2014-05-05, 04:28
Yeah I agree, the fact that I was able to make my sd card image, put in my keys in config.txt, add ssh to cmdline, change disk to disk=LABEL=STORAGE, boot the pi, log in with ssh, copy the addon in .xbmc/addons and reboot again, everything worked.
Granted I had hardwired the Ethernet, already put it in DHCP and so was able to ensure the box would be reachable, but still, I was able to get everything working without any sighted assistance. You have NO IDEA what that means to the blindness community--imagine if you bought a new computer, but couldn't install or use it really without the assistance from somebody else.
A stop-gap measure for making openelec, raspbmc or whatever talk might be to get a check put into the create_sdcard script that says
make a talking version?
Then after making the ext4 /storage partition, the script could go grab the addon, make .xbmc/addons/$ADDON_NAME and then when the blind person reboots the pi with the sdcard in there it starts talking.
Maybe people are buying premade sdcards that already have openelec, raspbmc, or whatever installed, but I think there are a good number of people who make their own installation media. The issue of supportability is going to come up time-and-time again, so if we want to promote the pi as a workable solution, maybe placing our own version of the create_sdcard utility with the addon downloads page will make it easier for some.
I know, I know, now we're assuming packagers won't change their create_sdcard script too often, this just requires coordination. It either goes this way or that way and I think until the addon is usable and doesn't promote random crashes, reboots or sudden loss of speech after 10 minutes of use (like what happens now on my pi) not seeing the crashes and reboots any more, but am seeing OOM crashing the tts addon thread and it has no watchdog, so you basically have to restart xbmc or reboot your device if you want speech. anyway I think we should go out of our way to support the packager installers until we have a product that does not burden the sighted community but still lets us get our job done.
Also on the topic of first-time-install enables speech or not there may be a case where the initial configuration has passed (and probably varies from packagers) that a blind person might want to quickly use a copy of xbmc, then return it back to its native state. Maybe a long-press of some key or something to allow you to turn speech on or off
oh and I almost forgot. I noticed while playing with the pi yesterday when it was about to run out of memory, the remote would go wild and repeat some key as rapidly as possible, like down or left or right or whatever. This caused rapid clicking sounds and could be interrupted by pressing another key. I don't know if that's my remote or some other problem, but thought I'd mention it since I forgot to mention it yesterday.
Granted I had hardwired the Ethernet, already put it in DHCP and so was able to ensure the box would be reachable, but still, I was able to get everything working without any sighted assistance. You have NO IDEA what that means to the blindness community--imagine if you bought a new computer, but couldn't install or use it really without the assistance from somebody else.
A stop-gap measure for making openelec, raspbmc or whatever talk might be to get a check put into the create_sdcard script that says
make a talking version?
Then after making the ext4 /storage partition, the script could go grab the addon, make .xbmc/addons/$ADDON_NAME and then when the blind person reboots the pi with the sdcard in there it starts talking.
Maybe people are buying premade sdcards that already have openelec, raspbmc, or whatever installed, but I think there are a good number of people who make their own installation media. The issue of supportability is going to come up time-and-time again, so if we want to promote the pi as a workable solution, maybe placing our own version of the create_sdcard utility with the addon downloads page will make it easier for some.
I know, I know, now we're assuming packagers won't change their create_sdcard script too often, this just requires coordination. It either goes this way or that way and I think until the addon is usable and doesn't promote random crashes, reboots or sudden loss of speech after 10 minutes of use (like what happens now on my pi) not seeing the crashes and reboots any more, but am seeing OOM crashing the tts addon thread and it has no watchdog, so you basically have to restart xbmc or reboot your device if you want speech. anyway I think we should go out of our way to support the packager installers until we have a product that does not burden the sighted community but still lets us get our job done.
Also on the topic of first-time-install enables speech or not there may be a case where the initial configuration has passed (and probably varies from packagers) that a blind person might want to quickly use a copy of xbmc, then return it back to its native state. Maybe a long-press of some key or something to allow you to turn speech on or off
oh and I almost forgot. I noticed while playing with the pi yesterday when it was about to run out of memory, the remote would go wild and repeat some key as rapidly as possible, like down or left or right or whatever. This caused rapid clicking sounds and could be interrupted by pressing another key. I don't know if that's my remote or some other problem, but thought I'd mention it since I forgot to mention it yesterday.
