent to a pentium 3"; this is
definitely not the case. Just because it is a dual core running at 1ghz
doesn't mean it's slow. In fact most ARM machines are slower than their
equivalent chips, but not as much as people would think. An example is the
EfikaMX (Cortex A-8 @ 800MHz) runs only ~20% slower than an Atom clocked at
1.6GHz. But at a fraction of the power usage. My apartment is full of ARM
machines and I have a build farm of ~20 that are compiling software (Ubuntu
and Gentoo) 24/7 and my power bill was 40 dollars. They also generate much
less heat, and don't require fans, and most run off integrated SSD drives
(PATA and SATA) so there are no moving parts at all in them. And... They are
cheap. I can get a brand new ARM based netbook for 200 dollars that gives me ~
the equivalent processing of an Atom netbook of the same price... Except the
Atom netbook is a refurb.

Cheaper, lower power consumption, and almost the same processing power. It
works for me, sure I can't use proprietary software, or something like dropbox
that requires a proprietary daemon, but I don't really miss it much. At first
you notice but as you use it more, you come to realize that you really didn't
need it.

Sorry if this was a huge wall of text, I am responding via my phone.

~~~
steevdave
It won't let me respond to your comment, and you're right, I shouldn't have
made that comment. I do apologize, and apparently misread the comment.
Hopefully people can look past both things and realize that there is more to
ARM than just "omg the processor isn't as fast as a quad core i7"; That said,
I'm also looking forward to this board and hope it makes it stateside. I love
ARM (if you couldn't tell), and the main thing holding it back is the lack of
people who are familiar with it. Since it's been most typically an embedded
processor, most people don't write software for it unless it is specialized.

And pretty much any game that runs on an iPhone could run on an ARM desktop.
Off the top of my head, popular "mainstream" games that I can think of would
be Street Fighter 4, Mirror's Edge, I'm sure there are more, I just happen to
have those 2 installed on my iPhone. ARM machines can also run Android, as
long as you are willing to put in the kernel work, and most companies do these
days.

The EfikaMX has a "desktop" version as well as a netbook version. They are
both almost identical, although the netbook version doesn't have any video
out. It also runs off of a 3 cell battery, and gets somewhere in the range of
6-8 hours of solid usage, not just sitting there almost suspended.
They(i.MX515) pack the AMD(ATI)z430 3D unit, which runs at 133MHz (the i.MX535
version will run at 200MHz); This is also known as a Qualcomm Adreno, although
the Adreno uses a z180 instead of z160 for the 2D unit, not sure if it uses
something other than the z430 for 3D. The difference between the graphics card
in the Xbox360, and these is that the 360's runs at (i believe) 600MHz.

I'm not sure what graphics card will come with the ARM11, but if it does 1080p
and OpenGL ES 2.0, then I'd guess that it's a Mali. I could definitely be
wrong, but really, at 25 dollars, even if you only played with it every once
in a while, it's probably worth it. And if they do a buy one give one like
OLPC did, I'd definitely order a minimum of 4. I hope they are able to, and
I'll be watching closely.

~~~
nitrogen
_The difference between the graphics card in the Xbox360, and these is that
the 360's runs at (i believe) 600MHz._

There is much more to a GPU than simply clock speed. Since modern GPUs do
everything with programmable shader units, the number of units acting in
parallel makes a big difference, as well as the efficiency of the units
(cycles per instruction). Many mobile GPUs' shader units can be counted on one
hand[1], while a modern AMD or nVidia GPU has hundreds (though the different
architectures make a direct comparison of numbers almost meaningless).

[1] I had a hard time finding exact specs last time I looked, but I seem to
remember reading about one popular SoC whose GPU had in the neighborhood of 4
pixel shader units.

------
dangrossman
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.

1: <http://www.tonidoplug.com/>

~~~
reginaldo
You might be interested to know that you can do the same with a $25 DockStar.
The process is kind of clumsy, bit it works.

<http://hunterdavis.com/archives/843>

~~~
erik
I looked into this recently, and wasn't able to find a DockStar for sale
locally. It seems that the reason you could buy them for so cheap was that
they were being discontinued. Which is too bad, as it sounds like a very nice
piece of hardware.

------
jeza
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.

~~~
regularfry
Make it tiny, and you can pot the whole thing in epoxy and make it essentially
indestructible. That might be important in a school environment.

~~~
cakeface
But then you cannot crack it open and actually see the components that make
the thing run. If this is about educating kids on computers I think that it is
really useful to be able to see where each part of the system lives and what
it looks like.

~~~
regularfry
I kind of doubt the utility of that with a heavily compacted system like this.
I can't find any info on the chipset, but it wouldn't surprise me if the ARM
SOC included the graphics driver as well, for instance.

------
tluyben2
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.

------
wccrawford
The other news I read said they claimed they could create a version of it for
$25, not that the existing one costs that. That's quite a bit different.

~~~
angusgr
Their own page at <http://raspberrypi.org> says simply "The expected price is
$25 for a fully-configured system."

------
pdenya
Article mentions it's ready to browse the web by default, how is it connecting
to the internet though? No mention of ethernet or wifi.

~~~
kqr2
It has a USB2.0 port so presumably you can hook up a hub with additional
peripherals such as a wifi adapter.

The preliminary specs are listed on the website:

<http://www.raspberrypi.org/>

~~~
AndrewJG
If you look in the picture you can see that is exactly what he is doing. I
wonder what that other box is though.

------
jamesgeck0
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.

1\. <http://love2d.org/>

2\. <http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker>

~~~
cicero
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.

1\. <http://www.greenfoot.org/> 2\. <http://bluej.org/> 3\.
<http://processing.org/> 4\. <http://www.squeak.org/>

------
hasenj
What about the cost of TVs and keyboards?

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

      > 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.
    

So, no different from math, then.

~~~
hasenj
Programming is harder to break into a set of rules and formulas that you can
just apply to an artificially constructed problem.

You just can't "fake" it. You either get it, or you don't.

Most high school teachers won't "get" it.

> Ditto mathematician. Most high school teachers I know of who are teaching
> math have no idea what math is really a

I know, but they can fake it, because the curriculum is designed as a set of
rules that must be learned.

> So, no different from math, then.

The difference is that programming cannot be taught as a set of rules that
must be learned and then applied without much understanding.

~~~
ColinWright
What you're saying is there is no real math in the curriculum, and you're
right. There'll never be any real programming in the curriculum either.

------
wlll
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2517136>

~~~
mrshoe
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2517822>

;)

------
brianjolney
sounds like an excellent device for wall-mounted dashboard monitors

------
fosk
A neat device. I can use this in my spare time instead of much bigger Arduino
boards

------
inoop
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.

------
7952
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.

------
diya
25$ cost is definitely possible. The cost of many smart routers lie within 25$
range. This unit is not any different

------
anti_veeranna
Very nice, but when do we finally get a new version of Elite/Frontier type of
game? :)

------
tropin
What makes this dupe from yesterday
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2517136>) much more interesting today?
It features even the same pictures.

------
haspoken
Reminds me of the rossum's RBox: A diy 32 bit game sonsole for the price of a
latte.

<http://rossum.posterous.com/20131601>

------
riobard
I want to buy one, hook it to a big monitor, and work on it whole day via SSH.
Perfect! :D

~~~
AndrewJG
This is exactly what I do with my Cr-48. I hope these hit stateside, I would
be all for an SSH machine for $25!

------
kleiba
So is this really a "PC" as the headline claims as in IBM-compatible?

The computer will apparently be able to have network access, presumably
wireless, and enough storage to run standard desktop software.

Oh, well, as long as it runs Emacs... ;-)

------
CCPancakes
I don't see how this PC works. How do I plug it to a monitor, keyboard, mouse,
and outlet?

Even if the PC only costs $25, will schools have to buy extra equipment to
allow use of the above accessories?

~~~
burgerbrain
Did you look at the images? It has use and hdmi.

~~~
CCPancakes
I did look at the images, and I already figured out that this $25 computer has
USB and HDMI outputs.

I don't see how most keyboards, mouses, and monitors will be able to connect
to it.

This device has one USB output. A mouse and keyboard will need one USB output
each, so to use this $25 computer you need to buy an additional device that
allows the connectivity of multiple accessories. Not all keyboards and mouses
connect via USB, so some users will have to buy new keyboards and mouses just
to use this "cheap" computer.

And not all monitors will be able to connect via HTMI. Users with another kind
of monitor will need to buy some additional technology that allows these other
monitors to plug into the $25 computer.

So how do I connect my equipment into this computer? It's not obvious just by
looking at the picture.

~~~
burgerbrain
Unpowered USB hubs cost nickels these days, and I don't think I've seen a new
mouse or keyboard that isn't USB for nearly a decade (PS/2 -> USB converters
are similarly dirt cheap anyway...)

Additionally, any new monitor for the past few years ships with HDMI.

I've got to say though, if you succeed in making a computer so cheap that
people complain "but I have to buy a mouse made in the current or previous
decade???", then you've done a damned good job.

~~~
duskwuff
> Additionally, any new monitor for the past few years ships with HDMI.

Also, all monitors besides the cheapest / oldest models will have DVI input,
which you can easily get from an HDMI port. The only displays you can't easily
drive from this device are those which only take VGA input.

------
phlux
I would like to see some other concepts taught using these devices.
Specifically clustering, meshing, cloud etc.

You get a bunch of these devices and arrange them into a cluster/cloud of
nano-nodes and teach kids (teens) how to setup clusters of webservers,
memcache, micro-dbs etc.

You effectively use the devices to teach large technical infrastructure with
tiny physical representations.

Here is how I would do it:

I would whiteboard out a network diagram showing the different layers of tech
infrastructure in contemporary cloud designs.

Draw the nodes and connections.

Define the role of nodes in each layer:

Firewall, load balancer, web server, memcache, app server, db server

Then do a micro-config for each of these and run them on the little buggers.

Get velcro tape and tape them onto the diagram in the appropriate location.

Physically wire them all together.

Have it run a website that the students build.

Run analytics...

This would be the ultimate in showing them how The Tubes actually provide them
with the data they view every day.

By drawing this, then physically attaching the units to the diagram and
running it there will be ZERO confusion and I guarantee that every student
will grok the internet more fully.

The thing does not need to be high performance - but it does need to be fault
tolerant.

Have the students pull devices out while its running and they are watching
monitoring. Have some subjectively F5-ing the little site they made while you
drop a few nodes.

Hell, I am ready to do this... anyone want to help me get some of these
devices/similar devices?

------
VB6_Foreverr
If pretty much every home has a PC, if the schools teaching ICT have computers
then how is this going to make people 'learn computers' better? Would kids be
more turned on by this than by, say, developing apps for android phones?

~~~
lukifer
1\. Cost. This can be deployed in places here and abroad where computers are
still not widespread in the classroom.

2\. Personalization. These are cheap enough that each student could have their
own, for a fraction of either iPad or OLPC.

Of course, the fact that it requires a connection to a not-cheap HDMI display
mitigates both these somewhat.

~~~
DanI-S
HDMI and DVI are interchangeable for this purpose; most computer displays
manufactured in the last 5+ years have DVI ports. With a $10 adapter they can
use the screen from their parents' crusty old Dell.

