The summer holidays brought, besides a well-deserved break, also back an old hobby of mine, which is playing around with microcontrollers… It was a while ago and I must say a lot changed since last time…
The term BYOC got a new dimension for me this summer. Instead of ‘Buy your own computer’ or device, why not just build it…, especially when the price is as low as $25 …
More than a year ago, I saw some posts about the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is low cost single chip PC made by the university of Cambridge, where they had the idea to build a low cost computer mainly for education purposes, based on a Linux OS. After some delay in production, they managed to start delivering it as from beginning 2012. The delivery in the beginning was a problem as a lot of people where waiting to order one (I suspect they used the same strategy as apple, as the production was low in the beginning and the demand higher than expected, it created even more attention…, it certainly worked for me J )
I managed to get hold on one in May, because of lack-of –time; it was waiting on me until the second part of my holiday.
After walking through some forums and docs, I managed to put a Linux image on it and in less than 1 hour my TV became an internet browser. I read already some positive things about it, but still I was amazed by how easy it was to make it work. Soon the device was taken over by my kids... so I was thinking about the possibilities this device bring us.
Already working with thin client infrastructure such as citric technology as from ’97, I stayed a fan of the thin-client concept, even up to now… So I was wondering if I could not turn this into a Thin-Client device. As a matter of fact the only thing what is missing is the Citrix receiver on it.
Before I started to think how to put a Linux Citrix client on it, I started googeling looking if someone out there had maybe the same idea. And yes, I found some links about Raspberry Pi Thin client project (
http://rpitc.blogspot.be/2012/03/raspberry-pi-citrix-client.html) .
AS Service provider we deliver a shared Citrix XenApp infrastructure environment to customers, so within less than 30 minutes I managed to prep the Raspberry Pi and fire off a Windows desktop on it.
Not only did is support HTTPS and CAG Web interface connection without any doubt (which is not always the case for the commercial Thin clients J ), it also performed amazing well. I try to post some you tubes later on…
This opens new perspectives… I can’t wait to put my Windows 8 VDI on it… The only thing that is missing is a nice case around it, 3d printing will do the job…
So the term BYOC stands from now on for 'BUILD YOUR OWN PC !'
