• IngeniousRocks (They/She) @lemmy.dbzer0.com
      10·
      4 months ago

      The flash memory the OS is stored on is borked.

      Filesystem check shows dependency errors attempting to check ext4 fs on /dev/mmcblk0p2. Assuming ext4 and fsck are installed (it should be if this isn’t a mega-custom ultra stripped down private distribution) this shouldn’t be possible.

      Further down networking fails to initialize leading to a bunch of fails before it succeeds and reaches its target, only to be stopped by the dependency errors again.

  • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
    13·
    4 months ago

    Man it’s so crazy how many small computers are around us. Just a few years ago that would have been a plastic label they swapped out when needed.

    • cley_faye@lemmy.world
      14·
      4 months ago

      And it probably should be. We could even have a set of small plates embedded somewhere for quick swapping on demand.

      I like computers, but having an individual computer to run a single drink display really is overkill. At least use one to drive all the labels simultaneously, if you still want the ability to display nifty animations of liquid flowing above the actual liquid actually visibly flowing.

      • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
        4·
        4 months ago

        Exactly. This implementation makes no sense. Unless the logos are animated, need to change frequently, or supposed to show advertising (I hope not), a backlit plastic label would do the same job just fine. In fact, that has done the same job for decades at this point.

        • lb_o@lemmy.world
          3·
          4 months ago

          This implementation makes a lot of sense if you think about the ability to support variable amount of screens without the need of complex routing and addressing.

          It also has increased reliability where one failure doesn’t break the whole system.

          As for the need of it - well, that’s “slurp” they try to sell some cold sugar to impulsive people who like flashy things. That implies animations on the screen and being “not boring”.

          The fact that they changed to screens by itself means that backlit plastic label was doing poorer job than this abomination.

          • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
            3·
            4 months ago

            **sharp exhale** You’re probably right. It’s just like the gas pumps. A big soda cup takes a few seconds to fill up, and the system knows that’s when you’re holding the button down, staring at the tap. All that makes you an advertising target for the duration.

            Is there some version of Occam’s Razor where “enshitification” is the most likely answer?

      • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
        9·
        4 months ago

        They’re probably paying a dollar or two for a esp32 at volume. When one fails a tech probably just throws the old one away.

        tween this and the e-ink pricetags on merchandise…

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      4 months ago

      And it still should be.

      Cause its stupid. This is even dumber than walgreens replacing freezer doors with LCD screens that don’t let you see whats inside.

      • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        yeah, that is the most f’d up thing, I saw it at a travel plaza, it looks like the fever dream of some tech mogul’s kid that they just sink money into because they’re infatuated with it.

        • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          4 months ago

          its some serious cyberpunk 2077 shit.

          I can see someone slinging a cyberdeck pinging a drink machine to infiltrate the LAN.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      3·
      4 months ago

      The difference in what can be done and the amount of work that needs to go into it between discrete digital electronics and just having a microcontroller or even microprocessor there is HUGE.

      Also with microcontrollers and microprocessors most of the work moves from Electronics Engineering and circuit-design space to Software Engineering and software development, and the latter experts are easier to find plus the development cycle is way more friendly when it’s just code which you can change and upload at will rather than physical circuits were simulation can only go so far before you have to actually create the physical hardware.

      Even more entertaining, microcontrollers are so stupidly cheap (the most basic ones cost a few cents) that throwing in a microcontroller is almost always significantly cheaper than doing the control stuff with discrete electronics.

      (For example a screen that size can be controlled by as ESP32 which if you embed it in your circuit yourself costs maybe $1 or $2, though that wouldn’t be running Linux and programming it be much more low level, plus it’s probably the cheapest you can go)

      I actually got an EE degree back when we embedded circuits were just starting to be used so I didn’t really get taught how to use them, then went for a career in software instead of electronics and came back to digital electronics years later and it’s like night and day between the discrete digital electronics age and the everything is a computing device era.

      • 0x0@lemmy.zip
        1·
        4 months ago

        You’re forgetting the main driving factor behind being able to personalize a screen vs a plastic label: advertising.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          What I describe goes well beyond things with screens.

          For example computer mice have a microcontroller inside (and unless it serves a mechanical function, not much more than that) and cars have several, only one of which actual handles a proper screen (it’s actually a microprocessor rather than a mere microcontroller).

          The simplest microcontrollers have nowhere near enough memory to handle any half-way decent display (some nothing at all, some can just about handle a two-tone 320x200 display over I2C or SPI, some can handle 640x480 16-bit RGB but without animations as they don’t have enough memory to actual have a buffer for image composition) and yet they keep getting sold in massive numbers.

          Pretty much all digital electronics out there no matter how invisible to users has been replaced by embedded microcontrollers or, in a some use cases, single function controllers (which are basically microcontroller programs converted into integrated circuits).

          Embedded computing was a massive revolution in digital electronics.

    • Zozano@aussie.zoneEnglish
      5·
      4 months ago

      In the florescent bathroom of food court, nano crouched by the toilet, vomiting his guts up after consuming the kernel-krush slushie.

      He thought being the lowest common denominator was bad; used by noob sysadmins and confused interns, until this moment.

      The slushie hadn’t tasted right. It was supposed to be “Byteblast Blueberry,” but it had an aftertaste of burnt silicone and magic smoke. Something in it was wrong. nano could feel it rewriting him from the inside.

      lines of strange lua code scrawled across the back of his eyelids. His .bash_history was being overwritten. His sense of indentation… sharpened.

      As his tremors subsided and the last of the neon goo slid down the drain, he looked up into the cracked mirror. Something had changed.

      His terminal font was crisper. His cursor… blinking with authority. And there, under the stall’s flickering light, he whispered:

      “…:wq”

      Suddenly, the doors of ever bathroom stall flung open in unison, people shit themselves in fear as his inner thoughts wrote themselves onto the walls of his stall.

      nano inhaled deeply, as a familiar scent wafted from under the entrance door, and a shadow stretched to the far wall.

      “emacs…” He muttered to himself, before the entrance door crashed open. emacs snorted and coughed, this bloated monstrosity, confused for a text editor, was actually an operating system.

      “Poor little nano” he chuckled “serves you right for trying to be more than a fuckin’ stepping stone. Why don’t you go hang out with Edge and Bing, you’re about as useful as a clippy themed Chrome extension.”

      emacs’ voice reverberated through the tiled chamber like a RAM leak in a core dump. His trenchcoat, stitched from thousands of unreadable .el files, dragged behind him.

      neovim exited the bathroom stall, letting emacs bask in his new glory for the first time.

      “Fuck off, Emacs. You press seven keys just to copy a line.”

      A silence fell across the stalls. Somewhere, a urinal cake cracked.

      Emacs stepped forward, snarling. “I’m the past and the future, nano. I’ve got an email client, a music player, a fucking psychiatrist built-in. You? You’re a Hello World that got a pity install”

      neovims eyes narrowed, one coloured gruvbox, the other catppuccin as he clenched his first “My name… Is Neo (vim)”

      Next time:

      neovim & emacs - Battle of the Keybinds

      Will neovims LSP destroy emacs s-expressions?

      Can emacs remember how to quit in time?

      • Sergio@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        4 months ago

        lel awesome text. so many great lines…

        His .bash_history was being overwritten. His sense of indentation… sharpened.
        …
        His cursor… blinking with authority.
        …
        Suddenly, the doors of ever bathroom stall flung open in unison, people shit themselves in fear as his inner thoughts wrote themselves onto the walls of his stall.

    • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      4 months ago

      I feel like that isn’t that far fetched, considering this machine probably has some sort of Internet connectivity so you can update the labels remotely and do other remote maintenance/monitoring tasks.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
      4·
      4 months ago

      Wouldn’t be surprised if they ran animated splash.

      Hell, wouldn’t be surprised if they started pushing ads through the screens.

    • Grass@sh.itjust.works
      141·
      4 months ago

      a whole linux system isn’t even all that crazy. if it runs doom it can probably also run linux so probably everything from a potato to a dog’s left testicle can run linux.

    • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
      16·
      4 months ago

      I’ve never seen one of these, but I assume it performs other functions - surely monitoring sensors, probably reporting that data, maybe allowing triggering maintenance functions, etc.

      That said, processing and storage is so cheap on this scale that it’s probably better (and cheaper) to go with a tried and true, widely supported system, than it is to optimize with custom hardware/firmware.

        • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
          1·
          4 months ago

          I meant the machine itself! The print out is your typical systemd boot, though they’re usually covered by a distro splash but it can be disabled.

    • The_Decryptor@aussie.zoneEnglish
      22·
      4 months ago

      It’s failing storage, top half of the display is EXT4 complaining it can’t read the SD card, bottom half is the result of that, services can’t start.

        • 0x0@lemmy.zip
          2·
          4 months ago

          Anecdotally, a friend had a bunch of raspberry pis running inside specific devices, running hot, SDcards would eventually fail.
          Started properly venting and cooling the pis… SDcards stopped failing (didn’t have to be MilitaryGrade™ either).

  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    281·
    4 months ago

    Is it just me who feels that having one processing unit per display is a waste?

    I mean, I get it why they did it (it’s way easier to just have one SBC per-display, both on the hardware and the software sides), but if designing such a system I would still try to come up with a single board solution if only because waste gets on my nerves.

    • Brosplosion@lemmy.zip
      5·
      4 months ago

      I’d argue that a custom board is more wasteful since they are single use. Using a cheapo COTS processor that drives a single display and runs Linux is reusable in the long run.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        True, such a low number of production units design would really only make sense if you could find an off the shelf solution to drive multiple displays.

        If these displays are not supposed to be animated and they’re reasonably low resolution (say, 800x600 20bit RGB or less), they could be connected via SPI and pretty much every microcontroller out there has multiple SPI ports, so even a cheap SBC would work for that). However I expect that getting XWindows or Wayland in Linux to work with such displays would be a PITA.

        I’ve only ever got software running under Linux to control a tiny 2-tone display via I2C - on an Orange Pi SBC - and it’s totally its own thing which happens to be running under Linux sending low-level commands via the I2C dev and not at all integrated with X-Windows or Wayland. This would also work fine if the comms was via SPI (in fact the code barelly changes since I’m using a library that does most of the low-level work for me).

        To just display a static image or a sequence of static images loaded from storage in a bunch of screens low-resolution enough to support SPI (so 800x600 or less) I expect something like that would be fine.

        The more I think about it, there more I expect this thing could run on a single $50 SBC as long as the connector exposes at least an SPI device and 8 independent I/O lines (given how SPI works, shared SPI bus is fine with one separate Chip Select line for each screen as long as the SPI device under Linux can run on a mode that lets your code control the CS line itself, and the other 4 I/O lines are for touch detection) assuming touch position is irrelevant.