@_L1vY_

There has been a cybertruck that drives a block up the road from the super expensive condos to get starbucks from beside my job most mornings. At first it was causing psychic damage, but I've also been watching the body degrade, getting murky looking and rusty over the last two months.

It's been making me giggle as it slowly gets worse looking.

I think her next single will be in the same vein: a cover of The Stranglers' "Tank" -

Cause I can drive (drive) my very own tank
Yes I can

yikes

gurl

@humanhorseshoes @echolocation @_L1vY_

Capitalist, oligarch, CEO, queen or king, all the same things spinning different buzzwords for "owning" land, people, and/or piles of gold coins.

Okay #CES #CommunityEntertainmentSystem

Let's start with what and why and then get in to how and talk about plans.

What?

It's a box that plays #CommunityMedia (which you can learn about at communitymedia.network among other places.)

Basically, I want some independent radio streams and television networks and whatever is happening on peertube.

Independent, community media.

But also, let the thing play some video games, yeah?

Games are media, and small games and community centered games are very good, and I want people to be able to play the games I make in the same place where they watch the television I produce, and listen to the music I distribute.

And I'm not alone in making these things, and putting together a common distribution mechanism for them would be helpful.

I've covered the "Why Community Media" thing a lot, so I won't get back in to that here.

But why #CommunityEntertainmentSystem ?

Because the fundamental problem that is facing most community media creation is discovery.

Connecting an audience with a game or a television program or a piece of music or whatever is fundamental for most people, and it's the only way artists are likely to get paid.

And, right now, 95% of content discovery happens at the behest of billionaires, and I want to cut in to that.

Okay, so that's what and why.

Let's talk about How.

So I'm looking at the Radxa Rock 2f as the hardware It's $10+ shipping.

If you want an EMMC it's allegedly $20, but I haven't seen the EMMC version for sale.

So it's $10 + shipping + an SD card + a case + a power supply.

At scale, we're probably looking at $20/unit.

I have sketches for the case, which we'll 3D print. I did a very rough version that's approximately the right size, but doesn't have any of the holes in the right places. I threw it in to our slicer and approximated how many I could fit on the bed, and how much plastic they would use, and how long it would take and ...

Our printer is very large. I could get way too many cases on the bed at one time. They'd take about an hour to print each. With a bunch of them on the bed at once, it's not quite a linear addition of time as you add more cases, but I could do 15 or so in about 10 hours, in about 2KG of plastic.

At the prices we're paying right now, that's like 12 cents of plastic, unless I've got the math way wrong.

Anyway, the hardware is not the hard part here.

The hard part is the software.

And I've gone down a million different rabbit holes, and I've written some software myself, and I keep coming back to a few simple facts:

1) I don't like using, supporting, or configuring Kodi.

2) Literally nothing other than Kodi, including what I've written myself, is even half as useful for what I want to do as Kodi.

3) Every time I try to use Kodi for this I get very angry.

4) I don't know if I can launch games from Kodi. It seems like I should be able to, but I don't know how and I haven't bothered to learn.

Anyway, I should put this back on the shelf until after the toy show, probably.

I have way too many things to do between now and then.

But after the show, I need to sit down and really explore if Kodi is the way to go, set up some distribution channels, build an update system, and write a custom theme.

A couple of folks in the comments have recommend batocera as a potential front end.

If I understand correctly, that's going to get us Emulation Station as a place from which we can launch games, and also launch kodi (or whatever else I package up for emulation station.)

So I'm going to try that aat some point.