Odroid C1 dreams

A machine vision algorithm emerged, which could do a reasonable job tracking a path. The machine vision algorithm of choice goes at 3fps on the raspberry pi. The PI can only go up to 900Mhz. The RTL8188 is the only chip still supporting wifi access on it & it rarely stays connected longer than a few seconds.

The other problem is the algorithm only works in daylight, on a single uncrowded path near the apartment. When you have to commute 3 hours a day, you can't be home during the daytime, at all. There wasn't a chance to test it in January & probably won't be until April. There's no open space in the city to test it.

In terms of cost per clockcycle, the Odroid C1 has now been the duck's guts for several years. Development of the RTL8188 driver has continued on the Odroid, supposedly making it more bearable. It begins at $37, then the gauging begins in ernest, with exorbitant shipping, taxes, & cash only.

It makes no sense for so many middle men to now be required in payments, each adding on their own 2.5%. 30 years ago, there was just a bank. Now, it takes Paypal, Square, Apple pay, Google wallet, Coin, thousands & thousands of middle men. As middle men gauge more, new middle men emerge, promising to reduce the fees by spreading the cost of the lower middle men among a larger group. It was once said that Visa's exorbitant fees bordered on racketeering. Now, the current generation is in middle man euphoria, praising Google wallet, Apple Pay, & Square, which merely tack on other fees on top of Paypal, on top of Visa, on top of the bank. It's insane.