raspberry pi in higher education - databaselabdatabaselab.org/files/cambridge.pdf · raspberry pi...

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Raspberry Pi in Higher Education

Alexander ElsasGoethe University Frankfurt, Germany

aelsas@finance.uni-frankfurt.de

The Raspberry Pi Big Birthday Weekend, Cambridge

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Alexander Elsas

Assistant Professor

Economics, Management & Information Systems

Database developer with APEX

Information Systems for Business Students

Management for Computer Science Students

Raspberry Pi since February 2012

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To Carry Coals to Newcastle

● Price tag● Performance● Flexibility● GPIO● Wolfram● ...

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Experiences so far

Introduced the Raspberry Pi in every introductory course for business students since winter semester 2012:

● Always an overwhelming positive reaction,● lots of questions far beyond the syllabus,● biggest motivation the multimedia center.

Based on these positive reactions the “Two Simple Projects“ have been created.

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Two Simple Projects

PiMMS: Pi-based Multimedia System

FRAdir: Operating directions of Frankfurt Airport

Objective:

Get business students an intro into computer science (information systems) and provide them a feeling of success to boost their motivation.

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PiMMS

Turn-key digital signage system:

Power-on on premise

No network connectivity needed

No manual configuration necessary

Boots into slideshow No coding, just configuration of existing programs

Fast results, product can be used in a real-life scenario

Possible extension: integrate network connectivity

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FRAdir

FRAport publishes the actual direction of operation of Frankfurt Airport (FRA) on their website (07 East / 25 West)

Objective: Gather data from the website, store it in a database for later analysis

Programming exercise in Python in a nutshell

Possible extension: 7-segment LED display

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Show-and-Tell

Both projects can be seen tomorrow.

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Computer Science Students

● Course “Introduction into ERP“● Very SAP-oriented● Students “hate“ SAP● Open Source ERP with Raspberry Pi● Installation and configuration of OpenERP (now Odoo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odoo) ● Comparison of performance, GUI, etc

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Further projects in the pipeline

● SQL-Box:

Raspberry Pi as database server, equipped with MySQL or SQLite as SQL learning tool

● Pi-Lab:

Establish an infrastructure on campus to support more advanced projects

● Ideas from the audience ...

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Best Programming Language?

● Learning to programme is independent from a specific language.

● A problem must be analyzed, divided in sub-problems, etc …

● At the end of the day the remaining problems are on the level of individual statements of the chosen programming language.

Programming is a process, not a language!

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Something completely different

Raspberry Pi and its success, ecosystem, created jobs and businesses as object of economic analysis.

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Contact

Alexander Elsas

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 3

D-60323 Frankfurt

Telephone: +49 69-798 33636

Fax: +49 69-798 33639

Email: aelsas@finance.uni-frankfurt.de

Internet: databaselab.de

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PiMMS & FRAdir – Two Simple Projects

Alexander ElsasGoethe University Frankfurt, Germany

aelsas@finance.uni-frankfurt.de

The Raspberry Pi Big Birthday Weekend, Cambridge

Seite 2

Two Simple Projects

PiMMS: Pi-based Multimedia System

FRAdir: Operating directions of Frankfurt Airport

Objective:

Get business students an intro into computer science (information systems) and provide them a feeling of success to boost their motivation.

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PiMMS

Turn-key digital signage system:

Power-on on premise

No network connectivity needed

No manual configuration necessary

Boots into slideshow No coding, just configuration of existing programs

Fast results, product can be used in a real-life scenario

Possible extension: integrate network connectivity on premise

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Components

Monitor feh as slideshow application

starts automatically after booting into LXDE xscreensaver to disable screensaver of LXDE

sudo apt-get install feh xscreensaver

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Technical Details

feh -pzrFYD10 slideshows in slideshow, make slideshow executable(http://man.finalrewind.org/1/feh/ for options of feh)

Autostart in LXDE:Add @/home/pi/slideshow to /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

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Looking for ...

Replacement for feh which can also show video (like Irfanview)

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FRAdir

FRAport publishes the actual direction of operation of Frankfurt Airport (FRA) on their website (07 East / 25 West)

Objective: Gather data from the website, store it in a database for later analysis

Programming exercise in Python in a nutshell

Possible extension: 7-segment LED display

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Data source: http://apps.fraport.de/betriebsrichtung/betriebsrichtung.html

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Source Code: betriebsrichtung.py

#!/usr/bin/python

import urllib, time, sqlite3, smtplib

from email.message import Message

#URl einlesen

sock = urllib.urlopen("http://apps.fraport.de/betriebsrichtung/betriebsrichtung.html")

htmlSource = sock.read()

sock.close()

beg = htmlSource.find("Betriebsrichtung")

betriebsrichtung = htmlSource[beg+60]

if (betriebsrichtung == "0"):

betriebsrichtung = "Ost 07"

else:

betriebsrichtung = "West 25"

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seit = htmlSource.find("seit")

datum = htmlSource[seit+5:seit+15]

zeit = htmlSource[seit+17:seit+25]

sep = ";"

ausgabe = betriebsrichtung+ sep+ datum+" "+ zeit+ sep+ time.strftime("%c")

print ausgabe

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f = open('status.br', 'r')

last = f.readline()

f.close()

#print last

msg = Message()

msg.set_payload(ausgabe)

msg["Subject"] = "Betriebsrichtung: "+betriebsrichtung

msg["From"] = "aelsas@gmail.com"

msg["To"] = "aelsas@gmail.com"

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if (last[0] <> betriebsrichtung[0]):

#print "Wechsel!!!"

f = open('status.br', 'w')

f.write(betriebsrichtung)

f.close

# csv fortschreiben

f = open('br.csv', 'a')

f.write(ausgabe+'\n')

f.close

# html datei updaten

sep = "<br>"

ausgabe = "<div style>"+betriebsrichtung+ sep+ "Seit: " +datum+" "+ zeit+ sep+"Update: "+ time.strftime("%c")+"</div>"

f = open('/var/www/br.html', 'w')

f.write(ausgabe)

f.close

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# datenbank

#if (True):

db = sqlite3.connect('br.db')

cursor = db.cursor()

cursor.execute('''INSERT INTO br(id, richtung, zeit, bemerkung)VALUES(NULL,?,?,?)''', (betriebsrichtung, zeit+";"+datum, ' '))

db.commit()

db.close()

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# email

#if (True):

smtpobj = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 587)

smtpobj.ehlo()

smtpobj.starttls()

smtpobj.ehlo()

smtpobj.login('pegasuselsas@gmail.com', 'mysecretpassword')

smtpobj.sendmail('pegasuselsas@gmail.com', 'aelsas@gmail.com', msg.as_string())

smtpobj.quit

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Email on midday: statusbr.py

#!/usr/bin/python

import smtplib

from email.message import Message

f = open('status.br', 'r')

last = f.readline()

f.close()

msg = Message()

msg.set_payload(last)

msg["Subject"] = "Betriebsrichtung: "+last

msg["From"] = "aelsas@gmail.com"

msg["To"] = "aelsas@gmail.com"

smtpobj = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 587)

smtpobj.ehlo()

smtpobj.starttls()

smtpobj.ehlo()

smtpobj.login('pegasuselsas@gmail.com', 'mysecretpassword')

smtpobj.sendmail('pegasuselsas@gmail.com', 'aelsas@gmail.com', msg.as_string())

smtpobj.quit

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Crontab

betriebsrichtung.py is started hourly

statusbr.py always on midday

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Contact

Alexander Elsas

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 3

D-60323 Frankfurt

Telephone: +49 69-798 33636

Fax: +49 69-798 33639

Email: aelsas@finance.uni-frankfurt.de

Internet: databaselab.de