Offline-Pedia converts old televisions into Wikipedia readers (2018)(wikimediafoundation.org)
wikimediafoundation.org
Offline-Pedia converts old televisions into Wikipedia readers (2018)
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2018/07/17/offline-pedia/
10 comments
I would really like that page to show a static picture of the final device instead of making me watch the video for glances of it.
I skimmed it but it looked like they never showed the device actually turned on. I bet the experience is worse than they hoped.
And if you think about it, with 100 USD, the cost to upcycle one of these machines, you can just upcycle a cheap tablet and load an offline wiki trivially. It’d be easier to use as well.
And if you think about it, with 100 USD, the cost to upcycle one of these machines, you can just upcycle a cheap tablet and load an offline wiki trivially. It’d be easier to use as well.
Am I the only person who saw OS/browser chrome eating up 1/3 of the vertical screen real estate on that CRT and sighed a little bit? It's amazing that they're able to offer this to people on such a small budget but wow, modern software sure isn't friendly to people running on small screens is it...
I think we've just gotten used to higher-resolution displays where those UI elements can be made smaller: https://zdnet4.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2016/08/09/5d4189d0-20...
Chrome has a kiosk mode they could have used. Maybe they have some reason for exposing the OS and browser.
For the cost of a micro SD card (or a small micro SD for the OS and an inexpensive USB hard drive for actual data storage) and an Orange Pi Zero (about $10), this could also become a low-power headless Wifi access point providing Wikipedia and other offline data to mobile devices, for example in a school or a community center. Kiwix does offer a standalone HTTP server for ZIM files. The same device could also have provisions for local messaging and storing local user data.
There's more to "cost" then price. Your scheme adds several orders of magnitude in complexity and points of failure.
My "scheme", in its simplest form, is to serve the same content over HTTP to nearby phones, and has in fact one fewer point of failure - namely the old TV. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, but it's not inherently more complex. The premise is of course that this works better because it distributes the information among more people at the same time, as long as wifi-capable phones are common in the community.
This is a really interesting project! It would be interesting to adapt it to old laptops. They are a dime a dozen and if people could donate them then they could serve this same purpose.
It's just software running on a Raspberry Pi (which does have TV out). You could easily run the exact same software on a laptop. Maybe even build a FreeDOS version, for maximum availability on x86 retro hardware. (Though this is actually an obvious use case for a DRM-free ebook platform. If only e-paper in large formats wasn't so expensive and hard to find.)
Part of the problem with repurposing old laptops is they're vulnerable to battery failure, at which point they're just awkward all-in-one PCs chained to a power adapter. None of my old laptops are in usable condition without a battery swap, and I suspect the cost of a raspberry pi isn't much higher than a new battery...
> I suspect the cost of a raspberry pi isn't much higher than a new battery.
Don't forget that you'd have to factor in the cost of a display, input devices, and storage if you go the Raspberry Pi route. And if you wanted the Pi to be portable (as your alternative suggestion seemingly implies) you'd have to buy a battery for it as well.
On the other hand, if you don't need the Pi to be portable, you might as well just leave the laptop plugged in and use it instead, as you wouldn't have to spend any money at all to achieve the same end-result as purchasing the Pi.
In fact, I would wager that putting together a Raspberry Pi solution comparable to a cheap laptop would be difficult for any given price point; if the laptop is just "old" and not "broken", I would further argue that it provides a much better user-experience.
I don't intend for this to be a criticism of the Raspberry Pi. In the article they're using old CRT televisions which negate the cost of a display, and keyboards and mice are readily available from a number of places for free (or close to it). For their use-case, it seems to be quite an effective solution.
Don't forget that you'd have to factor in the cost of a display, input devices, and storage if you go the Raspberry Pi route. And if you wanted the Pi to be portable (as your alternative suggestion seemingly implies) you'd have to buy a battery for it as well.
On the other hand, if you don't need the Pi to be portable, you might as well just leave the laptop plugged in and use it instead, as you wouldn't have to spend any money at all to achieve the same end-result as purchasing the Pi.
In fact, I would wager that putting together a Raspberry Pi solution comparable to a cheap laptop would be difficult for any given price point; if the laptop is just "old" and not "broken", I would further argue that it provides a much better user-experience.
I don't intend for this to be a criticism of the Raspberry Pi. In the article they're using old CRT televisions which negate the cost of a display, and keyboards and mice are readily available from a number of places for free (or close to it). For their use-case, it seems to be quite an effective solution.
But at least the laptop comes with a screen.
In a similar vein does anyone know a way to load all of say Simple Wikipedia onto a Kindle? I have plenty of space and I'd love to have a simple offline backup on a relatively energy efficient device.
There is the Wiki Book Creator Feature, which lets you create books from selected articles, and mediawiki2latex which can output these to epub. Though there seems to be a page limit of 800.
Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books
I don't know if it exists, but it seems it would be possible using a similar format to the offline dictionaries on Kindle.
This is excellent. I didn't grow up anywhere nearly as remote as these communities, but being from a small town the advent of Encarta, and eventually the internet, was a massive sea change.
It can't be overstated how much of an impact efforts like this can have on young people.
It can't be overstated how much of an impact efforts like this can have on young people.
I've been wanting to make a version of this which is more polished, has text-to-speech, and a visual aspect. Imagine an instant documentary generator!
Would you use it ?
Would you use it ?
I feel like this would probably be somewhere in the next phase of ~AI to generate video based on a Wikipedia page or at least a copy of Wikipedia which is highly annotated with video links.
I understand why they removed it, but I really liked the analog video output on older Pi's
The current Raspberry Pi 4 includes analog video out over the 3.5mm TRRS jack.
It's still there, it's just not using the RCA connector anymore.
Unless you're referring to the RCA connector itself being removed, in which case, I apologize.
It's still there, it's just not using the RCA connector anymore.
Unless you're referring to the RCA connector itself being removed, in which case, I apologize.
I was referring to the RCA, although I didn't know you could do something similar with the 3.5mm jack. Is there a simple (non-powered) adapter one can use to convert that to RCA?
I hope this doesn’t exacerbate the shortage of CRTs. These are extremely valuable for retro gaming. Old LCDs would be just fine for reading Wikipedia. CRTs are irreplaceable.
Do you truly believe that retro gaming provides higher value than providing unconnected communities with access to Wikipedia and associated knowledge sources?
The point that you and GP are missing is that these CRTs are what they have lying around in their area already. They aren't coming to the United State and such to buy up CRTs. The could just as easily use flat panels if they are available.
Old CRTs are generally pretty easy to find cheap at boot sales and junk shops though, and the ones used for things like this would most likely be sourced local to the region they are being used in (and as such appropriate to whatever TV standard is used regionally and probably not compatible with yours).
For now. This nice time will end.
If you like CRT displays, get one or two you really like. Now is the time!
Personally, I picked up a PVM for watching SD content. It looks amazing.
If you like CRT displays, get one or two you really like. Now is the time!
Personally, I picked up a PVM for watching SD content. It looks amazing.
I drop off donations at Goodwill every month or so. I see no "shortage" of CRTs.
What’s my grandpa’s 32” worth anyway?
One would think, also, that there may be a similar opportunity at some point to recycle old phones as offline devices and get similar offline Wikipedia functionality using something like Aard.
https://github.com/itkach/slob/wiki/Dictionaries