Hello everyone,
I just learned about RACHEL which is distributed by World Possible - https://worldpossible.org -. It is a HW that integrates CPU, storage and wifi - and also is battery powered - and was created to provide access to offline educational content.
Has anyone in this community deployed Kolibri on RACHEL? I’d like to know the pros and cons.
Thank you.
-Marco
I use the Raspberry Pi, the image for this is available from World possible. It is a lot cheaper than the RACHEL from World possible and a lot more flexible. The Pi also uses very little power. We use it with Kolibri in all the remote installations and in a more urban setting. You can see this work at giakonda.org.uk.
I have deployed RACHEL Plus with Kolibri in 5 schools in rural Dominican Republic plus 4 schools in Ghana. It works well, but we do have occasional problems with file corruption. Sometimes we can recover, sometimes we can not.
When we added 2 more schools in Ghana I decided to deploy Kolibri on a couple of old servers I was able to scrounge up. It seems to run more reliably on servers (either Windows or Linux).
Regards,
LarryY
Hi there,
Thanks for the feedback, really helpful. BTW, I took a look at your website and you are doing a great job, congrats. Curiously, I’m planning a deployment in a rural school in Nepal too - no electricity, no Internet.
Best regards.
-Marco
Hi LarryY,
Thanks for the feedback too. It is specially relevant since the deployment I’m planning will not have technical support nearby.
Kind regards,
-Marco
You are very welcome & good luck.
LarryY
We are considering an implementation involving RACHEL servers as well. Regarding the file corruption, can you describe the experience? Did you have to reformat the entire RACHEL server? Has using the old servers you’ve deployed, impacted the number of concurrent users who could connect in a classroom?
Hi Andy, My 4 RACHEL Plus CAPs all had some problem when I arrived in Ghana. I believe the problem was related to the CAPs losing power for extended periods of time. All of them displayed no modules present. When I rebooted them, three of them came back up with modules, but then a day later, one of them once again displayed no modules present. I don’t know if the two other remote CAPs continued to work or if they failed again. I did lose all of the content on the two that kept failing.
I’ve been working with James Kainer, who has come up with a fantastic solution for me. Since expertise is so hard to come by in many areas and my time there is very limited, he’s developed a way to take a RACHEL Plus V3 and upgrade it to version 3.0.2. Once it’s at version 3.0.2 I can remove the existing disk and add a new disk that I will load up as version 3.0.2 as well, then load all of the desired modules. I can then remove that disk & place it in any 3.0.2 RACHEL Plus V3 at version 3.0.2. This way, when there’s a disk failure, I can create a number of disks in my office then either ship them or carry them to the existing site. Once in the field, all I have to do is replace the current hard disk with the new one & it’s all ready to go. I can also leave extra pre-configured disks at a site in case they have a disk failure later.
I have not tried the new method yet, but I’m very optimistic.
Regards,
LarryY