Adventures in Pi...

[W. H. Heydt]

Because a client of my daughter's employer is elderly and temporarily in a convalescent facility, going not so quietly stir-crazy (he made a career as an author...if I named him, everyone would recognize the name), I was asked if I could set up a Pi for him to use to write...today (so it can be taken to him tomorrow). He'll only need it for a couple of weeks when he should be going home to his regular system. (And I can pull his files off for delivery on a USB stick in a format his other system can read.)

It took about an hour. Pi4B 4GB, RasClock RTC (no network connection where he is), 16GB SD card, keyboard, mouse, mousepad, 19" 1280x1024 monitor, all cables including a 3-plug short power cord for both the Pi and the monitor, and a 6' extension cord if needed. Plus directions of how to set it up and how to shut it down.

Not an earth shattering project, but nice to be able to gather everything together, set up updated/upgraded, tested, configured then packed down with everything but the monitor and the keyboard in a 1 gallon Zip-lock bag...all in about one hour.

[pidd]

Good one!

I always have spares lying around but never the ones needed for myself.

[bls]

Great to see/hear about Pis being put to use for a good cause. And setting up and testing a whole configuration in an hour is pretty sweet. Would be great to hear how the delivery and initial use goes.

[W. H. Heydt]

Great to see/hear about Pis being put to use for a good cause. And setting up and testing a whole configuration in an hour is pretty sweet. Would be great to hear how the delivery and initial use goes.

I may not get much detail back. My daughter, who said the set up directions were clear to her, will probably have to turn everything over to the convalescent facility staff to do the actual set up. They are not, apparently, very techy. If they don't understand the directions, my daughter said that she'll walk them through it so they can set it up for the end user. We have hopes that simply making all the relevant connections will be clear enough....

I do expect to get some feedback when the person it is all for gets back to his usual abode in a couple of weeks. If/when I get feedback, I'll. I just hope it doesn't turn into a comedy of errors. After he gets back home, I'll re-save his files to .docx (since LibreOffice can do that), pull them all off to a USB stick, and he can (possibly with a bit of help) put them on his PC.

The initial set up time was helped by having an SD card already with that particular Pi, so all I had to do was update/upgrade (745MB...it'd been a while), install/configure the RasClock, and (just to be clever) change the hostname to the users last name and a '1'. (My equivalent would be a hostname of 'heydt1'.) No idea if he'll notice it, but if he does, I have hopes of a smile from him. Still something a tour-de-force to pull off on absolutely no notice.

Since he is a writer, I was going to supply a rather nice mechanical switch keyboard I got recently from Monoprice (they run about $40) until I realized that the rather dark gray markings on black keys wasn't going to work for an 80-year-old with poor eyesight. So I swapped the keyboard out for a Logitech K-120 that has white markings on black keys...much more legible, if not nearly as good a 'touch'. Ergonomics matters...and that includes vision.

Side note... My wife (who writes, hence my knowledge of some of the "mechanical" aspects of the project) and I go to a small local writers-focused SF convention (FogCon). I keep trying to interest their programming person in a panel/discussion of what the minimal hardware required to actually write on in this day and age is. I could show up with a range of Pis, keyboards and a monitor or two to let people try. Haven't managed to get them sufficiently interested so far.

[W. H. Heydt]

Some feedback...

As predicted, my daughter couldn't just go in a set things up. The people there expressed some concern about electrical hazards, which my daughter allayed. She wound up connecting things together for them to then transfer it the intended user. A certain amount of "Huh? Who? What? Why we never..." took place, but that got straightened out.

More to follow if I hear about it.

[W. H. Heydt]

Minor update... The person in question has the Pi set up. I've been called in on a bit of minor tech support (a question of how to do something in LibreOffice and how to restart a Pi that has been shut down...pull the power and then reconnect it). The end user has indicated being impressed by the Pi, and quite happy with it.

[W. H. Heydt]

Status update... No more support calls for the last week. That probably means either that everything has been working perfectly, or that the user has given up altogether. Said user is scheduled to return to his normal abode next Tuesday. I will at least provide enough update as to whether or not the hardware comes back to me. Hopefully, there will be some anecdotal material about how well it all worked.