RachelPi in Somosomo Fiji

[moo_...@hotmail.com]

Hi Everyone,

I am a student currently studying at The Queensland University of Technology. I am part of a group of 10 students that will be traveling to Somosomo Fiji in 2 1/2 months to setup a ICT system in a school and spend a week teaching. The university has donated 16 laptops to be placed in the school and we are planning on using RachelPi as the hub for our ICT.

The main challenge for us is that there is no power during the day, only at night. We are planning on using a battery something like this to power the Pi during the day and recharge it at night. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Anker-Astro-E5-15000mAh-External-Battery-Charger-for-iPhones-iPads-and-more-/331128690773 . Is this going to work?

I was hoping to get some advice from this great community about what we need to consider when we are there. Also what challenges we may face when we get there.

Another question I have is also around the content on RACHEL. If we were to have some additional space on the SD card what kind of content would you recommend we add? I am aware that Fiji currently teaches the British Curriculum if that helps.

Feel free to respond to this post or contact me at m51....@student.qut.edu.au I would love to hear back from you.

[Ed Resor]

Some quick suggestions for Fiji,

A. WORK WITH WHAT IS THERE

1. If you cannot get one or two people to stay for a month, try to identify a willing and able local person and start preparing her (or him) now with emails, Skypes, etc.  Willing means, willing to live and work with your team for a week.
2. If people are using Windows 7 or earlier, get laptops with Windows 7.
   
3. If people need to know Microsoft Office to get jobs, spring for a few copies of Microsoft Office
   
4. If people use, FireFox browsers, be sure to include Firefox browser, etc.
   
5. If people use AVG or antiVir virus protection, use that protection, or register all of the laptops and install Microsoft anti-virus protection and show people how to download the update once and install it on all computers.  Even without Internet connections, viruses will arrive by USB Flash Drives

B. REDUNDANCY

1. Install RACHEL USB on all of the laptops unless they have limited SSD drives.  I would recommend against SSD drives as regular hard drives hold up pretty well.
   
2. Install everything needed to repair and upgrade SD Card images on at least two laptops, i.e. Win32Imager, SDFormatter, image copies preferably with modifications, images for small SD Cards, Putty, WinSCP, etc. (if you are not using Windows laptops, add other software)
   
3. Take two of everything for the RACHEL Pi.  Take several, inexpensive smaller SD Cards loaded with a reduced copy of RACHEL and maybe an extra Raspberry Pi board, just for testing the RACHEL Pis.

Redundancy increases reliability and more importantly it empowers people by enabling easy, logical, and quick troubleshooting and repair and helping people overcome their reasonable fear of working on and with the equipment themselves.

For your power problem, you solution should work fine, especially if you are using a RACHEL Pi as a "headless" server with no terminal, keyboard, and mouse, but just a Wifi dongle.  That configuration draws less than 500 mA on average.  See this YouTube videos for suggested WiFi dongles and power consumption data:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXLqpWmghqw

Remember: 1.) the more efficient dongles may have less range 2.) some dongles may need additional drivers that are not included with the RACHEL Pi images.  You can add these, but then you should make back-ups of the modified images as note above.  Jeremy Schwartz at RACHEL posted instructions on how to do this

There are many more YouTube videos on power consumption with and without, wired Ethernet, HDMI monitors, keyboards, optical mice, etc.

If 24 hour power was not a problem, I would recommend using RACHEL USB on a laptop running the MOWES server instead of a RACHEL Pi.  A laptop server with a beefed up power system might still might be the best solution if you cannot find some local Linux expertise locally to help with maintenance and support.

However, even if you go with the RACHEL Pi solution, I still recommend using a locally obtained 12 volt lead acid battery and a simple AC powered battery charger.  Connect to this battery a properly wired and fused 12 volt DC to USB power adapter rated at 2 amps or more, especially if you are using a WiFi dongle powered by the Raspberry Pi board. such as below.  For training people, it is nice to have a monitor and a keyboard attached sometimes to the Raspberry Pi board.  A directly attached monitor is the only way to actually follow the full startup and shutdown routines in Linux.  (Using a SSH terminal program such as Putty, you will only see what happens after the network starts working and you can log in and then up until the network shuts down.)

Do not use spring loaded battery clamps, wire the leads to the battery using ring terminals on the wires that can be bolted to good battery clamps.  Take plenty of spare fuses for the 12 volt to USB power supplies.  Consider including in the wiring automotive fuses such as those sold by Radio Shack if you have time.

I would recommend a larger 12 volt DC system that would have one or two solar panels attached as well as the AC battery charge.  This would be able to support 12 volt DC power outlets for automobile chargers for the laptops, wired on separately fused wires to the same battery.  With RACHEL, I like to set an objective of 100 hours of use per laptop per week.  You need to struggle against power problems and more importantly, locked closets.  Redundancy also helps deal with locked closets.  I have never reached this target, because the people who donated the laptops (I just added RACHEL.) insisted on have the laptops locked up when there was not a computer class or time supervised by a computer teacher, but we are getting more and more hours per laptop and going to start testing tablets, such as donated second hand iPad 2s, which are really great.  (I hope your laptops are new, or at least all of the same model with new batteries.  If you have laptops with worn out batteries, you really should try to get a larger 12 volt DC power system with solar panels for daytime operation.)

I would add GCF Learn Free (preview at www.GCFLearnFree.org ) and Practical Answers for content.  I cannot tell you which part of Practical Answers to include, but I am attaching the Introduction Document which is a 21 page description for the first 13 GBytes of 90 GBytes. The rest of the 90 GBytes is arranged in folders with names that describe their contents.

RACHEL has made bulk downloads of these materials available.  As far as I know bulk downloads are not available for the sites themselves.

Keep up the good work, be prepared to fail on your first attempt and to help the local people succeed after an initial failure.

Good luck, Ed Resor

Recent Amazon Orders.  All equipment tested except for the first item, but the build was good.  Any problems will be reported as soon as I get another unit to test.  This one and another are already in Africa.

PowerGen 4.2Amps / 20W Dual USB Car charger Designed for Apple and Android Devices	$9.99
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0088U4YAG/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i02?ie=UTF8&psc=1
64GB SD XC Class 10 SCT Secure Digital Ultimate Extreme High Speed SDXC Flash Memory Card	$29.99
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008YLD7XE/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i03?ie=UTF8&psc=1
USB 802.11n 150m Wifi Wireless Lan Network Card Adapter	$8.50
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007BWFXYS/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[moo_...@hotmail.com]

Ed, thank you for the few quick suggestions for Fiji! I hadn't thought about some of the possibilities and challenges you mentioned.

I worry that the 12v battery won't like been drained all day and only charged at night. Do you know of anyone that has used a battery in this way? I also agree that the solar power would be a good way to power the laptops. Some of the projects I have seen using RACHEL in this way are amazing though we have limited funds for infrastructure beyond a Raspberry Pi and a few other things.

The computers we are using are different though they all have new batteries. The sizes of the HDs do range from 60gb - 250gb. We are still trying to work out the best way to use that space. Suggestions always welcome!

The question on space came from an idea I had of attaching a laptop HD to the pi via an inexpensive sata to usb connector and using the extra space for further content that could be added to RACHEL. Unsure if anyone has tried doing this but I think it would be interesting to see how people would use an extra 500-1000gb.

The computers will be locked up at night and only usable during school hours.

A final question. What is the best way to get involved in the development of RACHEL? Myself and two others on the team are IT students and would like to contribute in any way we can.

Matt