Raspberry Pi - The Bear and Badger

acemuzzy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQRjWxfz-PQ&feature=related
Ahh, the things I get emailed at work.

Blue Swirl

Nowt wrong with Perl.

Python is the tits. C is pretty cool, too. Just avoid Javascript like a healthy dose of the clap.

dynamiteReady

Blue Swirl wrote:

...Just avoid Javascript like a healthy dose of the clap.

Rofl!...

Why?

Edit - The way I see it, is that every language has a use until it's community dries up... At one time, Perl was the language of choice for scripting on Unix, and also the Apache webserver when that first came out. So communal support (andÂ documentation, libraries, support and extensions) was assured. That's not the case now (there are plenty of linux shell scripting language options now, and PHP is all but a standard on Apache). A similar thing might be said for C++... Java's been eating into it's target community (high performance, cross platform enterprise users/teams) for years now. And Java happens to be easier to use (no platform specific rewrite, though you take a performance hit, right?).

WorKid

Nice robot. But come on, what sort of nerd doesn't have USB cables of all possible lengths. 5m is silly.

beano

I think the same point was made in the commentary if I'm not mistaken.

beano

So this week we've had the first year undergrads in and I've been demo'ing the PiBot- just to get them interested and hope they opt to order one for themselves and get into some programming / problem solving in their own time.

So we showed them it working with manual imputs and now we've got an ultrasonic sensor from the head and we demonstrated the code that allows it to roam based on sensor input. Finally we got them to consider the code it would need to drive in a square. By jove they got it right, forwards, rotate 90, loop.Â

Went down pretty well too.

isanbard

Reminds me of a BBC Micro and that pointing arrow thing I had in one of the classrooms when I was a nipper. Hehe.. now the arrow is a whole blinking robot..can't you stick a laser on it for Mars lander funtimes too. Would need a small atomic power station then too, get a smoke detector onboard an' all.Â

Will have to chase up my mate and see if he has his Post Docs doing anything with them or wether he went back to just being locked in his lab.

beano

Hah! I believe the next steps are to connect a camera and get some computer vision going as well as a laser. But not likeÂ Curiosity's!

Aye be interested in what your man is doing. We did also have a presentation so showed them what others had been doing such as the super computer/cluster.

image002.jpg-1adf63916c66efb2.jpeg

Blue Swirl

dynamiteReady wrote:

Blue Swirl wrote:

...Just avoid Javascript like a healthy dose of the clap.

Rofl!... Why? Edit [...]

It's just got some bizarre conventions, and it's really easy to get things wrong simply because you forgot to sacrifice a goat on the third Thursday of the month.

Don't confuse, JavaScript and Java, AFAIK they're not related in anyway, bar the name.

Scotswahey

So it seems like the latest build of Raspian boosts the performance of the Pi by 50%. It cranks the Pi up to 1ghz processing power whenever it needs to work that hard but then cuts back when the processor reaches 87 degrees. I'm going to reflash my SD card and see if it makes any change. They need to hurry up with the hardware acceleration.

monkey

They need to hurry up with the delivery. I'm still waiting.

Scotswahey

[img][/img]Anyone know if you can put films on the xbmc sd card or can they only be stored on a usb?

beano

Both mate - A bit moreÂ http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Media_sourcesÂ So just add the locale on the SDcard in.

dynamiteReady

Blue Swirl wrote:

...Just avoid Javascript like a healthy dose of the clap.

Rofl!... Why? Edit [...]

It's just got some bizarre conventions, and it's really easy to get things wrong simply because you forgot to sacrifice a goat on the third Thursday of the month. Don't confuse, JavaScript and Java, AFAIK they're not related in anyway, bar the name.

I like JavaScript alot... Duck typing can be a nasty thing, but the language has many decent features... Lambda calculus for one, which even Python doesn't quite do properly. Variable scoping also feels very well thought out, and at an advanced level, you find that the care that you have to take to address unexpected cases, is certainly comparable to the care that you have to take in the pre-production work necessary for programming in a strongly typed language...

That said, I'd learnt basic coding with duck type languages, so I'm biased.

But yeah... I'm real keen on learning Python, C (partly why I want to get a PI, as it goes... A buffer overflow means much less on a Â£30 system), and am also quite interested in the ideas behind Clojure, Scala and Ruby (in that order), but that's mainly curiosity... The first two though, I'm very keen on.

beano wrote:

Hah! I believe the next steps are to connect a camera and get some computer vision going as well as a laser. But not likeÂ Curiosity's! Aye be interested in what your man is doing. We did also have a presentation so showed them what others had been doing such as the super computer/cluster.Â

OMG! : D

11 week waiting list though, innit?Â : P

beano

Yeah think some people are getting told 13. I'd deffo put an order in now if you want one for around xmas / new years.

Blue Swirl

dynamiteReady wrote:

But yeah... I'm real keen on learning Python...

Python is immense. Most fun language I've played with. I thought that "white space being important" would annoy me, but it makes sense. It's easily the most human-readable language out there.

In other news, what's a "duck language"?

monkey

Duck typing - if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, its a duck.

Whether your program works or not depends on what methods your are calling on what entities, not necessarily the class of those entities. The compiler won't complain if you call a method on a class that doesn't have it. It will just crash at runtime.

dynamiteReady

Blue Swirl wrote:

In other news, what's a "duck language"?

One that has trouble 'floating'...

...

I'll get my coat... : P

edit - Seriously though, what Monkey said, but simply put, it's the difference between scientific precision, and artisticÂ inference. There are great benefits to both approaches. You wouldn't want to write a 3D engine in a duck type language, for example, but you might want to script NPC behaviour in one...

Blue Swirl

Ah, I see. I like it.

Mod74

isanbard wrote:

Reminds me of a BBC Micro and that pointing arrow thing I had in one of the classrooms when I was a nipper.

They still use a floor path following robot, it's called The Mouse or something like that. The missus was using them the other year, looks like something straight out of 1985.

beano

That sounds fucking amaze.

The demo went down so well the students actually applied logic that they 'learned' (about loops) in another session later the same day. So I am impressed with the work we did.

The uni have asked to film the demonstration we did. Naturally I went to David and told him, hoping he'd do it as it is his PiBot and I was only filling in with someone else. Somehow I am still doing it. Although it's one of many personal goals to raise awareness of the school and doing this is exactly that, even though it's a bit hard to quantify my participation past youtube views. I hate being on camera.

monkey

My Pi has now been despatched apparently. I placed the order on the 29th June.

Suppose I'd better order an SD card and some cables. God knows what I'm going to do with it now though. Since I ordered it I've bought an Apple tv for media streaming, set up an old laptop as a file server at home, and I've just ordered a PSP1000 off Amazon which will be my emulation machine.Â

I'm thinking robots.

Birdorf

psp1000 amazon

Birdorf

Hmm, I appear to be still partly asleep.

Blue Swirl

monkey wrote:

I'm thinking robots.

If you build anything, we demand pictures.

Birdorf

You can always go the complete knobhead route like wot I did and flog it on ebay.

Mod74

So what's the crack with this then?

Order one from RS, stick an SD card from Amazon in and use a micro USB phone charger for power?

Mod74

Answer my question you beardy open source wankers.

MattyJ

Haha, yeah it seems so. My bro got one recently, using it as a media hub.

monkey

Yeah you're right.

Plus stuff you're likely to have already - keyboard, mouse and HDMI lead.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories