The Raspberry Pi Bucket List

I promised a list of projects I’d like to pursue. Consider this Part 1 in a list of projects I will be documenting.

The Tiny Compute Engine

Items on this list will involve using the RasPi as, unbelievably, a computer! To that end, we’ll explore how to create:

1. A RasPi Kiosk – for browsing the web with minimal fuss.
2. The Home Server – storage and printing wirelessly from anywhere in the house
3. VPN Proxy – securing your communications
4. THE SWARM! – What happens when tiny computers meet clustered computing? THE SWARM! happens…

Once I’ve collected enough RasPi machines to create THE SWARM! we can explore all kinds of new projects, like exploring Tiny Data with Hadoop, and maybe bake a Parallel Pi.

We’ll also look at some other things like home automation and security, as well as RFID and NFC.

All of these projects will be subject to my ability to acquire necessary hardware. That will likely push some projects into the background for a bit. But if anyone wants to make a donation for the cause, feel free to get in touch.

How to Trash a USB Port

Did you know that you can, in fact, push enough current through USB to completely destroy one of those nano wi-fi dongles? Oh, yes. Mind you, it will also melt the USB port you are plugged into, and you’ll need some skin protection when you try to remove it.

Luckily, I was able to return the defective dongle and replace it with a clearance-priced portable wireless router. I am using that as a wireless bridge, so that I can connect the RasPi via ethernet, and not use up one of the 2 USB ports for wireless.

And no, the RasPi was not the victim of the USB meltdown.

Jon Lebkowsky (and Bruce Sterling) on the state of the world.

Bruce made a related point last year, as he came up with the concept of “stacks”:

“In 2012 it made less and less sense to talk about ‘the Internet,’ ‘the PC business,’ ‘telephones,’ ‘Silicon Valley,’ or ‘the media,’ and much more sense to just study Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. These big five American vertically organized silos are re-making the world in their image. ”

This is pretty well-established theology at this point, but I think we’re still in a transition with attendant confusion. These stacks and related businesses are all about media and marketing, and they require massive cycles of content, not so much as product but as fuel for the engines of commerce. So the pipes are full of information, but it’s less reliable than ever – we’re missing the intermediary vetting within the cycle, everybody’s running just to stay in the race. And where media is amplified by a proliferation of content – channels and sources – there’s more room for media manipulation, political propaganda and commercial marketing messages are embedded, often indistinguishably, in the signal and the noise.

Source: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2014

Threshold

Today

I’m sitting here looking at my brand new Raspberry Pi Model B, all connected up and booted to the install menu. And I have been smacked in the face with a sudden realization: the way we use technology is about to change.

I showed the IT manager at work the Pi in action, and jokingly said, “So, you think we can replace all the desktops with these?” His response was more serious than I expected. He said, “No, but maybe the kiosks…”

We maintain a handful of kiosk computers at our manufacturing plant for our employees to use to check e-mail, confirm their timecards, check paystubs, and do a little light browsing. Currently, we have relegated older PCs that are too old for front-line service, but still too useful to send to the recycler. Replacing them completely with RPs is completely doable. It would reduce the amount of space taken by the kiosks, and could simplify a lot of the administration required.

And it shouldn’t really be surprising that the RP is flexible and powerful enough to do that. It’s hardware is about on par with a smartphone from just a few years ago. It has about as much CPU power – and far more memory and GPU capability – as a desktop system from 10 to 15 years ago.

And when running OSes that have been optimized for it, you can easily stream HD video, or use it as a nifty little web browser. And you can do it for less than $60.

The bottom line is that the RP is a very cheap little computer that can be used pretty much out-of-box as a media center device, Internet browser, or even a small server. People have used these devices for home automation, car computers, web servers, security, and embedded computing. You are limited only by your imagination.

Future

And if we stopped there, that would be enough. But this week at CES, Intel announced Edison, a dual-core SoC with wifi and Bluetooth built-in. And its the size of an SD card.

This is a device screaming for wearable and embedded applications. We’re entering a year that promises a number of smart watches, activity trackers, and other devices that change how we interact with technology. We will, within another 5 years have the personal area network that was first promised by Bluetooth a decade ago. We will each be the epicenter of our own compute clusters, with SoCs in our pockets managing data coming from sensors, sending notifications to our wrist or eyewear, exchanging data with other people we meet, and other devices we encounter. RP will train us to make them, and devices like Edison will be the start of our ability to build them, in a way that isn’t possible except through companies like Samsung, Apple, and Google.

Perhaps we can regain something we have lost, something we have ceded to Big Data and Big Mobile. Perhaps we can regain our foothold in engineering and science. Perhaps.

A Little Slice of Pi

I have placed an order for a Raspberry Pi. I will be exploring the device, and several of the projects one can do with this versatile SoC computer. I will be posting the unboxing and set-up next week, and will publish a list of projects I will be attempting.

Stay tuned

Import This!

Everything I know about software can be summed up in one lovely Easter Egg in the Python interpreter:

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

Related articles

• I Love Python (sadorect.wordpress.com)
• The Python That Ate Your Job (financialsurvivalnetwork.com)

Diffusion

There is a famous chart that has been around for many years that purports to show the cycle known as the Diffusion of Innovation. It is a bell curve that starts with innovators and early adopters, rises to a peak with the early majority, and declines with the late majority, finishing with the laggards.

There is another way of measuring the adoption lifecycle, and that is to determine where things stand on the backlash curve.

Think back to the halcyon days of the 1980s and 90s. Pagers and portable CD players were all the rage.  We discovered the joys portable game systems. We delighted at the handshake noises coming from our modems, and laughed at Apple’s quirky Newton as it slid down the slope towards irrelevance.

At the time, cell phones – and I’m talking chunky plastic phones with a single row of 8-segment LED or LCD “displays” that could be used to make phone calls, and nothing else – fell squarely in the realm of the well-to-do, upwardly-mobile, and/or self-important bastard. An individual once referred to by the archaic term “Yuppie” (not to be confused with Yooper). For everyone else, the consensus of opinion was “Cell phones are for people who are important: doctors, lawyers, wealthy businessmen.” On the adoption lifecycle, these would be the innovators.

Within a couple years, the prices had come down, and it was plausible that ordinary folk could just about afford a phone. The consensus became “”Cell phones are for people who want to look important. I wouldn’t be caught dead with one.” Now we are into the early adopter phase, because more people started to acquire this life-changing technology.

A few years later, and many more people have phones. Ordinary people. We start up the steep curve of the early majority, and the consensus changes to “I don’t want everyone to call me at all hours! I want my personal space! But it might be nice to have for emergencies…”

By the time the adoption cycle peaked and we were swooning over the original RAZR, and there were no more excuses. Cellphone adoption was rapidly sliding down the curve of the late majority, leaving only the laggards to jump on the bandwagon.

Luckily for our hamster-wheel powered rationalization engines, smartphones arrived, and we were able to start the cycle all over again. But this time, the cycle burned faster. The first smartphones from Nokia, Palm (actually Handspring at the time), were taken up by innovators, early adopters latched on to Windows Mobile and Blackberries. The early majority gets iPhones and Androids.

And then tablets came along, and the cycle sped along with a rapid ramp-up to the peak with the iPad, and now the market is saturated with Kindles, Nooks, Nexuses, and Tabs. In the space of three and a half years, we went from “Why would anyone want this?” to “Gotta have this.” Zero to early majority in an eyeblink.

This year, the buzz surrounding wearable computing devices has increased greatly. We are laughing at Google Glass and Galaxy Gear, and nodding thoughtfully at the Pebble and Fitbit. Clearly, we’re still in the innovator phase, and most people are busy saying they would never be caught dead with these silly toys on their person.

What will those same people be saying in five years?

Related articles

• Riding the hype cycle (avaya.com)
• Smartphone adoption, not even half way (edblogging.wordpress.com)
• The Adoption of Technology – A Wild Ride (thestrategyhq.com)

Two-Factor Authentication. Better Get Used to It.

Yesterday, Lifehacker wrote an article listing all the major websites that have added multi-factor authentication to their site security. Many of the sites rely on either their own mobile app, or the Google Authenticator mobile app to provide the “something you have” portion of their authentication process. Most offer to send codes to your phone via text message, as an alternative to an app-based solution.

Sites offering this capability include the three big webmail providers (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft) as well as the major social networking players (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). Apple rounds out the last of the major mobile players, and popular services like Dropbox, Evernote, PayPal, and yes, WordPress all offer this security enhancement.

I took the time to go through the list of providers, and enable two-factor with every service I use. I encourage everyone to do the same. This extra step may seem like an inconvenience, but only if you’ve never had any of your accounts compromised. I once lost control of my Gmail account to a stranger, who then used it to send spam. I was able to regain access to my account, and immediately stepped my security regimen. Two-factor auth would have stopped that breach in its tracks, since the culprit would not have had access to my code generator.

While we’re at it, make sure you use a password manager. I’m partial to LastPass (which also offers two-factor auth for their service). LastPass allows you to generate very strong, long passwords. You don’t even need to remember them. All you need is your master password…and your 2F auth code, of course. LastPass even analyses all of your stored passwords, and let’s you know where you can improve your security.

One last thought: these services offer different recovery methods should you lose your phone. Some revert back to texting codes to alternate phone numbers. Others provide a list of one-time-use backup codes. Make sure you provide all the information needed, and save any codes generated. The last thing you want to do is cut yourself off from your own accounts.

Resource: Two-Factor Authentication List

Update 12/15: Evan Hahn has a very comprehensive list of sites offering two-factor authentication. You can find his list at http://evanhahn.com/tape/two-factor-auth-list/

 

Related articles

• You Should Be Using Two-Factor Authentication. Everywhere. (algonquinstudios.com)
• Multi Factor Authentication – An introduction and set-up tutorial (coinjar.io)
• Feature Friday: Two Factor Authentication (avc.com)

The Mother of all Demos

Forty-five years ago today, a man sat down in front of a computer, and began a technology demonstration that was so powerful, that it resonates today. Doug Englebart, of the Stanford Research Institute’s Augmentation Research Center, and his team began a ninety-minute audio-visual presentation of their greatest work, the oN-Line System, or NLS.

NLS encompassed a number of then-revolutionary technologies, including the world debut of the humble pointing device that still adorns our desks – the mouse. Many people know the story of Steve Jobs and his band of Apple pirates storming Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, and walking away with licenses to the mouse and Xerox’s graphical user interface. Fewer people know that both go back a decade more to Englebart’s ARC team, and this presentation that has become known as The Mother of all Demos.

Englebart also demonstrated a number of other features of the NLS, many of which were not widely used until decades later. These include multi-window interfaces, hypertext, WYSIWYG word processing, object addressing, dynamic file linking, video conferencing, graphics, revision control, and shared-screen collaborative editing.

This presentation was the realization of Englebart’s dream to make computing about more than just crunching numbers and conducting complicated, repetitive calculations over large data sets, and to make computers powerful tools that allow people to communicate, collaborate, and create. He wanted to build a device that would allow people to retrieve all manner of information.

Looking at where we are today, I’d say he succeeded.

But the most astonishing part of this was when this demonstration took place: December 9, 1968. Before smartphones and personal computers, before websites and the Internet. Before cellphones were invented. Before Gates, Jobs, and Woz turned a hobby into a real industry. It would be nearly eleven months before the first four nodes of ARPANET were connected and transmitting. It would be another seven months before the astronauts of Apollo 11 made another kind of history.

We stand at the threshold of another revolution in computing. Today, we speak of wearable computing with the same disdain we spoke of smartphones seven years ago, and cell phones fifteen years ago. If history is any indication, wearable devices will be ubiquitous within a decade. The computer power-per-person will be unbelievable – look at the explosive leaps in processing power each generation of mobile device makes over the previous generation.Time will tell if we will become a pacified crowd of content consumers, or if we will create something new with these devices.

Whatever happens, and whatever form the future takes, we would not be standing here, now, without the incredible work of Doug Englebart and his team.

You can read more about Doug Englebart’s demonstration, and even view video of the presentation at Stanford’s MouseSite