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I am a 12 year old computer geek, and I want a Raspberry Pi. I asked my mum, said I would use it well, pay for it by myself, ect., and she said no, I "don't need one." What can I do to convince her I should get it? Help!

Ha, Say that its educational and can be used for school work or something
Also im sure there's plenty of things your mom has that she doesn't 'need' either.

Best bet is to come up with a project you want to make a reality and then present it to her, say it can be used for lots of projects and after buying the pi
the components and addon's are very cheap if you buy them online, like leds etc

Tell her you want to support her in her old age in the manner to which she would like to become accustomed (oh, say, a queen ) and that the only way to do that is for you to become technically proficient as a computing expert, even if it's only part of being an expert in other things (a writer, in marketing, via artistic endeavo(u)rs, etc). I'm actually being quite serious - I'm not only a practi(c/s)ing computer scientist and software engineer, but also a STEM teacher, former military officer, an airplane and helicopter pilot, nuclear engineer, amateur musician, writer of horribly-long forum posts and e-mails (aka a latent author), photographic and videographic enthusiast, and probably half a dozen other things that I've spent less time doing than the others. As a result, I've never been at a loss for being qualified for whatever work has been available.

It's predicted that students graduating from secondary school today will have an average of eight career (not just job, but career) changes during their lifetimes, and much of that will be due to technological advances. Ten years ago, there were no such jobs as tablet app developer, search engine optimization engineer, or mobile content artist, yet they are some of the best-paying jobs available, and many of the skills can be learned on your own via on-line sources of information. Education is being turned upside-down and inside-out via remote/distance-learning technologies as institutions turn to video teleconferencing, class forum chat, and development and delivery of lessons that are self-paced by the student. Progress can now be tracked individually by the student, educators, and parents down to single questions and answers, and the same material can be covered in multiple ways until the student finally truly grasps the intended lesson.

Work is returning to industrialized nations' factories not in the low-paying jobs that were sent overseas, but in the form of operators and technicians who not only keep automated robotic machinery going, but enhancing and expanding it. There is a crying need for computer numerical controlled (CNC) machine operators and maintenance people in every manufacturing area, and as use of robotics continues expanding (used to build our Pi boards, BTW), the demand for people with the skills to install, maintain, and repair them will continue to grow.

You can't walk into a semiconductor fab nowadays without at least a two-year degree in industrial or electronics technology, and the same is going to be true for virtually every factory by the time you graduate from secondary school. The days of getting a general education and then getting hired easily are rapidly dwindling - if you understand computing and are competing for almost any job, you will have an enormous advantage over the competition.

Even if you wind up becoming an accountant, you'd better understand how to use forensic accounting software to help spot fraud and other criminal activity, because criminals have discovered that most money is now handled via computers. $40 million was just stolen via ATMs because criminal hackers were able to defeat not highly-regulated banking software, but unregulated credit card processing software. They hacked the credit limits on cloned credit and debit cards to tens of thousands of dollars each, and then had runners literally hit dozens of ATMs each within a span of less than an hour in a number of major cities. Do you think those credit card companies are going to be hiring more accountants that were clueless about this kind of operation, or those who understand how to develop software to detect and prevent such activity in the future?

There are tens of thousands of examples of other jobs whose descriptions are going to include the words software, computing, digital communications, etc., in the coming years. The $25/$35 cost of a Pi is going to seem like the best bargain of all time when you're able to parlay it into work worth at least high five figures, and probably low six figures by the time you're ready to join the work force after you finish your education. Tell her about the 17 year-old lad in London who taught himself programming starting at age 12 and just sold his Summly app technology to Yahoo for $30 million, along with a nice desk job in Yahoo's London offices where PhDs will be working for him to help further improve his technology ... after he finishes his secondary school studies! Yahoo also just bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion from a high school dropout who started the company rather than spend any more time in school (that's a very risky move and you need to be both brilliant in software development and marketing, and extremely lucky to be in the right place at the right time in order to pull something like that off).

I was told in 1977 by a professor that, within 10 years, there would be two kinds of engineers (I had just earned an engineering degree), those who understood computers, and those who would be unemployed, and he was exactly spot on in his advice (I earned an MS in computer science a few years later). Now the same is happening to virtually every other job in the world beyond the most mundane manual labor in fields and rudimentary manufacturing (there doesn't seem to be much of a life in being a garment fabricator in Bangladesh, does there?). It's now becoming cheaper to use robotics for manufacturing than even the lowest-paid foreign factory workers, because robots don't complain, get tired, need breaks, make many mistakes, need medical/dental/optometry plans, go on strike ... are you seeing a trend here? We can use robots more cheaply in our own country and not have to deal with weeks of surface transportation delays in bulk shipment of parts, subassemblies, and finished products - assuming it's all 100% defect-free, which it won't be (ask the Foundation about its issues with its first Chinese manufacturer substituting an Ethernet connector that caused failures with longer cables).

Welcome to the forum, and tell your mum we said she needs to get you a Pi now before one of your future job competitors does

Talk to her and find out why she says you don't need one. Listen to her and try to understand her reasoning (I suspect she has some valid concerns like not doing your homework or chores etc.). Then figure out how to allay her concerns. Explain how having it would benefit you. Get her excited about a project you are thinking of. Lay out pros and cons. Then figure out a compromise that works for both of you.

Negotiating will be a very useful skill as you get older -- much more useful than a Raspi in the long run! Since you say you are a computer geek, I expect you to use calm rational analysis and devastating logic! Also remember, you are not just asking to buy a raspi, you are laying down a foundation for future request :-) Good luck!

Thanks everyone. I'll tell her that when she gets home. Also, I told her that by the difinition of 'need', we don't need a house, clothing, technology, or almost anything else. She gave me the evil eye and waked away. lol

Bakul Shah wrote:Talk to her and find out why she says you don't need one. Listen to her and try to understand her reasoning (I suspect she has some valid concerns like not doing your homework or chores etc.). Then figure out how to allay her concerns. Explain how having it would benefit you. Get her excited about a project you are thinking of. Lay out pros and cons. Then figure out a compromise that works for both of you.

Negotiating will be a very useful skill as you get older -- much more useful than a Raspi in the long run! Since you say you are a computer geek, I expect you to use calm rational analysis and devastating logic! Also remember, you are not just asking to buy a raspi, you are laying down a foundation for future request :-) Good luck!

Yes, the homework and chores thing is no issue. I finish my homework quickly and get good grades, finish chores with ease and then are super bored.,

aaa801 wrote:Ha, Say that its educational and can be used for school work or something
Also im sure there's plenty of things your mom has that she doesn't 'need' either.

Best bet is to come up with a project you want to make a reality and then present it to her, say it can be used for lots of projects and after buying the pi
the components and addon's are very cheap if you buy them online, like leds etc

Alright, good idea. Do you have an project ideas? I could come up with one on my own, but I'm tired and I don't feel like thinking.

I like the idea of using LEDs. Is it possible for the raspberry pi to play a sound file(preferably MP3)? If so, can you play it at a specific time. Its very hard to wake me up in the morning and my mum is tired of doing so, so I could maybe make it play a MP3 file at 6:00(am) so I might wake up.

Explain to her that advanced computer skills are a valuable asset to have.

Yes you can use a cron job to play a .mp3 file at a certain time. You could also build a button to stop the sound file or music file from playing. Put this on the other side of your room with the speaker close to your bed so you have to get up to turn it off. This can be done with a minimal of amount of parts and would take 1-2 hours of researching, scripting, etc to accomplish. It would be a great first project. Later you could expanded it to play peaceful music to go to sleep by or play white noise or ocean waves while you sleep. You could also get some bright LEDs and have them flash while the alarm is going off in the morning. Even later on with proper supervision and an isolated relay of proper size you could turn your bedroom lights on or off at a specific time. Then work on building a web interface to set the alarm times or files you want to play using another web enabled device. There are sooooo many possibilities. If you need more arrows in your quiver when reasoning with your mom, explain the cost is much less than a video game and would provide much more benefits than the video game.

MrdaEpicDucK wrote:

aaa801 wrote:Ha, Say that its educational and can be used for school work or something
Also im sure there's plenty of things your mom has that she doesn't 'need' either.

Best bet is to come up with a project you want to make a reality and then present it to her, say it can be used for lots of projects and after buying the pi
the components and addon's are very cheap if you buy them online, like leds etc

Alright, good idea. Do you have an project ideas? I could come up with one on my own, but I'm tired and I don't feel like thinking.

I like the idea of using LEDs. Is it possible for the raspberry pi to play a sound file(preferably MP3)? If so, can you play it at a specific time. Its very hard to wake me up in the morning and my mum is tired of doing so, so I could maybe make it play a MP3 file at 6:00(am) so I might wake up.

Im using mine to power a led strip to light my room, i can set the colour to anything i want ;D

MrdaEpicDucK wrote: I like the idea of using LEDs. Is it possible for the raspberry pi to play a sound file(preferably MP3)? If so, can you play it at a specific time. Its very hard to wake me up in the morning and my mum is tired of doing so, so I could maybe make it play a MP3 file at 6:00(am) so I might wake up.

That's something I use a Pi for, though I've never bothered to develop a shut off (that's the part that could be an actual project for you).

So long as the Pi has access to the internet, it will have the correct time and will make the appropriate adjustments when the time changes in Spring and Fall. In addition, you can set the time by the day of the week so you can sleep later on weekends, but still get a "wake up call" as needed.

For playing your MP3s,take a look at mplayer. While I use .wav files when I use pre-recorded music, MP3 shouldn't be a problem.

If you have trouble setting up your cron file drop me a note and I'll send you the code lines I use in cron. (Do try a bit on your own first...it's a good learning experience, and that is--after all--what the Pi is all about.)

DO NOT talk about turning your mains-light on or off, that would freak out any parent!

I recently discovered mocp and I would recommend it over mplayer.
You can run the mocp daemon in the background and then control it (start, stop, skip, seek, etc.) from the command-line.

https://github.com/zcoder/mocp

MrdaEpicDucK wrote:I am a 12 year old computer geek, and I want a Raspberry Pi. I asked my mum, said I would use it well, pay for it by myself, ect., and she said no, I "don't need one." What can I do to convince her I should get it? Help!

I'm probably going to regret saying this, but for things like this I live by the mantra "it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission". In other words, save your pocket money and buy one without telling her!

I remember being 12 and having all the adults telling me to "turn off the computer", "what are you wasting your time with that thing for?" - which I managed to ignore. Unfortunately non-geek adults see computers as just a toy or something not at all important. This was even more so in the 1980s when I was 12. For example, they want to see you "do your maths homework", they don't realise that the game you are trying to program is teaching you more about maths than the GCSE syllabus ever will and nothing you can tell them seems to convince them of that! Unfortunately I don't have an answer to that - as I said, my way was to save my money for something new for my computer (that might have been a C15 tape to save my programs onto!) and just buy it rather than tell them I was going to do this.

Print her out a copy of the MagPi, this month (http://issuu.com/themagpi not released offically yet) includes an interview with Amy Mather, a 13 year old Raspberry Pi user who presented at the Manchester Jam (http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3506).

After-all, you could be doing less productive things with your time!

Alrightthanks everyone! I'm viewing this on a small screen so I cant reply individually like last time but oh well!!!

As for buying it without them knowing I couldn't. Id have to fodder off my kindle and since they mail it id have to get up early and shed know something was up!

As for automated lights not for me. I'm alredy lazy enough or so she says.

When I get to a good computer(my Internet browsers aren't working) ill post again to you gigs.Again thanks!!!

we don't need a house, clothing, technology, or almost anything else. She gave me the evil eye and walked away

You are doing this wrong - you are thinking this is a battle between you and your mum. If you try to win without her agreement, I am sure there are several things she can do to "punish" you. Next time you want a treat, birthday present or day out.

You need to talk to her and find a way that you can both agree on, where you get the Pi and she gets something too. You just need to find out what she will agree to. As was said above, the art of negotiation is very important for the rest of your life.

As a secondary consideration - do you have the keyboard, power supply, SD card and other things you need to make it work? You should make sure you know the full cost before you start negotiating

SimonSmall wrote:

we don't need a house, clothing, technology, or almost anything else. She gave me the evil eye and walked away

You are doing this wrong - you are thinking this is a battle between you and your mum. If you try to win without her agreement, I am sure there are several things she can do to "punish" you. Next time you want a treat, birthday present or day out.

You need to talk to her and find a way that you can both agree on, where you get the Pi and she gets something too. You just need to find out what she will agree to. As was said above, the art of negotiation is very important for the rest of your life.

As a secondary consideration - do you have the keyboard, power supply, SD card and other things you need to make it work? You should make sure you know the full cost before you start negotiating

I already have a keyboard I can use. I believe I have an SD card. If not, I can get one. If there is anything I don't have, I can get it. I have like 350$ to spend in allownace and 85$ in b-day money, plus 15$ in Target gift cards.

MrdaEpicDucK wrote: I already have a keyboard I can use. I believe I have an SD card. If not, I can get one. If there is anything I don't have, I can get it. I have like 350$ to spend in allownace and 85$ in b-day money, plus 15$ in Target gift cards.

Congratulations. don't try to plead poverty.

You'll need a power supply and power cable. Since you're giving funds in dollars, I will assume that you're in the US. Adafruit makes an excellent power supply, for pretty minimal cost. I like Monoprice for cables, including suitable power cables for Pis.

Unless you have another computer and want to run a Pi headless, you will need a monitor. It can be an TV (old or new), CRT monitor, or flat panel monitor. If you haunt thrift stores, you should be able to get a flat panel monitor for very little. Just make sure it can take DVI or HDMI input (because otherwise, you'll be spending money on an HDMI-to-VGA converter...which will cost more than the Pi or a monitor that will handle DVI/HDMI intput).

I don't see mention of mouse. Again, if not running headless, you'll want one at some point.

Networking...may require a WiFi adapter, which may also entail a powered USB hub. If you can use a wired network, all you'll need is a long enough CAT-5 (or better) cable.

You might be interested in the latest copy of Wired magazine, if you still want to convince someone of the need to buy a PI.

Sup man

My mum said the same. Say its for a school project. Or you need to observe programming. Baffle her with long computer words. Say "We are looking at the technological advances in modern programming using a cheap source, can you buy me this for school please?" something like that.


See ya later!

Hector Pearson

Get her to read this page :

http://www.raspberrypi.org/about

This should reassure her that the Pi is there to teach people computer and programming skills. Something some of us do for a living and pay the bills. So you owning a Pi may well give you skills that you use in later life to pay your way. You might not work with computers but the Pi is so cheap it's better than all the other things you might learn and never use.

The Pi is popular. If you don't use it or find it boring you can sell it. The amount of money you might actually lose is now only $20.

I would have loved a Pi when I was 12

winston wrote:I'm probably going to regret saying this, but for things like this I live by the mantra "it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission". In other words, save your pocket money and buy one without telling her!

Hmmm. I remember that one. At the age of 12 I bought an air rifle and set up a shooting range in our loft. That took more than a little explaining when my parents eventually found out. .... Actually, forget I wrote that.

One good argument for the pi is that it lets you learn really serious programming skills without any chance of breaking the family PC. The worst that can happen on the pi is that you have to re-flash the sd card.

(You can break the pi by making a mistake with hardware electronics projects using the pi expansion pins, but it's near impossible to break it learning to code software.)

I've got children around your age. I've bought them pi's to learn with, and would be very happy for them to be even more interested than they are.

Alright. I just talked to her. She said she thought I 'don't really need one.' Then she said she didn't now what I use it for. She looked at the FAQ and said yeah, you can't use it with the desktop, it's not windows compatible. I said I know. Then she said what dsplay would I use? I said I don't believe it requires a display(does it?). So question. What does it need?

you can't use it with the desktop, it's not windows compatible. I said I know.

Is that as in 'you're not allowed to use it with our desktop PC?' Or the 'Pi doesn't have a desktop?' You would need the family computer to create the sd card, but that's about it. The Pi has a desktop of it's own, similar to Windows but it's Linux.

Then she said what display would I use? I said I don't believe it requires a display(does it?).

That depend on what it used for. If you have a TV in your room or a spare one around the house then you can use that. The quality of the picture depends on the connection to the tv/display. HDMI/DVI (DVI to HDMI adapters are quite cheap) would be ideal but you can use composite (yellow video connector), but the image quality wouldn't be as good.

So question. What does it need?

Some of the things required you may have lying around doing nothing.
A good 5v 1amp (minimum) power supply. A modernish phone charger may be enough.
SD card (2GB absolute minimum, 8GB or more, ideal)
USB Keyboard & Mouse
HDMI,DVI or Composite Video Cable
Audio Cable if required (if you're not using HDMI)
Network cable or WIFI adapter

This may help as well
http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/u ... e-v1.1.pdf

Stu

MrdaEpicDucK wrote:Alright. I just talked to her. She said she thought I 'don't really need one.' Then she said she didn't now what I use it for. She looked at the FAQ and said yeah, you can't use it with the desktop, it's not windows compatible. I said I know. Then she said what dsplay would I use? I said I don't believe it requires a display(does it?). So question. What does it need?

You might or might not "need" a Pi. If you could show an actual need, then your mother should consider buying it. However, you appear to have sufficient funds of your own that you can pay for it yourself. How much latitude you have to spend those funds is something you may have to take up with her.

If you need your mothers permission to spend the funds you have, offer to earn additional funds with the proviso that you are allowed to spend them on a Pi and any peripherals you want to go with it. Note that the most expensive item would be a monitor, unless you show some initiative and either find one cheap in a thrift shop, or free if a local company is disposing of older equipment as they upgrade what they're using. (Sometime, companies are very happy to have such equipment hauled away so that it's one less item they have to *pay* to get rid of.)

Strictly speaking, if you have a network available (home router, for instance), the only things actually *required* to get a Pi working are a power supply, an SD card, and either a wireless dongle or a CAT-5 cable.

With no display, no keyboard, and no mouse, you run it "headless". Setting it up will be a bit more difficult than if you can connect keyboard, mouse, and monitor, but it can be done.

FYI... You mentioned using a Pi as an "alarm clock". While I didn't do the initial set up headless, that is the way I run a Pi as an alarm clock. The only connections it has are ethernet, power, and speakers.

Here's a suggestion for you... Talk to the most science or engineering oriented teacher you know. Discuss projects that would good for you with that teacher. Take that information back to your mother, or even ask the teacher to talk to you mother if he shows enthusiasm for you to do a project with a Pi.