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This Raspberry Pi 'Expanso Football' is a cool distributed compute cluster in a briefcase
When it comes to demonstrating software at a convention, it can be tricky to develop something that's efficient and appropriately attention-grabbing. Thankfully, the team at Expanso has Sean Tracey on board who threw together this really cool Raspberry Pi-powered cluster in a briefcase he calls the Expanso Football. We think it's a super fun idea to throw so many Pis into one case so we've invited Tracey to show off his creation in our upcoming episode of The Pi Cast, linked below.
Tracey was taking part in a convention known as TechCrunch Disrupt to showcase Expanso's software known as Bacalhau. This is an open-source tool that lets users process data as it's being generated in the same location. However, this is a tricky concept to get across in a short amount of time. The solution? A nuclear football! Or rather, something with a similar form factor that could implement Bacalhau and attract passers-by during the convention.
What's really impressive about the project is how quickly Tracey managed to pull everything together. He had less than 48 hours to go from idea to final product and that included a 10 hour flight from the UK to the US. Despite the time crunch, he managed to find everything he needed from a perfectly sized storage box to house the hardware to a travel screen that could easily be mounted inside the lid.
The system is comprised of a total of four Raspberry Pis. One serves as an orchestrator node that communicates with the other three work nodes. With this setup, attendees can see the cluster working in unison to demonstrate Bacalhau and its potential. The system is controlled by a keyboard that's covering the wire jungle beneath.
According to Tracey, the Expanso Football served its purpose exceedingly well. People were more than curious about the briefcase with a screen and were eager to see more of the Raspberry Pi cluster's potential. There are plans in the works to refine it further with more features, LEDs and a purple finish to suit the Expanso branding.
If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project, you can check out the blog post detailing its creation—but we recommend tuning in Tuesday to our upcoming episode of The Pi Cast to hear more about it directly from Tracey himself.
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Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.
