From: Giles Bowkett <gilesb@...>
Date: 2006-11-28T18:01:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby/Rails on Gumstix

> For your Simon thing, I'd go for a p100 and some serial cables (killjoy I know,
> but you'll be less annoyed when it's stolen or puked on). Maybe some IRDA
> recievers in each skull and a TV remote for the 'wand'?

No, there's an element of theatricality required, and serial cables
would totally ruin that. Plus there's not much chance of anybody
stealing an entire art installation. To do this right I'd probably
want the skulls mounted a good seven feet high or something. Anyone
who can puke on my computer or the skull it's housed in from a
distance of at least seven feet definitely qualifies as an edge case.
It's not as if people go around Burning Man looking for art pieces
which might contain Gumstix and then dissassembling them. I mean the
ticket to the event costs more than a Gumstix box, the technology is
relatively unknown to begin with, and you'd have to be a bit of a
maniac to scale seven-foot poles just to steal spare parts. And not
only a maniac, but in incredible shape.

In fairness, I should have probably mentioned the seven-foot poles.
The IRDA thing might be a good idea. All it really has to do is be
something which the computer in a given skull can definitively
identify as being closer to it than to any other skull. It would be
very cool if you had to be very close to the skull for the wand to
work, and if the wand could trigger the skull just by proximity, i.e.,
no button, like magic. (Obviously if the wand had a very limited
range, then the fact that a skull sensed proximity at all would
automatically mean it was the most proximate skull.)

> A dozen 'stix in a cluster has about the same computing power
> of a so-so pentium3, and costs probably 3 times the price a Sun
> T2000 (once you sort the networking out).

well, that is a very real consideration. however keep in mind all I'm
really trying to do on the software side is emulate a game that ran on
extremely cheap hardware during the 80s. I mean it sold for like five
bucks, and that was twenty years ago. Gumstix might be slow but they
can probably handle "Simon."

if the Gumstix are too slow to run Rails, I'm more likely to abandon
Rails than Gumstix. just code it by hand in Perl or something if I
have to.

but that is a real consideration.

Ed -- do they run really slowly? have you coded any apps in Rails on
them, to see how they handle it?

-- 
Giles Bowkett
http://www.gilesgoatboy.org