Demonstration build

The XO is often presented in demonstration, at events, to new users, or as a showcase for what would be possible under different school or low-infrastructure scenarios.

Demonstration build

There are many capabilities of the XO that aren't easy to demonstrate on a standard build. We are preparing a set of builds that can show off the features described here.

1. Dual-boot
   • with a Fedora/Gnome or Edubuntu setup (via SD card)
   • with any simple hacks to speed up launch -- perhaps a dual-boot OpenWRT?
2. Video (full screen)
   • ogg
   • m.youtube / kaltura
   • the best that can be done with mpeg & rm
     • has been done using a completely separate build which was stripped of absolutely everything but the ability to play video (No "OS"/GUI at all), and uses proprietary codecs
3. Audio
   • Stereo sound to show off speakers range
   • multichannel audio from creative activity (tamtam)
   • Duet example
   • streaming audio from an online source
4. Book Readers
   • pdf (evince)
   • js (flipbook, ICDL, jresig)
5. Flash
   • smooth Flash animation with gnash
   • the best that can be done with Adobe Flash
6. text-to-speech
   • Speak
7. videochat or at least audiochat
8. drawing w/ stylus
   • phun / elements / crayon physics
9. Browsers
   • Full-fledged firefox
   • Opera
10. New Sugar UI and configuration screen
11. Faster load time (now in joyride)
12. Abiword
13. Develop/ Pippy
14. Xaos Python fractal viewer
15. Modified xoIRC -- auto join #olpc
16. a plot of battery strength/usage over time, however crude, like what the Prius offers for gas conservation
17. a compressed view for the Journal (or a way to link directly to a compressed view)

There are also a number of activities whose demos should be focused down to a couple of minutes, whose components could all be set up in advance; I'm thinking about how to effectively walk through them, without waiting to long for each one to load and set up, but without having more than one in memory at a given time. Is there some way to launch an activity while simultaneously demanding/reserving a block of memory, potentially killing other processes when starting up to improve the repeatability of demo length?

Progress

Here is what is done (from the list above)

• full-screen full-motion video
  • Ogg / mpeg / many other proprietary codecs all fully supported via mplayer
    • In full screen mode game keys are used for control
    • Usage: mplayer filename
    • Media: Elephants Dream
• Book Readers
  • Read / Evince working
  • ICDL working
• Audio
  • Stereo mp3 playback working via mplayer
  • Streaming audio working via mplayer
• Flash
  • gnash installed + working
  • Adobe Flash player installed + working (latest Flash runs youtube videos at 5-10fps)
• Text-to-Speech
  • Speak installed + working
• Tablet Example
  • Unexciting proof of concept tablet activity installed + working
  • Tablet drivers may work on joyride but there aren't any interesting activities that show it off
• Browsers
  • Full-fledged firefox installed + working
  • See firefox2 for guide
    • Works well for the most part, it is not the ideal browser for the XO.
    • Designed for a windowed GUI, full of features that are not helpful in the XO enviornment
  • Opera
    • Works very well, definitely the happy medium between Browse and Firefox
    • See Opera for installation guide
• New Sugar UI and Config screen
  • integrated into the joyride-1914 build used
• Faster startup
  • integrated into the joyride-1914 build used

Difficulties / Requests

• Playing youtube video
  • Gnash not compatible via youtubes website
  • Adobe Flash runs youtube at only 5-10fps
  • Mplayer can't seem to play the rtsp stream from m.youtube.com
• Need a good TamTam demo

Types of demos

Situational demos

XOs used in

1. an emergency school (school-in-a-box)
2. a tiny village w/unconnectivity (digital courier)
3. a disaster / zero-infrastructure intervention
4. an agriculture/water intervention
5. a health intervention / clinics

Learning demos

Children learning...

1. geometry (Dr. Geo)
2. collaborative music (lifelong K w/ distributed orchestra)
3. language
4. art (interactive creation)
5. writing (abicollab)
6. world maps

Parents learning

1. spreadsheets
2. geography