
Raspberry Pi Founder Shows Off Incoming Touch Panel for Making DIY ‘Pi Pads’ - prostoalex
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/21/pi-pads/
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derekp7
Since the Pi is meant to be for education, what I think would further this
goal is to turn the Pi into a graphing calculator as a replacement for the TI
series that is currently required in many high schools / colleges. So you
would take the basic design, add the case, battery, button pad, cheap screen.
Think of a calculator that has the Pi's SD slot, HDMI, USB, GPIO, etc ports.

When used in class or on tests, it can run a built-in program from its ROM.
For use in full computer mode, you boot it off an SD card. Anti-cheating can
be done via DRM features that are already available on the chip (although
open-source purists wouldn't like this part, but it shouldn't get in the way
in "full computer" mode).

The way the anti-cheat code could work is simply a calculator function which
gives a digital signature hash based on user input. Student enters a serial
number from the test, and writes down the function's output (which is derived
using a private key burned into the chip, and only accessible by the built-in
calculator-mode code).

The reason I think a calculator form factor would work better for the
education market, is that every high school already requires a $100 graphing
calculator, so might as well make it the calculator be of more use.

~~~
Osmium
> every high school already requires a $100 graphing calculator

I can't help but feel this is a historical aberration, and one that is bound
to correct itself eventually. The reason it's so entrenched at the moment is,
I imagine, standardisation--which is why a custom raspberry pi solution would
not be suitable.

As an side, I'm not entirely sure why a graphing calculator is even required
anyway. I never used one once in my entire school curriculum, and don't feel
like I suffered for it. Being able to plot a function by hand is something of
a skill in its own right because it teaches you the analytical tools to be
able to learn how a function behaves, and as long as the teacher knows the
correct solution there's nothing to be gained from every individual student
having their own calculator.

~~~
sputknick
> I never used one once in my entire school curriculum, and don't feel like I
> suffered for it.

I'm glad someone else said this, because I wasn't going to admit to it. I got
through 4 years of high school math and science, and four years as a CS
major/math minor and I don't remember ever using anything other than the
permutation/combination functions and some basic graphing. The TI-83 was much
more important in getting me into programming than doing real math.

~~~
mhurron
Creating programs to do the same steps over and over once I understood it was
the biggest benefit I got out of my graphing calculator. However, having a
larger screen with a scroll history was a close second, so even just using it
as a standard scientific calculator with a large screen made it very useful to
me.

My high school didn't require a graphing calculator though, and most of the
class didn't have one as I recall.

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georgemcbay
In retrospect, we really should have made a cat-shaped chumby (see: linked
video @ ~13:19)

~~~
codezero
Aw. Chumby brings back memories. I still have my original Chumby in a box
somewhere and it always makes me feel nostalgic.

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osandov
Cool! Back in 2012, I got impatient and put together my own resistive touch
screen for the Raspberry Pi:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwEwHFglq8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwEwHFglq8M).
I just got a small LCD, a resistive touch panel, soldered up a
microcontroller, and wrote a simple kernel module
([https://github.com/osandov/raspi/tree/master/tsc2007](https://github.com/osandov/raspi/tree/master/tsc2007))
to get it all working. Unfortunately, I never really got around to documenting
how I did it, and it looks like this makes it obsolete, but it's all for the
best :)

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teekert
This is great news! I have one of my RPis attached to a MDF plate together
with a breadboard. I have bought several temperature sensors, relais and 434
MHz transmitters/receivers to play with. For now I'm doing all "development"
with an old eee laptop but it would be nice to do it directly on the Pi with a
BT keyboard. At some point I want this up on the wall where the thermostat is
and have it control music, the heating and check buienradar.nl for example. So
a stylish case would be nice :)

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chj
From the picture it seems to be a 7 inch, 1024x600 touch panel, same as in the
Kindle Fire original.

~~~
rootbear
I believe, based on descriptions of the prototype, that it will be 800 x 480.
That seems rather small, but they want to hit a price point (< $70),
consistent with their primary mission of providing an affordable educational
system.

~~~
joezydeco
7" WVGA TFT panels are flooding out of Asia for dirt cheap now, that would be
my guess as well.

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Animats
The Raspberry Pi is a developer board which brings out the pins of an ARM chip
designed for use in low-end tablets. If you want a tablet using the same chip,
you can easily buy one. The price point on Alibaba is about $30-$50. Even on
Amazon you can get one for $50.

~~~
laumars
That's fine, _IF_ those things can be rooted and have released any proprietary
drivers so you can load your preferred ARM-compatible Linux distro.

If, however, you want to run Plan 9, RISC OS, FreeBSD, Haiku, or anything else
that isn't Linux, then you'd probably still come unstuck regardless of
Alibaba's openness.

~~~
kefka
in terms of buying products from alibaba, most equipment on their uses the MTK
tool chain. MTK offers full drivers to run most of their hardware, and can run
under a multitude of Android OS is. I also have a friend who took the MTK tool
chain and installed debian on his HaiPai Noble N7889 phone. It didn't run very
well at all, but it did run.

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natewevans
This is a great step forward for continued approaches to lean hardware
development.

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beagle3
Anyone know how these are going to be priced?

AdaFruit have been selling a $35 PiTFT 3" touch screen - which is useful as a
small control screen but not for making piPads. (well, maybe piPad nano...)

~~~
rootbear
I believe the target price is "under $70".

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paulornothing
I'm curious what the actual price for this will be. I'm more interested in
just mounting this somewhere so I don't need a keyboard or mouse for the pi.

