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Mobile IT Education?
SickKiwi asks: "A
client, a local polytechnic, has recently asked me to come up with
plans for a mobile IT bus to bring technology to rural areas. I
would love to find out what other people in the field have come up
with in the way of workstation layout, OS choices and Internet
connectivity. There doesn't appear to be a huge amount of material
available but as the technology gets smaller, mobile classrooms
become more and more practical." What vehicles would work best
for this kind of application? A converted bus? A mobile home? An
18-wheeler with a heavily customized trailer? What kind of hardware
would you put in it?
We need a little more info on this. How big is their budget? How far does the vehicle need to go? What type of terrain? I ask the last one because I worked for the school system in Nashville for awhile, there are some really remote communities there. As far as OS goes, I would show just about all that you can, I would even include *shudder* MS products...if you can give some more info, I think I can add some to your conversation. ;-)
Sent from your iPad.
A converted bus? A mobile home? An 18-wheeler with a heavily customized trailer?
A fast pony and a satellite spot-beam.
Little known fact -- although the original Pony Express is often used as a symbol for the U.S. Postal Service, it was actually a private company.
--
Off topic and proud since 1947
They'll use the A-Team Bus!!!
~ now you know
Like the library's bookmobile?
Do you like information? Do you like technology? Do you like things that are mobile? Do you enjoy buses? If so, then you will love the mobile IT bus.
I think what we also need to consider is whether or not this bus will be driven by DeVry graduates. They are serious about success, but are they serious about keeping their eyes on the road? I don't really fucking think so.
I'd want those in rural areas to come to urban areas for schooling. Mobile classes will necessarily need to become permanent classrooms in those areas that you want to teach. IT isn't something that is static, like your mom's computer. It is always changing, and unless the IT manager has a firm grasp of the fundamentals, they will be lost without further instruction.
Have the ambitious ones come to the city to learn and take their newfound knowledge back with them.
Unless this is simply a scam you are running.
A mobile home. with 2 x86 desktops, a g4, and a Ultra10, all hooked up to a nice KVM
Linux/Win2k/OsX/Solaris
a single screen (KVM) and it doesn't need much power
Buttsex.
OS Choices
:-P
Well, if that isn't a loaded question...
Of course 99% of the community will say Linux, but I'll be the guy modded down that says go with Win2K. Don't do anything too hairy with the Win2K boxes (to get it so you don't need to worry about crashes), but MS makes good GUI's. Its easier to understand point-and-click with people that don't know how to use a mouse, than command line execution in a shell window.
Sure, you can spend mucho time getting SuSE (or GNOME) to have nothing but point and click, but I ask one question:
What do you have more of (or, more freedom of)?:
Time to setup the systems, or
Money to buy the systems?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Slashdot should remove this posting as "redundant".. segway has already been revealed.
What OS could he possibly use. I don't know, but I bet here on Slashdot he will get a recomendation. Would it be...Linux? Yeah, I thought so.
Ahhh, a great philosophy; every problem can be solved by adding armor plating to your van.
Modified school bus with every other row removed, a server near the front running dumb linux terminals (for heat, space, costs issues) running star office (most places use msoffice but star is very close in interface) with gecko for browsing (keeping it lite). if available run packet radio or if not i would have to say cell for internet uplinks...
all said and done that would make an interesting project.... want help?
#include sig.h
Just use Mr. T's van
It's heluva fast
--- Do you believe in the day?
wow, that would be one expensive trailer/bus...
sounds kinda interesting, but hey, it could give a whole new meaning to a system crash
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
when a plan comes together.
I tell you what though, if Mr. T said "settle down fool, I'll have email back up in a minute!" I don't think I'd call more than once.
~ now you know
I don't know if I'd try to trick out a bus or anything. Maybe just design a network, then put enough PCs in it (carefully placed with all the cords and peripherals attached and ready to go) so it can be removed, hooked up in a few minutes with help from the local citizenry. I'm sure most communities would allow you the use of a local building.
then it HAS to be a Volkswagen, like a Eurovan or Jetta.
Instead of the hows of doing it, I'm more interested in the whys of doing it.
I think something waterproof would be good. I hear there are all kinds of problems with the plumbing in a mobile home.
A pinto filled with laptops should do. :)
It's been a long time.
May sound absurd but I know that AOL and NASCAR had some kind of mobile web access thing going. There is a picture of it on Here. Of course, I am not sure how cost effective it is to have two satellite dishes on top of an old mac truck.
To prevent it from being stolen or the tech inside it taken. Id hate to be the one to insure the thing too.
KNIGHT RIDER MAN! have you not learned your lesson?
-elmar-
The mobile tech demos I've seen have all been in heavily modified 18-wheelers. But they've all been by big companies and I'm sure the cost is exteremely high. I certainly can't speak for how to equip it, but I would think a stripped bus would be the most economical way to go. It's easy to find a used charter or public transportation bus and rip out the passenger seats.
On the flip side, it's much easier to configure the power sources you'll need with an 18-wheeler, especially since many are already built for electric power.
Developers: We can use your help.
How about an iMac as well? Show the different options and systems out there is good. Of course you should have Windows and Linux, but that iMac is from another planet.
A satellite internet connection would be neat too.
Rural could mean (1) West Virginia, or (2) Afganistan
Technology is just to open ended...but I suppose the poster meant Web Surfing
Afterall, a steel Hunting Knife is technology in many parts of the world.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Learning how to setup a WinNT network, setup a Cisco router, or a little JavaScript is NOT an education. These schools, with waaaay too much government and business "help" , have ripped off thousands throughout the 90's.
How much does it cost to go to CompuCollege? ITI? Yea, all your money are us!
These days, all these graduates [*chuckle*]work at Microsoft... but many more are wandering the streets of America wearing signs that read: Will code in VB for food".
Didn't some of those dot bombs have those? Maybe you can find one on e-bay or in a SF newspaper auto add.
Works for them!
I see this as a good opportunity to put some i-Macs to good use. They take up so little space; perfect for a bus or whatever.
Also, OS X is perfect for little kids that haven't yet gotten into the bad habit of using MS Windows.
...it's called a BookMobile!
A school bus would be a huge mistake.
Put it in a trailer that can be pulled by a large rig. This will give you much more space and better heating/cooling options.
A school bus is made to commute students, not sit around w/them working in it. Your eqipment would kill most of your available space. (Not just computers- but power, a.c., all that good stuff)
Not to mention- what do you do when the bus breaks down? Let it sit until you can drop a new engine or tranny in it?
Much better to hitch the trailer to a new truck and keep rolling.
These are just a few of what to seem to be the more obvious reasons why a bus would be a poor choice.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
It sounds like a wonderful project on which to work.
As to the internet connectivity, I was thinking that perhaps a couple of webservers would be a better idea. House some complete web-sites, or create specific html content geared towards the matter at hand. May be easier than looking for signals in rural areas. You would still be able to illustrate the mechanics and experience of hyperlinking.
As to OS, the context would have to be considered. Ideally, I would want a number of OSes running, with largely Linux/FreeBSD on the server side. But one would have to include Windows in some form. I would also want to be able to show Mac OSX and some X-windows desktops as well.
Have fun.
The new iMac seems an obvious choice due to its excellent size (can be practically flush with the wall of the vehicle, no box to store anywhere), excellent ergonomics (flat screen readily adjustable), relatively solid state which is a bonus for a vehicle based classroom.
Also, it has an excellent technological base of UNIX, Java, all unix open source available, as well as MS Office for OSX, and Virtual PC (if you want or need to run anything in a PC environment). For a teaching environment, I can imagine VPC could be extremely useful to test Windows alongside Intel Linux in windows on Mac OSX (if they're comparing operating systems, approaches, etc.).
In sum, the new iMac is pretty all-inclusive with Virtual PC, Unix, Mac, and even MS Office native, not to mention less technical vocations like photography (new iPhoto just rocks), music (iTunes), and movie creation and publication (iMovie and iDVD) which are all excellent ways to introduce creative career paths superquickly and easily.
Good luck,
= Joe =
My thought would be to get a trailer. Then you could simple rent or borrow something to pull it with... and you aren't responsible for taking care of anything mechanical... Depending on your budget this could be as big as a semi trailer - or something as small as a UHaul or something similar.
I would suggest contacting Michael Knight of the much famed Night Rider series... If memory serves, his buddy Devon Miles had an extremely nice 18-wheeler with all types of elctronic goodies including computers hidden within the custom trailer...
Additionally, if you adopt their layout you would have a great parking spot!!!
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
How much time does it really take to set up one machine correctly, with apps, security settings, X, etc, then clone it off to as many as you need with Ghost or something similar?
A Microbus is cheap ($1000). Easy to maintain. Has kitsch value. Tack on a generator for power and you're set. Low complexity == maintainability.
:)
Plus there are many available configurations to choose from in addition to the widespread user community which can advise you on any customizations.
Of course, you would need to keep it in a garage for security, but that would be true no matter what vehicle you put a signifigant amount of tech stuff into.
No, the camper they used in the movie Stripes!
Image a Beowulf caravan of these things!
I would put an x86 machine that boots Linux and WinXP and maybe 98 also, and a Mac that boots OS X and 9. Have two monitors not use a KVM and probably need some projector and screen if you are having classes with more than 2 people. Is this for training or tech support? Becuase the requirements are different. Though I guess you would want both. You would probably want a back area for the techs and a forward area for classes and demos (and SALES?). I suppose you could make money at this. Going to towns who had no computer shop within 50 miles, but then how many people are going to have computers in a town like that? Sounds capital-investment heavy.
-entro
I'm sure there have been developments in uber-cool tricked out cars since MegaCar debuted, but I find it hard to care too much.
Is the poster looking for a big wow! factor, or something more practical?
a mobile education unit, eh? how about a mobile teach with a laptop? what more do ya need? what real need is there for internet connectivity in a classroom environment? i know if my classrooms had more than a teacher's computer for sleep demanding powerpoint presentations i surely would have shaved a few grade points off my gpa. if every student has a laptop and it's connected .. during class ..
btw - the gateway folks or whoever came to one of the city festivals downtown with their bus last year to show off their kewl computers. i don't know how it went for them, but when i go out side, downtown, i really would like to NOT see a computer.
Having spent a brief, but enlightening, stint as long haul OTR driver, I can tell you that a lot of drivers have internet connections through their satellite dishes on their rigs.
/. to do your homework for you.
In short, use their satellite setup (2 or more if you have the money and are really concerned about connection speed), and then configure the router and the network however you normally would.
Technically, this shouldn't be a big deal, especially if you already work as a consultant. That or you are just asking
How about you just take the bus, and bus all those rural types into some normal, stationary lab? Is that really so difficult?
"What vehicles would work best for this kind of application? A converted bus? A mobile home? An 18-wheeler with a heavily customized trailer? What kind of hardware would you put in it? "
I think the main question to answer this are :
1) Budget
2) How many people will be using it
3) What sort of internet connectivit will be avaiable where the bus/van/truck is going. Will there be a phone line, if not then some type of two way satillite would be the answer.
To get a good start on saving money.
1) Make sure you use as much open source/gnu software as you can.
2) Try to get a load of out of date pc's. Most education can be done on ~133mhz. You could get quite a few computers here for $5000. Mabey 3~4 upto date systems for projects that warrent it.
Cruise TT
Just make sure that you allow yourself the ability to check the van/bus/trailer out so you can be the person to bring the LAN party to the rural keggers.
-J
Most training areas that I've seen would be semi-trailers, but the problem with them is width: the instructor ends up teaching in a long hallway. (Unless they haul around one of those houses cut in half, each part sitting on a semi. hmm... classy. wait, impossible to assemble in the city...)
For interior hardware, I would want a distributed system -- since the trailer is in a rural area, it has to be able to switch configurations quickly and easily.
are they going to want to have 6 trailers? one for NetBSD, one for linux, one for microsoft, one for apple, one for cisco, one for sun? heck no. that gets expensive, and you need to cut a costs somewhere; there's less money to be made in a rural area (with less people) than a urban area (with lots of people).
mook
When I was in the Marine Corps, we gutted an old mainframe trailer (approx 40' semi trailer), and built areas for workstations. Primary use was for data processing related to scoring and timing the Marine Corps Marathon, but we also used it at Ft. AP Hill to teach Computer Merit Badge to the Boy Scouts. Forgeting the OS and workstation/server configurations, you need to make sure that you have AC (as well as heat). We used satellite for internet access at AP Hill, but we'd use ISDN or DSL at the race site in DC (more reliable then the satellite). Oh, and remember you'd also need a generator. If you want more specifics email me @ marshall dot lewis at starband dot net. I can also get you in touch with the guy that took it over after I got out of the corps, I know he did a lot or work with it.
Personally, I doubt it would be very effective in teaching people about the Internet. Sure, it can teach people a little, but is it really going to stick around long enough to teach little Timmy about Linux kernels and such? Most people shut off their IT learning capability after 'double click My Connection and hit connect'. Of course, some people could really soar with it.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
We managed to fit 12 standard slimline Gateway desktops with 15" monitors in it and an instructor's station with a large TV for a display, but will soon be going to flat panel displays and hopefully LCD projector to allow more workspace.
All stations are connected with an old 10mb hub and the instructor station is a "print server"(shared printer).
As for internet connectivity, I would suggest looking into finding someone nearby where you could park that has high speed internet you could share off of for some free training. Wireless would present a problem for rural areas if no one is using it nearby.
Satellite is getting a little cheaper and if buying/conversion prices are too steep businesses will donate to get their name on a plaque inside your mobile van. This I know firsthand.
I worked for a Neighborhood Network ( education for those less fortunate. While we maintained a fixed lab, we took laptops to outlying communities in the bush of Alaska for training and internet access. We were lucky to have a local ISP that donated a free dial up. Slow, but using two modems, a router, and some time setting it up, all were hooked through a hub to the router. Speed wasn't too bad for surfing and email. Used Win9x for training...that is what the kiddies like, and also trained on *nix in a dual boot on the laptops. Total cost, including a little Geo Tracker for transportation was under $15k. Just used local community centers, senior centers, and churches. It can be done!!!
Cheap laptops may be an oxymoron, but there are low-end PII laptops real cheap. Even if you don't expect internet connectivity, connections between the workstations is important.
My idea... Van with a pull behind trailer. Get a couple of E-Z Up tents, folding chairs and tables.
Securing the laptops is the biggest problem I see...
First, let me say that I think this is a commendable idea -- I grew up in towns of one to three thousand people, well outside of major urban areas, and any access I had to computers prior to high school was a special experience. As the technology needed to do highly mobile, Internet-connected computing gets smaller, cheaper, and more reliable, this kind of thing just becomes more and more appealing.
As far as the actual equipment used is concerned, I think there are better ways to go than a big truck full of gear. I think the best example to follow might be the sort of "mobile lab" starting to be used by a lot of schools: inexpensive laptops for each student, with 802.11 connecting them to a "server on wheels", which in turn handles user profiles/home directories, Internet connectivity, etc. If there's not going to be reliable hard-wired net connections in many of the areas, look into business wireless service; a number of digital cellular networks are starting to offer ~128Kb/sec dialup connections, which can certainly (with a proxy cache or compressed VNC gateway running on the classroom server) handle serving 15-20 students for basic email and browsing.
For hardware, if you're looking at new purchases, I think you'd be hard pressed to find better machines than the recent iBooks: they're sturdy, compact, fairly inexpensive (especially with Apple's educational discounts), and can run either OS-X or Linux without a hitch. With a decent KDE or GNOME setup, they could look and feel to the user eerily like a Win2k/XP machine, but you save $500+ on application licenses for each box.
Go for it, but don't forget that things have progressed well past the point where computing requires big iron and lots of space.
I did something similar when I was at Washingtonpost.com. They wanted to simplify their show setups, so we came up with the idea for a "roaming cybercafe". It was very much a prototype, but I the tech was sound.
Our vehicle was a stretch Lincoln Navigator. It won't work for what you want, but it was good for us. It was a Navigator SUV, cut and stretched 10 feet. Each side had a 10 foot "gull wing" door at the top which swung up on actuators. Underneath each door was a actuator-mounted table with 3 systems on it. In the back of the thing was the generator, and there were 2 seats up front (driver and passenger) with the bulk of the backend gear mounted in a small rack between and just behind the seats. If I did it again with more money, I would have used flat panels because they are lighter and wouldn't have needed the motorized tables.
First, the internet connection. We used a 2-way satellite dish mounted on the top of the vehicle. The dish we purchased was specifically designed for ease-of-use mobile mounts. It had its own compass and GPS unit, and a motorized turntable. Inside the vehicle, we had the equipment for it mounted. All the driver had to do was select the deploy options from the menu on the device, and it would deploy the dish, track it to the correct rough position, then use the satellite signal to finetune the positioning. A unit like this was very important for making setup go smoothly.
Second, our "backend" servers. Since we were using satellite, we decided to set up a proxy server on the vehicle to try and make the satellite lags a little better. This worked very well for us, since all of the people surfing were supposed to be on the same website. But I think it would be a good idea regardless. You can also run a local website on this box (maybe a portal-type page for your homepage). And this is a good place for a DHCP server.
Third, the workstations themselves. We used NT Workstation installs, for at least marginal security. Used policies to lock down the systems a little bit and make sure that people couldn't cause too much damage. It helped us that we only had 6 computers, and usually 3 or 4 people on staff to watch them.
The miscellaneous is all fairly important as well. We used a 12kw gasoline generator which was mounted in the back of the vehicle and drew off the same tank as the engine (which was expanded). I think we had it set up so that we could get 8 hours of 75% load. We also had a connection so that we could connect to a power source at the setup site. This required a decent power management system, but it worked just fine. We did have problems with the exhaust from the generator (because it was so close to the workstations) and ended up having to do some custom work to vent it out the top of the vehicle. But surprisingly enough, the sound wasn't that bad when it was running.
We also had a sound system installed, so that we could do presentations/classes. Just microphone hookups in the front, a rack-mount DJ quality CD player, small amp, and a few speakers around the thing. I think it's not a bad idea for any application, because there's always going to be a use, even if it's just background noise.
All told, I designed the system so that it could be setup by any marketing droid that took it out. Flip a few switches to power gear up, deploy the satellite, power up the workstations, and that's it. And for the few times I saw it in operation before I moved out of the area, it worked nicely. There were a few bugs, but like I said, it was a prototype.
Things I would have done differently this time? First, flat panels. They take up less space. This may or may not work for you, depending on the vehicle you use and how many workstations you want to get in there (and your budget). Second, for your application I might also set up a wireless network. It wouldn't cost that much to add, and while your customers probably don't have laptops with wireless NICs, it would give you a little flexibility for use, as well as letting you roam around with a troubleshooting laptop, if need be.
Hope that helps a little. If you have any questions about what we did, post a followup to this.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Rig: Use a trailer. You can hook it up to a different vehicle when the bus/rv is in the shop.
;) Also, you might want to look at thin clients??
OS: Linux, *BSD, Win2K, and Mac. Gotta show people the differences out there. We all have our pref's, but poeple need to be prepared for what they may be forced to use. Even if we're all so sure what is superior, gotta show people to convince them
Apps: Think about this one. People want to use applications, not OS's. This may effect above.
Net: I suppose it depends upon what kinda wireless you may have available in the area.
General: By rural, what do you mean? Is this an agricultural area? Modern farming uses a lot of IT these days, gps, chemical measurement, databases, sat photos even. Check with your local farmers/agri extension office. What do they use? What do they want to use? How can they help you? If it's not agri, but forestry, mining, tourism, light manufacturing, other, the same applies. Talk to the locals.
How many people will it serve at once? If not everyone can be on a machine at once, what other resources will you provide for people who are waiting that can enhance things? Video with projector for instruction while waiting? Other not-specifically IT technology education, like some basic electronics or radio stuff? These things can all be quickly unloaded and expand the number of people served and complement the IT stuff itself.
Sig?
Sigue Sigue Sputnik!!!
Terminal Services / Metaframe and winterms (Wise, etc.) are probably the way to go. Put a (donated) big-ass SMP server on the backend, and a bunch of (donated) software on there, and off you go. If you want to offer more diversity, add in a second big-ass Sun server and use the winterm that are also XTerms. Opensource is great, but I'm guessing that the folks coming to these classes would prefer to learn mainstream skills that they can use at home and work.
Although the bus has the "cool" factor, Cost wise and bang for your buck I would go with there current car and a box of Notebooks in reality the $50k your gonna spend on a bus can buy alot of laptops and most places the bus would go will have desks or tables already there ;)
--
That being said If I where to go for a bus/truck ect I would take an existing school bus take out every other seat and add a small desk with enough room for the keyboard/mouse combo route the cables down to the existing storage under the bus add rack mounts and put the the computers down there (In the bus you would have to add extra AC with that many kids / computers plus noise) Put Flat panels attached to the seat infront of each desk and have multiple OS's on each computer..
---"Some where in the heavens they are waiting.."
I see you're also in NZ...
If your client isn't the Waikato Polytech, ring them and ask them. They had a bus a couple years back that had 10-20 computers in it from memory, arranged around the walls. I'm not sure about its power supply, but I think an extension cord from the roof of the bus (perhaps 3-phase)? did the job.
AGP, PCI, IDE, SCSI, ISA, USB1.1, and the all new 2002 USB 2.0, 0 to 480Mb/sec in .0000002 seconds.
You can put flames on the side of your case and pretend your computer is a hot rod.
I recommend a satellite Internet provider like Starband or Wild Blue (when it comes out).
This photo from the interior of a mobile lab may give you ideas.
A number of organizations who attempt to tackle the digital divide are considering something similar.
I would think the actual set up you want would depend on what you wanted people to get out of the experience. If you want to people to learn hardware skills you'll need a different set up than if you wanted to teach them MS Office.
If you don't actually need to provide the classroom space, I once used a neat mobile set up which had a half a dozen small Windows CE devices wirelessly networked to a hefty laptop than acted as a server. It was all packaged in a wheeled box that fitted into the trunk of a small car.
Have the ambitious ones come to the city to learn and take their newfound knowledge back with them.
You expect them to go back? I'm reminded of a former resident's characterization of a town in backwoods Ontario: "It's reverse natural selection. The smart and ambitious ones move to the big city, the rest stay here and breed."
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Below is a link to the local "Internetbus". E-mail addresses are under the info tab.
s h. htm#
http://www.tampere.fi/kirjasto/nettinysse/engli
I recommend getting a truck that looks like Mr Haney's from "Green Acres"
The Travellers School Charity has a "budget" mobile computer classroom project in the UK. with 4 laptops 1 good one, and 3 ancient pentiums. Solar panels, windmill, banks of heavy jelly batterries in an old canteen truck. check it out - I've just uploaded new pics to http://www.tsct.co.uk/tsc-news.html
I don't know all the details, but a local non-profit (local to Grand Rapids, Michigan anyway) recently did exactly what you're talking about.
I doubt that their budget was very large. On the other hand, they may have just gotten a grant (standard procedure for a non-profit).
Here's what they call what they did:
"MOLLIE (Mobile Learning Laboratory for Information Education--20 laptops connected wirelessly to hub which is connected to Internet)".
If you're interested, I can connect you with Ray Hoag and Dirk Koning (the people behind the project.
Otherwise, you can probably get in touch with them through http://www.grcmc.org.
The best way would be to get a bus with 1st class airline seats mounted in instead of bus seats. The ones that you can put a screen right in back of the seat in front of you. A trailer truck I fear would be too loud. Unless you insulate the trailer well (The truck's diesel engine would be loud and would be needed for the air conditioning). The advantage of the trailer truck would be the extra room. I believe both Bus and Truck engines can act as a generator when it is not being used for transportation. Remember get skylights. And either one of these vehicles can have advertising on the side.
The computer itself could be a small laptop (B-series Fujitsu for example) and seperate the screen from the keyboard. mount a small keyboard on the tray table and stick the computer under the seat with an easy to reach boot switch, CD-ROM Drive, and Floppy Drive.
The O/S choice depends on what you want to teach. If you are teaching Joe Smoe from Company X productivity teach him what he will be using. The easiest would to do dual boot systems and then reboot as needed. Or if you want to, you could install VMware and skip all the reboots.
If you are teaching Linux then Linux. If you are teaching Windows then Windows. If you are doing both... well then do both.
For internet connectivity use a satilite provider. It won't matter on your location.
Your limitations will be primarily floor space, power and connectivity. These will drive layout to a very large degree. You will have problems with heat in a confined space as well. Arrangement will largely be dictated by the width of the chosen vehicle.
Since your audience can be assumed to be newbies, and since your function appears to be non-platform-specific (web access, etc), the OS should be chosen for stability and remote administration capabilities. The hardware should be chosen for space and power features.
I would suggest either running MacOS X on new iMacs (for space/power/remote admin/stability) or running Linux/GNOME or Linux/KDE on ldaptops, with external keyboards, mice and flat panel screens (for the same reasons, though the admin skill level will need to be higher, and it's more difficult to reload the OS/reconfigure the system if needed).
Also, in either case, you should be able to get some assistance from vendors in making this work.
For power, you can use readily-available generators that can be packed into tight spaces. For connectivity, you will probably need a microwave tower (if you can get line of site) or a bidirectional encrypted radio or satellite link. You might talk to the local telecom companies, or the local TV stations - they both have to solve this problem.
-jeff
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
SGI used to (still does?) have a 18-wheeler with a bunch of their technology in it. It visited the small town high school I used to attend a couple years back. At the time they had it full of a couple of Onyx2s and lots of O2s and Octane2s.
While not for education, per say, it'd still be valuable to check out for some ideas if it still exists and you can get access to it.
If your pupils are real geeks, your most important piece of equipment is a filter to make Slashdot and pr0n unavailable, else there's no way you can get their attention. ... -1 Insightful ... -1 Funny ... The most amazing Slashdot phenomenon ever, perhaps.
-1 Interesting
Since it's for a "local polytechnic," I wouldn't think their budget allows for many high-end options. And I'd also think that most of these mobile connectivity solutions are geared for big business, and if so you'd expect them to cost a fortune. Maybe there's some way to rent or lease that kind of connectivity equipment? Or even better, if it's for educational purposes (granted the polytechnic's probably not a public school), maybe the telephone or cable companies would offer discounts.
Looks like this guy's going to be making a LOT of phone calls.
Developers: We can use your help.
Motorhomes Cost at leat $40,000
School Busses Cost ~$80,000
Commercial Buses Cost >$100,000
18 Wheelers cost >$100,000
There is also the cost of insurance and maintence, neither one of which is trivial.
So here is what I what I would do instead:
1)Buy big pickup with shell/cargo van. Maybe 2/3. These don't need to be new.
2)Attach shell with waterproofing(on pickup) and racks for equipment.
3)Buy wireless lan hubs and network cards from linksys.
4)Buy folding card tables, 8 man tents (the ones you can stand in), and folding chairs from sports authority.
5)Buy laptops from Dell with Win2k.
6)Install all software you should ever need. Make OS work well.
7)Use Norton Ghost to make the OS easy to restore to perfect working order.
8)Build a HUGE fileserver runing linux (put shockproofing in the van so the HD's don't get fooed up).
9)Make SAMBA/unix acounts on aforementioned fileserver for each user who logs in.
10)If you want to be able to get internet acess beyond your little LAN, use a couple starband satellite uplinks to connect. Or equiv. service.
11) Find a source of power, or buy a generator. I would just use local power.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
Lowest cost, most flexible. Go wireless to simplify setup. MAYBE run a wire out the door to a satellite lashup or CDPD connection.
Consider something along the lines of library carrells with wheels. Load them into a semi-trailer, or a Uhaul, as budget permits. Get to the site, roll the carrells down ramp and into big room (e.g. gymnasium), proceed to teach class.
This solves several problems---
you don't have to work aisles into your vehicles--dead space is expensive
you don't need HVAC in your vehicle--also expensive
you don't need clean power in your vehicle
Actually armor plateing was rarely put on the van. There was usually some other thing to put the armor on...
Oh...and how to make more than one net connection work? Well Win2k had that nice "Share my connection feature" which might work, or you might have to put a load balencing server as a gateway. But if you read slashdot, linux as a gateway is not probbably a new idea to you...
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
I don't know if they are still doing this or not but SGI used to come to Va Tech (and other locations) with their Magic Bus, a giant, black, 18 wheeler, filled with SGI machines that did really cool graphics demos. You could walk through, test things out.
It was a draw the geeks out mobile attraction and if you search for "SGI Magic Bus" you will get tons of links to announcements from 1996-1997 about it.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
do you post this in every thread? i am getting pretty tired of seeing it. if you think slashdot moderation is really that bad, the best thing for you to do is go somewhere else. it is very irritating reading something by some disgruntled poster who thinks someone cares what he has to say. the internet is a big place, go somewhere else.
This is a test post.
...and spirit. It should allow no barriers, such as Windows or Gates. The mind should be free to explore. That is why this has already been done.
Tampere has converted an old bus into a mobile internet classroom. The bus is equipped with 10 IBM NetVista X40 computers and the back of the bus serves as a classroom and has a data projector. Internet connection can be made with WLAN (there are 10 WLAN equipped "bus stations") or with cellular phones if outside WLAN coverage. There is some info available in English. From these pics you can check the bus layout.
Three words: The Sneakers Van. You might have to get Whistler to be a teacher for disabled kids, and mother can swap conspiracy theories with the rural hicks.
On another note, it would be cool if someone expanded this concept to a tour bus service for those long hauls. eg. I charter a bus from say SillyCone Valley for a trip to vegas. Get some guy to drive it and just play counterstrike, total annihilation, etc. in the bus for the 9-12 hour drive. That would kick ass. Of course you'd have to mount a mobilized satellite tracker and dish on the roof for Starband Satellite Internet Access so that you could run the webcam from the bus so that you're cronies back in their cubicles can watch you living it up!
A very good suggestion, but I raise two points. First, Mac hardware is expensive versus PC clones, and it's a lot harder to find places willing to donate Macs to the cause than old PCs. Second, you have to have some (not tons, but not zero) Mac savvy to keep your network happy, and if SickKiwi doesn't have the expertise he'll have to learn it or hire it.
Still, despite these pitfalls it's worth some consideration.
Virg
Dare I say something about a Beowulf Carpool?
Nahhhh.......
Groove Salad -- a nicely chilled plate of ambient grooves and beats.
Coming from a family with a lot of rural dwellers, I wonder what exactly the point is. The rural communities that I visit have plenty of net access, most are already getting high speed cable connections. Of course this is nc, not iowa. Still, farmers everywhere have some pretty cool technology used for crop management. What is this supposed to show them?
Am I the only one thinking Unimog?
Obviously the easiest thing to do is to have an SUV with Starband and a proxy server in it with an 802.11 access point parked next to a tent with some tables and chairs and a bunch of laptops. Now, I'm assuming you do want to use this in inclement weather too. Then...
Use the largest van (trailer) you can legally drive around with (53' I think) and build in a slide out section on one side. If you figure the front five feet go to HVAC, servers, a generator (sound insulated, 5 kW may be more than enough, two 5 kW if you want to be sure and have a backup) and storage and use 4' per workstation you should be able to fit a total of 24 workstations in. I would seriously recommend using laptops with 802.11, again Starband and a proxy. During transport and parking of the van these can be stored in a secured location. You want to be careful you don't have too much trouble with vibration damage too, not much of a problem if you've got a suspension system in the vehicle or trailer.
Keep in mind you'll need an exit at both ends, you don't want to be the guy responsible for a bunch of kids getting incinerated.
Be careful with the lighting too. Think about a nice warm environment, the kind you'd like to work in.
Most importantly... If you drive a beat up old truck in a rural area, the people will view you as one of them. Well, at least if you wear a dirty flannel shirt, paste the truck with George W Bush for president, confederate flag (now american ones are ok too), and Calvin pissing on a chevy symbol stickers. I also recommend getting some nice naked lady mudflaps and a gun rack.
Yup. Shitfire, bobby. That'd do tha trick.
My plan so far (funds permitting), is to get a full-size schoolbus (deisel, for the hope of eventually using some kind of bio-mass), a teepee, and a bunch of laptops. Equip everything with 802.11a adapters, and put my pc in the bus with a big antena on the roof, another big antena on the teepee, and bring a few spares. When we get there, we contact as many locals as we can, looking for a feed, and if we bring spare 802.11a equipment to use, I doubt any gathering is more than 10 miles or so from a connection of some kind? Anyway, even if it wouldn't work everywhere, we could probably pull it off at least at nationals (the big one, in July).
After a few seasons, maybe the rainbow geeks could organize some sort of grand open-source project? Especially with all the time we'll have on our hands during long stints at gatherings. ;)
Cheers, Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
painted with psychedelic colors and flowers.
Just be sure when you head back to civilization with the IT bus that the guerilla fighters don't follow you.
After 9/11, the Red Cross in NYC got millions and millions of dollars in donated technology. On of the things that they have setup for the Red Cross is a Mobile Command Unit. Basically it's a truck with a pull out rack of approximately 25 laptops with Wireless LAN cards. In addition, they have a bunch of iPAQs with WLAN cards. I idea is that if a disaster occurs somewhere, the MCU could roll up and setup anywhere.
Now you can use the same idea for a mobile school. Instead of getting a cramped unventilated bus, just get a mid-sized van. Setup a pullout rack with laptops in them. [I think Dell had this type of rack for schools] Setup wireless lan connected to a server onboard of the van. It might be possible to use direcPC Satellite internet so that you are not reliant on location.
With this setup, the students can just pick up a laptop and tables could be setup or they can even go inside a building [a WLAN bridge might be necessary] and start learning.
In terms of OS, you have to remember what your primary focus is. [Not knowing that, I'm going to take a stab] It is to bridge the digital divide by educating people in technology. It should not be a battle ground in an OS-war. I would definitely setup Win2k because of its simplicity. [Hey, how many people will hack a IT Van?]. In addition, I'd setup a ghost image on the server and before or after each event, wipe the changes and ghost all the laptops to a standard configuration.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Call Jayco or Coachmen and ask for a bid to build a double-pop-out. That's a motor home where both sides slide out, creating a much larger (almost square) internal space. This should get you 8 or more "workstations", plus A/C, generator, "plumbing", etc.
As for the kit itself, I'd use something standardized, off-the-shelf, and reliable. If I were doing it, I'd get some nice Dell Optiplex boxes since they'll boot Linux, Win(whatever), or anything else you'd want. Possibly a couple Macs as well, not sure.
Make SURE whatever you use has removable hard drives, and get gel suspension storage to hold the drives when the mobile is "rolling".
And don't skimp on the spare parts!
Meow!
Yes, that's really my e-mail. Don't change a thing.
What our organization built was a mobile rack on wheels that holds holds 20 iMacs with an Airport wireless station.
In our case, DHCP addresses are supplied by a in-building server (cart is mobile within the building). Adding a NAT/DHCP server wouldn't be hard -- connectivity then only has to be to the NAT box.
The rack can be wheeled to where it's needed and the portables readied for use within minutes. Wireless eliminates the cabling problem at the site and makes doing maintenance "back at the shop" pretty easy.
The cart is physically about 5 X 4 X 2 feet on modestly large wheels. Crafting something that could be lifted into a van or even split across several boxes should be straightforward.
The nice aspect is the approach can be used if a bus with seating is available, but also wheeled into a building where a substantial room is available.
Connectivity will always hard regardless of the final design. Telephone some places, ethernet others, wireless (2.4 gig is becoming common in rural areas), even the Hughes satellite link (saw it at Comdex), might be reasonable. I suspect that connectivity will actually be one of the toughest aspects of the design. You might even end up wanting to ensure a dedicated link back to "something" ala what TV stations use for remotes (the vans with antennas that can telescope to 50 feet).
The iMac/airport solution is cheap, allowing money to be spent on ensuring good I-net connectivity (the hard part of this task).
I haven't done exactly what the original poster is asking for, but I have done a lot of trade shows and various demos.
You do not want a CRT in a mobile van. Ever. You do not want to pack them all up before you move ten feet because the guy who told you where you could park didn't have that authority. You do not want to deal with the even trivial cases of the socket getting flaky with the CRT, let alone with the cases where something will break in spite of your best efforts. No matter what you do, you will eventually have to deal with union guys and, unless you watch them like a hawk, there will be cases where the CRT's are packed improperly. You do not want to have a bunch of CRT's running in summer. Ever.
For the same reason and for the walking-away problem, you do not want to have laptops or separate LCD screens, because some union guy is going to think it's a great idea to stack them up to save space.
You could conceivably build everything into a set of consoles so that they didn't have to be stored. Then when they broke, which they would because nobody ever puts in enough shock protection, you could have dead machines sitting there until you got around to crawling behind and fixing them, which you will be a lot less likely to do than you think now.
Something like the new iMac would be good. Fairly durable, light, and bottom-heavy, but most important, you can put it in a box. Most of the volume will be air, and the screen will not be flat on a box side, so it's inherently resistant to packing problems.
Sure, teach 'em Windows, keep 'em slaves.
Maybe something like the mobile construction site vehicles in C&C Red Alert.
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
I would look at the feasability of losing the bus and carrying a number of notebook computers with wireless networking. It doesn't give you the actual classroom space but that should be easy to arrange in rural communities - town halls, school cafeterias etc. Terrain becaomes a non-issue as you can carry the ruggedized box of notebooks in whatever make sense. If actual internet access is not available you could provide your own server with cached/mirrored sites for the demonstrations - this would also keep people from going to inappropriate sites.
Ideas are easy - Implementation...
What our organization built was a mobile rack on wheels that holds holds 20 iMacs with an Airport wireless station.
In our case, DHCP addresses are supplied by a in-building server (cart is mobile within the building). Adding a NAT/DHCP server wouldn't be hard -- connectivity then only has to be to the NAT box. The new Airports (50 connections, 128 bit security, NAT) look cool and might ease this step markedly).
The rack can be wheeled to where it's needed and the portables readied for use within minutes. Wireless eliminates the cabling problem at the site and makes doing maintenance "back at the shop" pretty easy.
The cart is physically about 5 X 4 X 2 feet on modestly large wheels. Crafting something that could be lifted into a van or even split across several boxes should be straightforward.
The nice aspect is the approach can be used if a bus with seating is available, but also wheeled into a building where a substantial room is available.
Connectivity will always hard regardless of the final design. Telephone some places, ethernet others, wireless (2.4 gig is becoming common in rural areas), even the Hughes satellite link (saw it at Comdex), might be reasonable. I suspect that connectivity will actually be one of the toughest aspects of the design. You might even end up wanting to ensure a dedicated link back to "something" ala what TV stations use for remotes (the vans with antennas that can telescope to 50 feet).
The iMac/airport solution is cheap, allowing money to be spent on ensuring good I-net connectivity (the hard part of this task I believe).
Tour busses like used in the music industry shuttling your favorite bands from city to city already have in place most of the electrical requirements needed for this project. Since just about every one has a few TVs, stereos, ridiculous lighting... Satellite TV... assorted gadgets. The industry is also used to coming up with strange configurations for these... A semi trailer would have to be built from the ground up. I think that would be rather cost prohibitive. You can't just use any run of the mill old freight rig... The busses could be used or new... I would recommend actually rackmounting the computers down in the cargo holds and having an industrial cooling solution... It would cut down on the noise inside the bus. Also the cargo area is great for holding extra networking gear, course literature... If someone seriously wants to build one... get in touch with me: JC
From roughly the same era. The first thing that popped into my mind:
Classroomotron!! Transforms from a huge flying robot into a computer classroom with 20 networked linux desktop computers (if they were Win boxes, Classroomotron would have to be a Decepticon.)
If I remember correctly, Classroomotron was added to the cartoon to meet the "x number of hours of educational television" requirement...
;-)
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
eBay has had a bunch of these buses selling for the last few months. Definitely worth a look.
a mobile IT bus to bring technology to rural areas
Is this like introducing fire to early humans? Or is it like selling freezers to Eskimos? Are those living in rural areas really going to benefit from this?
I think we can all agree that broadband connections in many urban areas are either severely lacking or extremely expensive... so why would they be any cheaper in rural areas? Sure, there could be a community effort to bring broadband to all, but I'm guessing this bus is not going to be visiting those communities anyways. Local telcos are forced to sell rural telephone lines below cost (offset by higher prices in urban areas); however, broadband does not fall under this regulation.
So one day, suddenly the mobile-tech bus drives up and stops next to Billy Bob's house. Billy Bob doesn't know anything about computers and probably is not going to understand the possibilities of them. But if Billy Bob has children, they may be very much interested in the mobile-tech bus and the goodies inside. But how does the mobile-tech bus really do anything for the rural inhabitants? It's like parading around in a Ferrari and saying, "Gee, isn't this cool? You could have this, but you can't afford it... sorry."
So now you've managed to generate some interest in computers and broadband in rural areas, but they still won't be able to make use of it.
I'd like to offer you a solution to the problem, but I cannot. I would recommend that you build your mobile-tech bus while at the same time working with local ISPs or government to promote broadband, etc so hopefully when the bus shows up, you're not trying to sell freezers to Eskimos -- instead, you have a plan for dispersing the technology to those who you're hoping will benefit from it.
Agreed. It was interesting at first, even though it was off topic in the first place, but at least the first time I saw it was vaguly interesting. But when you place it in every thread, you lose any authoirty you once had. If you want to get your point accross, document your research and make a web page or put it in your jounal.
Sleep is for the weak!
Get one really spiffy laptop with lots of disk. Run linux or bsd with samba and wireless networking. Buy as many more mid-grade laptops as you can with whatever flavor of Windows sells the most in your communities of interest. Put a disk image on the spiffy laptop so you can copy the OS back to the mid-grade laptops you use for the locals, without having to go through an install per se when it gets hosed. Also buy a Hardigg case to carry it all around in. Sell the bus and buy a pick-up.
Have a day!
Bill Gates is a communist -- he's just more equal than the rest of us.
In March of 97 I was hired by the DCCCD to design such an animal. It was called Net On Wheels. We converted a mini-bus (like they use for handicapped people) by putting 2 tables on either side with an aisle down the middle. We had 5 laptops running I-Share, with one acting as the main server. Our connection was a paltry dialup using a cell phone and getting 9600 kb/s if we sat right under the tower. I know bandwith is higher using CDPD, but it was really expensive back then. I don't know if it's as expensive as it was then. We looked into microwave, but in some of the areas we drove we couldn't get line of sight. It was used to introduce folks that lived in Housing developments to the Internet and job searches using the Internet. Quite advanced for that time. We actually found jobs for several people, which I thought was pretty cool.
Of course, the MCSE courses would be taught in the short yellow bus.
I've seen two slightly different solutions here in Finland.
The first one is in Tampere and it is built into an old articulated city bus. The front part has the computers and the rear section contains the classroom. It has a homepage which contains an English summary and pictures (click "kuvia"). Connectivity for this bus is handled by WLAN at ten fixed stops or by GSM datalinks anywhere else.
The second bus was built at the Lappeenranta University of Technology. It is based on an old library bus. The page is only available in Finnish, but if you click on the picture with the text "varustelu", you should be able to make out most of the technical specifications. Connectivity is handled by WLAN to a base station Linux computer that has a combo NIC, an ISDN adapter and a modem. The solution allows connections nearly anywhere without having to run cables to the bus.
This is only relevant if you plan on running the hardware while driving: Me and a friend used to VJ at parties, and used to transport our gear (several laptops+mixer+monitors+beamer+miles of cable+whatnot) using a chevy van (modified ambulance, 8 yrs old). While one person would drive, the other could sit in the back in an old dentist's chair with a shitload of hardware to play with. Using 2 linked GSMs (can you say 14k4 blows?) even some mail and surfing was possible. Downside? after a while, a suspicious amount of bad blocks turned up on the hard disks. now we never use the gear while on the move; instead we got a small industrial PC with compactflash from a company called Advantech http://www.advantech.com/embeddedsw/ which has served us very well. We have tried both embedded linux and embedded NT, and run very smoothly. Of course, embedded linux is the cheaper of the two, but prepare for some heavy tweaking and more lilo than you could ever want. Good luck, Acid_Zebra
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
A ten-ton truck with a box body on the back, 12 laptops inside, plus a video projector hooked up to the tutor's machine:
http://www.northland.ac.uk/outreach/bus.html
The drawback is it has to hook up to mains electricity at a local authority school and last time I saw it, they hadn't licked the internet problem (cellular? in rural Northumberland? Ho ho, you *have* to be joking).
Not exactly built for the rough stuff (it only has to get to the schools), but you could always stick it on the back of a Scammel!).
You might check the boating magazines.
I have seen several system for keeping a boat connected both when moored and when moving.
R.Parr
Temporal Arts
I may get flamed or mod'd down for this but I seriously think the best option are iBooks.
:)
Apple has come up with some pretty cool mobile classroom type systems.
I would imagine it this way.
A road case, like bands use, with custom foam in the middle to hold the desired number of laptops. All laptops would be wired within the road case for charging purposes. These can then be taken out of the case and handed out to students in a classroom. The case is configured with an Airport base station and all the laptops are configured with airport.
The case would travel to the location via any means available. The teacher would simple plug power in to the road case, and into a network connection and hand out the laptops and you're off to the races.
This could be modified to handle dialup or isdn connections.
This solution offers several advantages.
1) Vehicles are expensive - using this method you do not have to pay for insurance or maintenance on a vehicle. You also do not need a dedicated driver.
2) You make use of available space - Students and teachers do not have to leave the class room. Classes can be held practically anywhere.
just my 2 cents
A tour bus has nice seats with tray tables. Most have TVs so everyone can view them.
Simple enough- replace tray tables with keyboard trays and keyboards/mice (maybe trackballs or pads for this crunched space). LCD monitors on backs of seats.
If you wanted to use it to teach, the TVs provide a perfect chance for it and you could always rip out a few seats in the front for a desktop and instructor.
As for the computers, tour buses have overhead bins. Build puters with smallish form factors, and mount them up there.
Seems perfect.
Buy a small van/SUV. Buy laptops with 802.11. Get an access point, and a server.
When you go tech, find a local church, school, or other hall with folding tables. Slap down the laptops, turn on the AP, and you're good to go.
It's very simple. It's durable, laptops are made to be moved around. You can increase or decrease the number of clients with ease, just add or remove laptops. You can probably also carry enough for 50-100 people, if you needed to do that. Also, laptops with batteries won't die if you accidently blow a breaker somewhere.
It's not fancy, but it would be easy and cheap.
Photovoltaic cells produce DC, standard hardware runs on AC, but converts that immediately to DC. Use equipment with DC power supplies and save the nasty AC/DC mess you encounter with photovoltaics.
Gateway supplied DC PCs to a project building a computer lab in a village in Nicaragua--it removed a ton of complexity and cost. The computer lab and satellite dish equipment runs entirely on DC.
Do this in the rolling IT lab and it's a lot simpler and cheaper.
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
I just wanted to tell about my dedicated teacher from middle-school circa 1980.
We only had 3 TRS-80 Model III computers for the entire COUNTY, and he taugh the gifted program at 4 different schools.
He begged the county for a bus that was about to be scrapped and spent some of his own money to have it turned into a 10 seat lab.
I didn't ride the SMALL bus to school...I learned how to program in it while it was parked.
Eventually, the county gave him a decent budget, and the next year the computer bus was greatly improved.
To me, Ted Huber will always be one of the most importnat people in my life.
If I ever become rich in technology, I want to permanently fund an institution and name it after Ted Huber.
If anyone knows of a computer bus earlier than this one, let me know.
My info can be found at:
http://homepage.mac.com/bentai/
"When do I click once, and when do I double click?"
There's an easy way to answer that question.
Open Windows Explorer and go to Tools -> Folder Options. At the bottom of the dialog box, there is a "Click items as follows" selection box. Select the bottom radio button, and everything on your desktop acts like the Web -- single click to execute; mouseover to select.
That's not to say that Windows doesn't have its share of usability issues. However, this one is no longer one of them.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
In rural areas, Internet connectivity options are going to be pretty limited, unless the the specific sites and dates for visits are known months in advance. Even then it could be pretty hard. I think satellite-type connectivity options might be your only choice. You might want to check out these guys: DirecPC -- http://www.direcpc.com/ Starband -- http://www.starband.com/ OnSat -- http://www.onsat.net/
Here's what you should be looking into for your equipment (keep in mind some you can buy later on).
Vehical: Mobile Home or a Bus would be your best bet as they provied ample size for people and equipment.
Computers: Try to stick with small stuff. Laptops would be nice but unfortunately are expensive, harder to maintain, and easy to steal. Try instead if possible, small (mid or mini tower) PCs (less expandability but your only trying to educate not sell them), and iMacs (I know, macintosh, but they are easier to learn and provide a nice system with LCD for a reasonable price).
OS: For PC's I would split 50/50 between Windows and *NIX based systems. If your trying to educate, you want to give them all options. For windows, I recomend 2k. For *Nix, I gues it depends of preference, but I would go with RedHat or SuSE. For macs, go with OS X.
Software: Show basic tools i.e. Microsoft Office (Mac and PC) and maybe a few games and graphic programs. Demonstrate music playback (iTunes for mac and WinAmp for PC).
Hardware: Stick to the basics, no really fancy graphics cards or sound cards, just enough to get what you need done. Get a camera that is cross compatable to demonstrate digital photography. Maybe get a portable MP3 player set up and a PDA setup, but otherwise stay away from too many periphrials.
Internet Connection: Untill you start getting some funding, your best bet will probobly be through wireless connections via Cell Phones. Once you have funding though, consider a satelite link. Other than that, just make sure it's comfortable.
If your looking for ideas on how to set up a mobile station, try contacting CSPAN as they have a mobile studio (cost them only 6 million, which is cheap considering what they had), maybe they can give you ideas.
Good Luck
-Tevis
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Teach them rightly, whatever that turns out to be for you!
Find your best choices for low power, low lifetime+recycling costs, etc. I suggest LTSP, the Linux Terminal Server Project, which is being used in the Pacific NW for some K-12 schools:
One currently-fast PC supporting 30-50 headless
or lightweight clients for full networked and
graphical sessions. You don't want the users to have to mess with a terminal, but instead to have the (text) terminal available to them as a tool.
I also suggest for this 'IT bus' (I also favor the wagon/trailer, you want to separate the tech which should be totally insulated and cushioned from the vehicle if need be. Separate systems, keep it simple [to fix].
Consider being a 'vehicle' for distribution of recycled older PC's, many linux- and other computing user's groups have campaigns to recover unused PC's and get them to folx who want 'em!
So save some of the space in your trailer for extra parts for on-site fixups and maybe a small carry-along PC collection and distribution centre.
Sounds like fun, so document and share your process please!
Some of your decisions will be pretty obvious - basic flat-screens have come down in price enough that you're far better off using them than CRTs, because you're trading off the cost of the equipment vs. the cost of a bigger bus and more electricity. But if you're trying to show things to a larger group of people, you'll have to find something that fits your budget but still works, though that may be "display the same slides on N screens at once." And of course you'll want a couple of CD-R-burners for giving away software, as well as stacks of blank CDs and floppies.
Will you be showing off how to build hardware? Letting people know what the basic guts of a PC are like is valuable, so you'll probably want some basic PCs, card tables, and screwdrivers for people to play with, and spare parts to make up for the ones you'll lose or break. But if you're also doing telemetry, you'll need whatever flavors of hardware that uses, whether it's simple RS-232 stuff like X-10 or fancier data bus things, and you'll need a few sample things to telemeter.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
IIRC, when I was at UKC in 1997, Sun brought their demo stand round to show off the latest workstations and servers.
It was basically an 18-wheeler with an adapted body, that expanded on hydraulics once the vehicle was in place, doubling the width of the body.
The internal space was quite impressive.
Mayve something like this, if there is room to use it at the intended venue.
It's no use having a great mobile classroom in an 18-wheeler if it can't fit through the gate of the rural school.
Escoutaire
When a dream dreams the dreamer, the dreams the real.
Either way, many are simply too pragmatic to see any need for something that takes time away from their lives and their work (which are often one and the same on many agriculture based livings). They may have a trusted and true method of achieving maximum efficiency (based on research and experience) in their tasks. If they are told that they are missing out on progress, yet only see a complex, finicky and fragile system that ends up costing much more in money and sanity (both from the initial learning curve as well as the upkeep and maintenance)... well, then don't be surprised at all if they begin to not only think of you as a slack jawed moron who deserves pity (but at a safe distance), but that after many repeats of this they generalize that computers are only tools for the lazy and foolish who can't hack (pun intended) it on their own. That the computer is not a tool to assist them, but a crutch that they depend on.
Most IT is really only self serving, with the actual services that are external being more of the exception rather than the rule (my observation of course). These people will either not care one bit about it due to the frightening ability for it (it meaning IT) to enslave humanity in some Orwellian meat grinder or they will simply just not have the time to devot to it.
Now, if it is presented (not sold, no marketing BS here please) as a tool to assist them, to actually INCREASE productivity... well then you might have a winner. For the record, I personally believe this endevor is a great idea, but I just want to share my own observations and opinions on how it could be performed better.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
What you are looking for is this
If you find it, steal it, dump the boat and the BMW for some cash and add a Beowulf cluster.
+++ath0
A few years back I worked for a program that was designed to teach principals and superintendants of public schools how to use technology. The idea was that by teaching the top of the education food chain, we could convince them of the value of educational technology. Interesting project, and one I really enjoyed working with. I won't mention what operating system we taught or who sponsered the event in order to protect the innocent. ;o)
To answer the posted question, we actually roamed all around the state setting up mobile, networked labs at all the major universities, holding multiple sessions of four days for a few weeks at each location, and then tearing it all down to head to the next site. All of the sites were VERY different--we had to get creative when wiring networks and power setups.
As for how we traveled, we used a large Chevy van for all of our equipment. We had a couple of printers, a scanner, digital cameras, 80 toshiba laptops per site, a ton of hubs, power cords, a large spool of cat5 for wiring the rooms, and assorted other details. It took about 2 days to set up at each location, depending on how the layout of the rooms whatever university we were at had [grudgingly] bestowed upon us. We also patched into local drops at each site. This got real interesting when working with the campus sysadmins in each area.
At any rate, we had a good time and from the responses we got the program was a complete sucess. I wish you luck in your own venture!
-s
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
Most laptops come with an OEM version of the most common operating system and productivity suites. This is usually licensed to the hardware not the individual.
Small foot print.
Portable and durable.
Most will charge from a 12 VDC power supply.
Non-computer users find them less intimidating.
The disadvantages are:
Proprietary hardware, means OS upgrades and/or alternate OS's are difficult.
Cost per unit is higher.
Fewer user serviceable parts.
Many companies donate laptops to charity or sell them in bulk when they are only a few years old. So, you can pick them up used, for cheap or free.
You can purchase refurbished notebooks (with warranty) from the usual suspects for about $1100/ea.
You can pick up brand new off-brand models for about $1100 (like winbook).
Given your source of power and your premium on space, give cheap laptops a shot.
[
isn't bringing computers to use to places where they were otherwise not used almost "virus-ish"? spreading the microsoft plague to those who do not know what a computer even is? are there linux provisions onboard the bus????
So you load up with computers but what do is the school objectives? What are they trying to teach the kids, what age group? How long will the van be there? How will the teachers in the school incoporate the technology into their lesson plans? This will dicated what type of computers you put in. Skip the generator, they will have electicity, What can found find for mobile broad ban? It is simply not profitable for the cable company to lay miles of cable to serivce one customer. I know one of my colleges will NEVER get cable TV because of this expense. What type of rural areas will you be serving, Alaska, and Alamba have very different needs?
And it's easy to keep the Mountain Dew cold. :)
Take a wander around a fairground, circus, sideshow alley at a Royal Agricultural Show, whatever. Take a look at what they are doing for design, because to an extent they are solving the same problem as you.
One approach would be to get a large trailer, just small enough that it can be towed on a conventional vehicle like a ute or something, and set it up with a fold-down side or sides. This radically increases your available floor space. Set up your PCs on desks such that in travel mode, all the desks can simply be dragged into the centre of the trailer, and the side(s) folded up. In classroom mode, you just fold down the side(s) and drag out the desks. In travel mode, if all the desks fit snugly and the monitors and PCs are bolted to the desks, there wouldn't be an issue with gear moving around in transit.
The trailer wouldn't be open to the weather; you could set up some simple canvas tenting arrangement to cover over your folded down side, creating the necessary three walls and roof. Temperature management would obviously be an issue; so you'd want some fairly gutsy reverse-cycle airconditioning.
On a separate subject, when contemplating glass monitors vs. LCD monitors, think about the cost difference per monitor, and the cost per square metre of floor space in your chosen vehicle. A glass monitor takes maybe a quarter of a square metre of space, versus an LCD monitor taking negligible space. If an LCD monitor costs, say, NZ$300 more than a glass monitor, is it worth spending that, or would it be better to simply spend NZ$300 more on the vehicle, to get one that's a teeny bit bigger? Plus, the glass monitor has the advantage of being less theftable.
A few years back we got some grant money together with some of ours and did this:
MEL
Don't blame me for the html on that page, the lady that drives it around and trains newbies to get online, move a mouse, etc. did it. ;)
Got eight Thinkpads for users, another for the instructor and a RedHat box in a cabinet for server stuff. Got a 6 1/2KW Generator to run everything, including the A/C or we can run an umbilical cord to either 120/240VAC and not worry about burning gas (The generator will cut out before running the gas dry though.)
We even have a TV/VCR in a popout cabinet for running instructional videos.
After playing with wireless we have sidelined that and use either a phone jack or ethernet tap to bring in net. All of our branch libraries and such have 240V outlets and ethernet jacks on the side now so it can tour the six tiny branches and do classes.
The size of the van was selected to be as large as a vehicle can be in Louisiana and not require the driver to have a CDL.
And even on the dismal concrete with ashpalt scabs that passes for roads in rural Louisiana, none of the hardware has crapped out in over three years of use.
p.s. the 240V power lets us run the AC full bore. On 120V it throws breakers when we crank it up to cope with the summer heat in Louisiana.
Democrat delenda est
Don't think fixed, think mobile. Apple sells iBooks in 5-packs at reduced rates to education. Fit them out with Airport cards, put the basestations and uplink or whatever in the van, and have people sit on lawnchairs and use the computers in the open air, or community hall or whatever.
Honestly, I had that figured out after about a MINUTE of using my first mac.
Click once on any open menus, or to do anything EXCEPT automatically launch an application, when you should click twice.. That really isn't complicated.
Honestly, though...for people who still can't get it, before they even TOUCH, even LOOK AT a computer, the first things that should be explained to them are the difference between a data file and an application, and the fact that icons and file names and whatnot are merely placeholders that point to the location of a file in a manner meaningful to a normal human.
It's fundamental (yet abstract) concepts that trip the (l)users up. They don't understand how things are related to each other, so they will never be able to do things on their own, so half of you will always be employable.
well, at one point today his post was modded "interesting" which would be a cause to reply to it.
I just bought next month's issue of Popular Mechanics, and in one of the articles under Technology titled "RVs Get Wired" they had a little speil about a TracNet Sattlite Internet by KVH industries. The article states the downlink is by sat and the uplink is by cell modem at 14.4Kbps or satellite modem at 9600 bps. Cost is $5995 not including the sat which is another $2999. Base usage fee is $75/mo plus 99 cents/min while conneted. After 900 min charge drops to 79 cents. This sat can also tune into tv broadcasts, but you cant watch tv and surf at the same time.. sats are too far apart. The setup requires having a server which while the sat is locked in on the internet satt, it will download certain websites as a local cache which can be viewed while watching tv.
Not the prefect deal, but the system is good for on the move.
Another system mentioned was stationary only. It was MotoSat. 400kbps down 128kbps up. Designed with gps to find it's own sats by itself and lock in. Raises to 42in high for sat lock.. folds down to 10 inches for ride.. This sat can tune into the internet sat and the tv sat at the same time, allowing you to watch your favorite scifi's using direct tv or dish sattlite network's gear (bring your own reciver deal tho). Cost? $4995 for the hardware. $79/mo unlimited usage.
Sattlite as little lag, but who would notice if they havent ever surfed broadband? They wont be able to frag, but who said you couldnt schedule local lan frags?
I remember waaaaaaaay back when windows 95 was already out and 98 was in the works, Microsoft set up a little bus with about 8 desks, monitors and tower computers and networked them all together and seemed to have a main server in the back with a generator running. The system wasnt internet connected, just had advertizements and demos of games and other software they were proporting. The bus came to houston during one of the Hal-pc general meetings. I probably spent an hour or two playing around with those pcs. They altered the registry to disable access to everything but the programs folder under start menu.
I would say the mini school bus does have a certain appeal as they are a wider vehicle, but they are also a higher platform and are usually hard to get on for the elderly or very young. I would suggest building it out of a 5th wheel trailer or camper. They can be very well stablized and with a 5th wheel you can store the gear in the over bed area. Some campers have electric flyouts that might afford more room while in use, but require leveling of the trailer before use (drive on blocks, jacking up). Another thought about a 5th wheel is, you have engine failover, if the truck you are using is troubled, you could easily get another one rather than taking the whole damned rig to the shop, putting it into the hands of mechanics who might just play with those computers sitting the back if it was a motorhome.
DRACO-
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
The West Plains campus of Southwwest Missouri State University has a pretty nice
mobile computer lab that you can take a look at the specs on.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
have internet... www.linuks.mine.nu/workstation
Windoze not found: (C)heer, (P)arty or (D)ance
In .dk Ericsson had a MI Lab in 2001 which was a converted trailer.
The sides of the trailer were able to move outwards, so the inner measures of the exhibition room were probably 4 by 8 metres or so. The entrance was in the rear. The side walls had small tables carrying laptops showing different techonologies. The front wall of the exhibition room had a huge LCD screen for demos.
Obviously there was also room for a display of mobile phones.
It was equipped with 802.11 WLAN, Bluetooth, GSM and GPRS simulators and lots of other exciting stuff.
External connectivity was provided by WLAN to the nearest building/place with ISDN connections, depending on where the demo was held.
(To the Moderator: Yes, this post was designed to be modded as "Funny" or "Redundant" Go right ahead and do that, but if you label it as "Insightful", you need to up your medication dosage. OK? Fine. :-)
Money for nothing, pix for free
Ok since im 14 here, i think i can say that i know wat kids want. u sould use microsoft i dont think w2k to confusing some thing like xp, me. Use a normal bus because of budget then strip the bus and build false walls on either one or both walls. Mount the lcd screens in the wall or walls and the computer under the screens behind the wall. Have at the back of the bus a white projecot screen where u can beam up insturctions and show them wat to do. But i would at least try to maybe include something like a new imac to show wat the other computers are like. You would want to have headphones so u can tell them about mp3s ect and of course heapz of fun educationaly games. Deffinetly have a web conection so they can expoler the web using internet expoler 6 due to the fact that most of them would have it already if they have computers at home. Well thats my view and sorry about no linux but i dont use it yet and i dont think many 8 years old will get it but microsoft being crap and all is still pretty easy to use.
I'm a geek deal wit it
Better idea (MUCH better) than cell modems is StarBand: http://www.starband.com/
It may have high ping latency, but you're not looking to play Quake out of your IT bus.
+++ATH0
The Internet Industry Association (www.iia.net.au)
has what they call the tech truck (http://www.techtrek.tv/). It cruises around in rural areas, teaching people about technology. It's a bit small and there is lots of room for improvement, but it's still good.
Anyhow this page has a bunch of Towitoko readers, on for $39.95. There are a bunch of other vendors as well. If you order them in bulk you can get them for LOTS less.
Lasers Controlled Games!