Raspbery PI in classrooms

[Simcfc73]

Morning,

 

We are looking at getting 10+ PIs for our school and wondered how other schools are deploying them. They will be moving between 2 rooms and I cringe thinking of kids unplugging and plugging vga cables as the pins will get battered.

 

I bought a cheap VGA manual switch but they will still have to plug in the VGAs unless they live on that machine for good.

 

We bought the PI with one usb and no NIC which is a pain cos my USB hub is not supported and buying even a cheap one takes it up to the next model up price.

[jmak]

Adapters?

 

I put female to female adapters on our staff laptops so that it's not the ports that get abused by continual plugging and unplugging. If it's the cables you're worried about, get an adapter with female one side and male the other. They should have the threaded lugs so they're secure on the cables and no strain on the pins. Then when the pins get broken, just buy a new adapter.

[caffrey]

I got monitors in preparation with vga and dvi connectors just in case, then I got a dvi to hdmi cable for the pi and left it ready to be plugged into, I also found some nice cheap usb switches that work well also so no need for plugging and unplugging of keyboards / mice, except now they've changed their minds and not bothering using them at all