On Sunday, a Chuck E. Cheese employee named Stewart Coonrod posted a TikTok video that documents the process of installing a new song-and-dance show on an old Chuck E. Cheese animatronics system—a process that involves a 3.5-inch floppy disk and two DVDs. Coonrod says it is the last update before his store undergoes a remodel that will remove the animatronics altogether.
I’ve never visited this restaurant chain, but I always love peeks behind the curtain of the technology places like this use. It reminds me of our favourite bar near the red light district in Amsterdam, which used a touchscreen computer running BeOS to manage its music playlist.
Wait, they still exist? I thought they went entirely out of business a long time ago.
rainbowsocks,
They do, but it’s become a basic arcade/pizza chain now. They’ve strongly de-emphasized the animatronic shows at least in our area. It’s just chucky by himself mostly waiving and looking around. I remember when they used to put on entire shows with a cast of 4 or 5 characters, but those productions are over AFAIK.
Thom Holwerda,
A raspberry pi is all they really need, haha. I actually looked for one just the other day and it’s depressing how much the low end SBC market that was so cheap just a few years ago has gone up in price – several hundred percent inflation.
Alfman,
So true.
Even the humble Pi “Zero” is only available as a “kit”: https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-zero-wireless.html
So, the $10 board becomes a $75 purchase, along with many stuff you’d have little use for.
Regular sized Pi 4 sets go for about $180+.
At that price, I can get a full SFF Dell workstation (refurbished):
https://www.dellrefurbished.com/item/dell-optiplex-3050-mff-000111/dell-optiplex-3050-mff/1.html
(And I think there is an additional discount on top of that price).
Sure, but power consumption is much higher, so not worth to buy for manage music or other things, Better is to buy Android tablet.
True,
But if power consumption is an issue, there are “mini pcs” with an only* 6W power usage:
https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-Windows-Celeron-Computer-Supports/dp/B09373HTN7
That is very close to RPi territory (3-6w), and again much cheaper than those “kits”.
(Frankly I am not sure about the advertised value in that page. It could very well be 12W under load, but still very low).
Marshal Jim Raynor,
I agree the hardware has lots of potential and I used to think old discarded android devices would be perfect for smart project boxes with all the hardware that comes built in. But frankly retooling everything around android sucks for embedded development compared to a vanilla linux environment. And given the firmware support problems I for one have given up on them. It’s a real shame the software platform isn’t easier to replace & program because so much android hardware ends up in the trash and would be available for free.
sukru,
I need something right now for a project. It needs to run a simple application to interface with ethernet, wifi and USB. Ideally 4GB but 2GB might work. I would have gone RPI, but given the sticker shock I’ll probably go for a mini pc.
The beelink looks interesting. Under the reviews some people had the same idea…
This comment also stuck out to me.
Debian was my distro of choice for a very long time, but ever since debian 11 I’m noticing hardware including wifi and wired networking that worked in debian 10 and previous versions have stopped working in 11. Also in debian 11, they’re intentionally breaking some features like RTSP streaming (needed by security cameras) over non-free software without asking or telling end users. While I understand their opinions about non-free software, breaking things isn’t the way forward…
https://forums.zoneminder.com/viewtopic.php?t=31433
As a long term habitual user and fan of debian, I hate to say this, but the debian experience has gotten bad with version 11. It’s not a “linux” problem per say, other distros like ubuntu still work fine. Bypassing debian’s repos works too, but package management is the main selling point of a distro. I guess it may be time to switch to another daily driver. I haven’t distro hopped in so long, haha. So many to choose from.
Alfman,
(Yes, Ubuntu is a usually good choice for .deb distros).
My concern is that these computers too might be gobbled up. We had a period where real cheap computing was possible, but for one reason or another, we hit a snag.
Fortunately, Rpi Pico is still available for hobby projects:
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC0915/13684020
And Arduino Nano compatible boards can still be found for less than $4:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=Compatible+Arduino+NANO&_sacat=0&_sop=15
So, maybe Rpi4 becoming “too powerful”, and even needing active cooling, or better I/O to catch up (via compute module -> pcie -> nvme) might not have been the best thing in a hindsight.