I can confirm the existence of two projects to commence after I arrive in South Africa.

It is even possible I might be teaching such skills at the school in Nigeria later; perhaps I might run a 'practical computing skills class' - it will focus on low cost computing; I will not impose the likes of Apple and Micro$oft rubbish in an African country; I know cheaper - and frankly - better - alternatives!). My dislike of Micro$oft, Apple and rip-offs in general is legendary.

Why am I so anti-Micro$oft? Why does my server run Unix? And why only my teaching laptop has Micro$oft junk on it. (I cannot use the correct terminology as ladies are reading this...)

...And why I am not a fan of Apple either. Mega expensive, captive market consumables? No way!!!

Recently, I mentioned that when I am not teaching, I have researched the idea of building a low cost AI computer (and renting online use of it?)

This is how one American achieved it. (Like me, he is a proponent of the 'small internet', low cost computing and alternative networks).

And I even found software that runs slowly but well on a Raspberry PI! The main issue is the computing power needed to get fast results. In the example, a Raspberry PI zero (the original device) was used; I already have a Raspberry PI here running providing my web, Gopher and Gemini services; it also is a local Samba/Apple Filing protocol/UNIX NFS server locally.

I ordered it from Alibaba last term; complete with case and power supply - and it also has a built in cooling fan - vital for high power applications! And although I had to assemble it myself, this is trivial for me once someone lent me some screwdrivers. By the way, my lady said Alibaba is a scam! However, I have also ordered things from there before including the components for these:

They are low cost chargers for the UK and Eire construction industries.

My former colleague and business partner, James, will remember them! I sold them partly at LHR16 (The Amazon UK Liverpool Street site, - at that time, under construction) in 2017 and the rest online; a few shipped to the Irish Republic paid for in Euros. (Take that, CMS!)

I believe that AI on a Raspberry PI 5 is feasible and not as slow as the PI Zero described here...

https://towardsdatascience.com/generating-images-with-stable-diffusion-and-onnxstream-on-the-raspberry-pi-f126636b6c0c/

Another possibility I am investigating is the use of a Raspberry PI 5 to mine cryptocurrency.

TIP: In a low cost economy such as South Africa, this might be viable. But why a Raspberry PI? Because, they consume just 4 watts of power! It is about the physics - there is no point in the project if it consumes a lot of electricity to run it! (In addition, I might want an uninterruptable power supply protecting a bank of these from power surges and to give time to shut them down correctly in the event of a power outage (this is to avoid losing data ans corruption of the SD card; I did this manually the last three nights here for the sever as we had been informed there would be power outage from 00:00 to 02:00 as they were carrying out work on the power supply to the Campus - a lot of building work going on here at time of writing!

Crypto mining with a Raspberry PI

Another article

Keep in mind that a gaming computer can have a powerful GPU card added - graphics processing cards are mostly associated with gaming - but a GPU can mine cryptocurrency too, and is MUCH better suited than the CPU. Being physically able to upgrade the machine rules out laptops, mobile phones and anything from Apple (And I hate Apple for cost, environmental and compatibility reasons, too).

When I see these awful thin laptops (convenient on a flight I know), I see RAM and the CPU soldered to the motherboard making upgrade or repair difficult, expensive or impossible; I see a lack of space for air flow and cooling and/or CPU throttling (to prevent overheating, but also meaning that your money is wasted on that fast CPU as you will not get the benefit of it!).

I feel that this will be a great opportunity to show off my engineering prowess in another continent. And in addition, I seek new sources of income, naturally!

Note: I can even build an initial working machine and take a whole system image of it. Firstly for backup purposes - lest there be a hardware failure. But there is another reason...

I can 'xerox' it onto a device with identical hardware (The Raspberry PI is perfect!) and... sell a ready made system. Potentially.

Happy Easter (It is Easter Sunday at time of writing).