[OT] Raspberry Pi vs x86 embedded motherboard PART 1

[William Waldman]

Sorry - Apparently this post is too large to go through without "moderator
approval" and after 3 days, I think I'll just hack it in two.

There's a huge groundswell of interest around a crop of new, relatively
inexpensive ARM based single board computers and micro based boards (the
Raspberry Pi, the Arduino, and coming up fast, the BeagleBone Black) in
"Maker" and (grade 5-12) Academic circles.

As Richard points out, there are x86 based alternatives that are nearly as
cheap that could host LiveCode right now. But they aren't getting the
press that the ARM based Pi, BeagleBone or micro-based Arduino is getting.

This current trend is not born entirely of necessity (sheer access to
computing power), but rather a desire to engage and share experiences with
a particular community, with particular products. That a popular, world
wide movement such as this happens to revolve around a topic this geeky
gives me reason to rejoice. The sheer fact that the Arduino has created
enough buzz that Radio Shack now carries them is, in itself, something
that gives me hope for the future of humanity.

It would be good for LiveCode to be able to ride this groundswell of
popular interest and visibility. The more points of contact with the
worldwide Raspberry Pi and Arduino communities and LiveCode the better. 

This doesn't necessarily mean that we need to run the full GUI version of
LiveCode on the Pi - but that would be really, really nice. After all,
they distribute Scratch with the official Pi OS because it's an
"educational platform." 

LiveCode could be quite a compliment to that platform. 

What is essential is that we need LiveCode to "talk" to these platforms -
and with a protocol that works better than using LiveCode's serial port
commands. 

How about LiveCode Server for the Pi, with drivers for the GPIO bus? 
How about something similar for the Arduino: a communication protocol, a
program to run resident on the Arduino and another "partner" program in
LiveCode - that can be implemented reliably and easily as libraries. Larry
Walker has done some great work in this area using Bitlash and LiveCode.

The dream of having a super elegant, high level language to interact with
these platforms (as client/server, controller/slave, peer to peer -
whatever) certainly appeals to me as an instructional set of tools that
transcends the 30+ year old model of Computer Science instruction which
has prevailed in the US.

See part 2 for more....



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