Kenilworth Show

The Midlands User Group show is on Saturday 12th July 2014.

If anyone is driving from or past Cambridge to the show, please let us know. Our prospective ROOL representative is stuck for transport…

I think he was looking at trains too¹. The target train station mentioned was Coventry – that means a change at Nuneaton.
Coventry is local, Nuneaton is an extra 10 miles but not a major issue.
(adly Kenilworth station isn’t rebuilt yet.)

¹ MUG correspondence.

Or Coleshill Parkway without a change was the other alternative.

However if someone can assist by offering a more local pick up point then it helps.

Coleshill Parkway

Ah, next along the line from Nuneaton.

Further away from my viewpoint.

TBH. I hadn’t realised Coleshill had an active station Hmmm. Hams Hall. Handy for bird watching

An interesting day at the show.

CJE Micros were demonstrating their progress with a dis-assembled portable computer containing a Raspberry Pi Compute moduule, connected via a forest of wires to the display (using an HDMI to LVDS convertor) and via another forest of wires to a USB keyboard. Two chips – one converting a matrix of key switches into a USB signal and another converting a USB signal to a key code and mapping that to the key that was wanted. Battery management was still to be done. Cost would be less than an A4 portable but considerably more than an off-the-shelf portable PC (a figure of £800 was mentioned). At this stage, therefore, a proof of concept.

ROOL had the usual items for sale, including the Pico SD card (a stripped-down RISC OS image for the Pi) for £6. RISC OS on the Pi Compute board cannot yet access the EMMC as a storage device and so (at present) has to use a USB-connected device as the storage and boot drive. We discussed ways around this (including the Linux-like approach of loading a RAM disc image at the same time as the ROM and booting from it) but we’ll probably have to wait for Ben to get SDFS working with the EMMC device. RISC OS can now boot from a read-only medium (it creates the necessary Scrap etc. in a RAM disc) and so the boot stuff can now go into ResourceFS. You can also register stuff to add to ResourceFS but … not before booting. So booting from ResourceFS has to be a ROM-build time option only. ROMs are now compressed so loading a RAMFS image (e.g. just above the ROM and ’noticing ’ it on start up) is not entirey straightforward either.

R-Comp had (most of) their usual range and were, as usual, an extremely useful and helpful source of advice and equipment.

Serious Statistical Software were demonstrating their range but as I asked a detailed question, my brain gradually numbed, so I can’t recall what was said!

Soft Rock Software were showing a Raspberry Pi (model B) case which had been manufactured on a 3D printer. It looked just great, based upon a “certain Acorn computer computer model” in shape. This had had its public debut at the Bristol RISC OS User’s Group, the previous Wednesday.

Orpheus Internet were there explaining their internet services for RISC OS and the Charity Stall had the usual bargains. Refreshements were available and both R-Comp and CJE gave brief presentations and answered questions.

All in all, quite a successful day. No doubt pictures will be posted soon.

R-Comp had (most of) their usual range and were, as usual, an extremely useful and helpful source of advice and equipment.

Also on advance sale was “DeleGate” a recycle bin and file protection utility. Developed from their existing item “BootGuard” apparently built into their ArmMiniX support this version is slated to capture file/application deletes on local and remote (network) drives and include a simple gui based restore to the original location.
Since it’s not yet complete purchasers get a discount and the right to update to the completed version without extra cost. Later purchasers will pay more. (Loyalty bonus?)

Soft Rock Software were showing a Raspberry Pi (model B) case which had been manufactured on a 3D printer. It looked just great, based upon a “certain Acorn computer computer model” in shape.

The RiscPiC and RiscPiC-mini (there are two case versions) have the pun-ness you expect from Vince. We did rib him a bit about the lack of locking pins or the ability to do two or three slice models. :)

They should go wonderfully with one of the CJE supplied 5 inch displays, quite where you’d get a matching miniature keyboard I don’t know.

Also on advance sale was “DeleGate”

Yes, I forgot to write that down. No point updating my post now… Many thanks for spotting the omissions.

The other thing I forgot to mention was that the latest Pi firmware can now take a parameter to pass to the kernel. Not sure whether the parameter can be arbitrarily large (e.g. a block of memory loaded by the GPU) but, if so, that could be the whole boot structure as a RAMFS image?

The RiscPiC and RiscPiC-mini (there are two case versions) have the pun-ness you expect from Vince. We did rib him a bit about the lack of locking pins or the ability to do two or three slice models. :)

There will be slices – but not locking pins! :)

When I did the first design, I considered slices but decided against it. (A number of reasons, but one was the rear of the case; the many different things people might want to put inside would mean all manner of different hole requirements – I didn’t see any practical solution at the time).

However, at the show, I was shown the X100 expansion board. People with that would need additional height – so my initial thought was to do a ‘faux’ two slice version of the case (i.e. it wouldn’t actually be two separate slices).

And Monday morning I found out about the B+ which changes the layout of the Pi, and where any holes would need to be.

(My B+ arrived today, BTW)

The obvious solution to the different layout would be to design different versions of the cases to match it – but that could mean paying to have a load of one of the designs printed and not managing to sell them. I don’t have the funds to risk like that.

So the better solution is to make one case fit both board layouts – and the way to do that is to design the back with one large opening, so that all of the rear connectors can be accessed, and through which anything connected with the side connectors can be fed. Not as neat and tidy – but very practical.

And by doing that, the same hole can be used for the rear of the slices – so that sticking point is gone.

The current designs come in two parts – the base, and the top, which is effectively the top slice. Once I’ve settled on the final version of that, and put it on sale, I’ll then design a basic slice that can be inserted between the base and top slice to expand it.

The problem with locking pins isn’t technical – it’s one of price. A version that could be held closed with pins would be quite easy to design (indeed, I played with that before getting the first one printed) – but the cost of the pins, despite being quite small, is enough that it could be an annoying tipping point between the case being a bit pricey but nice to have, and just too expensive.

I’d even (because I originally did toy with the idea of slices) partly devised a locking pin design that meant it wouldn’t need longer pins for more slices. However, that was just ‘on paper’ so to speak.

Oooh. Would love a case for my Pi+X100! One that is shaped similarly to the design of an old classic is even better!

I am hoping that an X100 successor comes out for the B+ Pi – the hardware design improvements of the B+ coupled with the extras found on the X100 would be great.

Where are the photos? ;)

There were a few people with cameras, but I haven’t seen any photos from the show posted online yet other than the two of the RiscPiC case I posted on Twitter on the day – here and here

I haven’t even looked at the rest of my photos yet to see how bad they are – but Ron Briscoe let me have copies of his, so there may be some slightly better ones than usual in my show report when I’m able to get that done. ;)

Edit: Forgot – I also filmed the R-Comp/CJE talks. I also need to get those off the video camera and onto YouTube at some point.

Cheers. The RPC case is very cute.

That case is REALLY nice. A two slice RISC PC version for the X100 – definitely!