Hello everybody!
It's been a while that I do not post anything. My job is keeping me very busy and the kids are taking the rest of my time, so very few time for new projects.
However, I managed to join my hobbies with the interest of my older kid, and I ended up buying a Raspberry Pi for a second time. The first one I bought 3 or 4 years ago, was the first version I think, but I never found the time and a nice Linux Distro to dig into, so I ended up selling it again. This time I bought a Raspberry Pi 3, which ended up being a whole out of a computer!
I'm not going to write about the Raspberry Pi 3, you can find infinite blogs talking about it. I just wanted to share you the magical combo that I have found mixing the R-PI 3 and the very nice linux distro Kano OS (http://developers.kano.me/downloads/) based on Debian.
Kano OS Start Screen
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
Of course at the first moment with the R-Pi 3 I've tried the Debian version for R-Pi called Raspbian, that comes with a new desktop called Jessie, which is not bad at all. But after some trials trying to install gnome, I finally ended trying Kano OS and I found it really nice for the kids, and light and powerful enough even for some more serious things.
Another really nice distro would be PicaroOS from a galician team in Spain, but I'm afraid that at this very moment (Nov 2016) there is no version running on R-Pi, and according to some post of the developers, they are not planning this developement. A real pity, because PicarOS looks really nice on the pictures (check in Google).
PicarOS from Galpon
But let's go back to Kano OS. After jumping the starting screen (a simplified desktop for kids) you can jump into the main desktop (which is as well simplified). Although this distro comes with some out-of-the-box packages, I will give you some recommendations according to my relative short experience with the R-PI and Kano OS (by the way, Kano OS is the OS for the Kano computer kit, I hope this guys are selling good so we can continue seeing Kano OS being developed).
Kano OS Desktop "tuned" at my Raspberry Pi 3
On the above picture you can see the actual screen of my son's R-PI, tuned to make it less harmful to the eyes (I went for grey on the background and a different grey on the Taskbar, and I like it much more than the original colors).
Some interesting packages that you should be installing:
- GCompris: a huge package of applications for kids. This is a "must" on any computer for kids.
- Tuxpaint: a nice paint, intuitive and adapted for kids
- TurtleArt: a 21st Century Logo version, with programming with boxes like Scratch
- Pingus: the Lemmings, but with Penguins
- GeoGebra: mathematics, algebra and geometry for kids (but not so kids should I say)
The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
Finally, let me just share with you some hints for setting up your R-Pi properly.
- Use a power source providing enough current (2.5A), otherwise the R-Pi will re-start when it's running out of "juice". The normal mobile phones chargers are only giving between 0.5 and 1.0 A, so you better buy a specific one.
- If you are a "doer" (so nice word, very 21st Century, in my time we were just frikies) then you may want to take use of one of those power sources that you have in your workshop (or set up one with a trafo), which is what I did (see below).
- Put a small radiator / heat sink and, if you need, also a small fan to blow some fresh air into that small chip... I jumped from 50-55 °C only with the heat-sink to 33°C constant with the small fan. And the very small fans are very quiet as well, so almost no noise.
The pictures here are showing "my setup". I've added two voltage regulators, one for the R-Pi (the big one with the display) and another one for the fan.
Finally, just to comment that the feeding is done thru the GPIO pins 2 and 6 (see below).
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