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The wheel of excuses [Resources_Hands On].
- Source :
-
IEEE Spectrum . Nov2014, Vol. 51 Issue 11, p27-28. 2p. - Publication Year :
- 2014
-
Abstract
- Many years ago in the offices here at IEEE Spectrum, we had a "Wheel of Excuse" pinned to the outside wall of a cubicle. Made from paper and cardboard in the style of a small lottery wheel, it could be spun to suggest plausible excuses to luckless editors seeking to explain a blown deadline. The wheel had its limitations, however, chief among them being the small number of excuses that could be squeezed onto a disk just 25 centimeters across, and a tendency to fall off the wall if spun with too much vigor or desperation. · Spectrum's offices were renovated this year, the dingy cubicle walls swept away for a modern office layout. So I thought it might be time for an updated Wheel of Excuses–a digital one, naturally. I wanted a one-touch system that would show an animation of a spinning wheel, followed by the display of a randomly selected excuse from an extended list. · Initially, I thought I would make the new wheel using an Arduino and a touch-screen add-on shield. But the speed at which graphics could be drawn on the touch screen proved too slow for the kind of animation I wanted, and the 2.8-inch screen was on the small side in any case. · So I turned to the US $35 Raspberry Pi microcomputer, which had the final release of its first generation in July–the Model B+. Among other changes, the Model B+ has two more USB ports than the Model B along with an expanded general-purpose input/output (GPIO) connector, and it relies more heavily on HDMI for video output. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00189235
- Volume :
- 51
- Issue :
- 11
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- IEEE Spectrum
- Publication Type :
- Periodical
- Accession number :
- 99082865
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2014.6934924