Hello Frank, I think I can speak with some minor authority on this. I am a BeagleBone Black guy, not a RPi guy, but in this situation I think my knowledge of one is enough to inform the other.
The RPi (and BeagleBone Black) run full Linux OSes running on ARM. Perl runs just fine on these; web servers run without trouble by extension; and more interestingly, the X windowing system and GUI layers (like Gnome, Mate, KDE, etc) run just fine, too. These are fully functional computers, powered by ARM processors. As such, they would do just fine creating a display if you can plug the monitor into the computer. BeagleBone has pre-compiled Debian and Ubuntu images; I'm sure RPi does, too. RPi is supposed to be better than BeagleBone for multimedia because it has more and varied ports, but the BBB has HDMI output, too. I don't do mutlimedia with my BBs so I don't know or care. If you can plug your mother's TV into a DVI input, or get a converter, then you could simply use the TV as a monitor. Then you could write Tk or Prima applications to achieve what you want. Language level support (Python, Javascript, or otherwise) need not have any bearing on your decision here. BTW, the big differences that I know of between the BB and RPi are: - BB is fully open-source, including board layout; RPi is not because of Broadcom (I believe) licensing agreements. - RPi's Broadcom chipset is more multimedia friendly, and it has two USB ports to the BB's one. - BB is built on TI's Sitara chip. This chip includes two microcontrollers *within the main CPU silicon*, making it all-around much better for industrial and real-time applications. It's like having two Arduinos baked into the chip. This should have no bearing on your decision, but was the deciding factor for me picking BB. Good luck! Feel free to reach out either on this list or directly if you have questions! David On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 7:53 PM, SSC_perl <p...@surfshopcart.com> wrote: > On Jul 25, 2017, at 2:08 PM, Andrew Solomon <and...@geekuni.com> wrote: > > In case you want to see what's already out there, the search engine term > for you is "assistive technology". > > > Thanks, Andrew! I appreciate it. However, I think that's more than what > I need. I'm really only looking to display formatted text on a TV screen. > > ------- > > I finally found a project that looks similar to what I want to do: > > https://www.cnet.com/how-to/turn-an-old-monitor-into-a- > wall-display-with-a-raspberry-pi/ > > It's a lot more elaborate than what I need and it uses a web service to > display the information. I'd prefer to use Perl, if at all possible, and > use my own server for the files. > > Frank > -- "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." -- Brian Kernighan
