Alexander Elsas Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Raspberry Pi in Higher Education
Alexander Elsas
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
The Raspberry Pi Big Birthday Weekend, Cambridge
[email protected]
Seite 1
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
Seite 2
Seite 3
To Carry Coals to Newcastle
Price tag
●
Performance
●
Flexibility
●
GPIO
●
Wolfram
●
...
●
Seite 4
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.
Seite 5
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.
Seite 6
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
Seite 7
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
Seite 8
Show-and-Tell
Both projects can be seen tomorrow.
Seite 9
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
Seite 10
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 ...
Seite 11
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!
Seite 12
Something completely
different
Raspberry Pi and its success, ecosystem, created jobs and
businesses as object of economic analysis.
Seite 13
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:
[email protected]
Internet:
databaselab.de
Seite 14
PiMMS & FRAdir –
Two Simple Projects
Alexander Elsas
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
The Raspberry Pi Big Birthday Weekend, Cambridge
[email protected]
Seite 1
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.
Seite 2
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
Seite 3
Seite 4
Seite 5
Seite 6
Components



Monitor
feh as slideshow application
starts automatically after booting into LXDE
xscreensaver to disable screensaver of LXDE
sudo apt-get install feh xscreensaver
Seite 7
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/LXDEpi/autostart
Seite 8
Looking for ...
Replacement for feh which can also show video
(like Irfanview)
Seite 9
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
Seite 10
Data source:
http://apps.fraport.de/betriebsrichtung/betriebsrichtung.html
Seite 11
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/betriebsr
ichtung.html")
htmlSource = sock.read()
sock.close()
beg = htmlSource.find("Betriebsrichtung")
betriebsrichtung = htmlSource[beg+60]
if (betriebsrichtung == "0"):
betriebsrichtung = "Ost
07"
else:
betriebsrichtung = "West 25"
Seite 12
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
Seite 13
f = open('status.br', 'r')
last = f.readline()
f.close()
#print last
msg = Message()
msg.set_payload(ausgabe)
msg["Subject"] = "Betriebsrichtung: "+betriebsrichtung
msg["From"] = "[email protected]"
msg["To"] = "[email protected]"
Seite 14
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
Seite 15
# 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()
Seite 16
# email
#if (True):
smtpobj = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 587)
smtpobj.ehlo()
smtpobj.starttls()
smtpobj.ehlo()
smtpobj.login('[email protected]', 'mysecretpassword')
smtpobj.sendmail('[email protected]', '[email protected]',
msg.as_string())
smtpobj.quit
Seite 17
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"] = "[email protected]"
msg["To"] = "[email protected]"
smtpobj = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 587)
smtpobj.ehlo()
smtpobj.starttls()
smtpobj.ehlo()
smtpobj.login('[email protected]', 'mysecretpassword')
smtpobj.sendmail('[email protected]', '[email protected]', msg.as_string())
smtpobj.quit
Seite 18
Crontab

betriebsrichtung.py is started hourly

statusbr.py always on midday
Seite 19
Seite 20
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:
[email protected]
Internet: databaselab.de
Seite 21