Minimum spec: Empty Epsilon

Hey, I want to make a sweet bridge for my wife. Obviously keeping costs low is a priority. Ive found EE works on Linux which is great because I didn't want to pay MS for 5+ licences.

I'm also thinking a projector like this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B06X9B27VM/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1510930608&sr=8-5&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=projector&dpPl=1&dpID=415dn9wdaYL&ref=plSrch


So my question is: assuming a fully wired network, what's the minimum spec for laptops (I live in the UK, so have to set up and pack away a room), that will work and what's the recommended spec? I've tried Google but can't find anything helpful for "Minimum specification Empty Epsilon" or "technical specification empty epsilon".

Do All the machines need a 3D gfx card or just the server? I'd prefer to buy a bunch together so they look uniform but money is a thing.

Comments

  • Our initial setup is running on laptops that where all free. Just asked around in the office for laptops that people had at home but no longer where using. There is even an IBM thinkpad in our mix. So the minimal specs are quick low, even if not all of these are running at 60FPS.
    I've also ran it on my media center, which is the first version ASRock Ion. Simple Atom based machine.

    So I'm quite sure that anything new, but low spec could potentially run it. Maybe except for the main screen, that's always the heaviest requirement due to the 3D rendering.

    But minimal specs are always hard...
  • I would say one minimal spec is "OpenGL", as you need OpenGL drivers even for the non-3d-screens. But hardware acceleration is not neccesary. If not hardware accelerated, software acceleration should work, but of course is much slower. There was a suggestion in these boards a while ago that it should be possible to compile a version that uses GL.ES instead (like the android versions already do), but I don't know if someone already succesfully did that for a desktop OS.

    Anyway, on every laptop I tried EmptyEpsilon so far(and I tested some really old ones, like celeron m and 512MB), it worked - although there were some performance issues on the oldest machines.

    Make sure that Your Server PC dont get too slow, as that can cause weird effects, like a "jittering" ship, also having server and mainscreen on different computers can increase the porformance. BTW you can show the current FPS by pressing F10. If you end up with one laptop that is much older than the others, use it for engineering.

    Or, as I read your introductionary post: Maybe you don't need an extra PC for engineering at all! At least for the power control part, all in-/outputs are accessible through the http API. So, if you activate Auto Repair, you could make a custom console that uses sliders for power and colant control and leds or scales for showing the system condition. Then plug in into another PC where you are running a script that communicates with the http server. But of course that would be a pretty ambitious project, as there are 16 values to set and 32 to display.
  • Thanks dotcomrades!

    I'm pretty excited about making the custom input devices and whilst it would be a challenge you've got to admit engineering with physical sliders would be cool as balls.
  • As coolant gets drained out of systems if you put it into others, you would need motorized linear potentiometers. I haven't been able to find those for cheap. They are always around $20:
    https://www.proto-pic.co.uk/slide-pot-motorized-10k-linear-taper.html
    As you need at least 8 of them, it quickly becomes more expensive then our touchscreen solution (which where 80 euro a screen)
    For the displaying of data, I would buy WS2812 LED strip, and put some white acrylic in front of it. Cut the strip into bars per system.
  • edited November 2017
    You won't necessarily need motorized sliders, an inidcator LED showing if there is as much coolant in the system as demanded should suffice. As the WS2812 are RGB LED, you could indicate that by changing color.
    Actually, this fits engineering IMHO even better than motorsliders, as the game also stores the demand-states for the systems so they will get back coolant if available (probably the one thing that keeps me from disliking the autodistribution much, as I am normaly not a fan of it and prefer manual distribution "FTL-style")
  • BTW, cheapest place I know for components is http://futurlec.com although they are somewhat slow to fill orders (might take a month). Don't think they have motorized faders though. They do have 60mm sliding potentiometers for $1.30 each and rotary pots from $0.55 each, and various buttons, switches, LEDs, LED matrixes, etc. for cheap.
  • Wow thank you! That's really kind of you!
  • The current EE setup daid has (I'm a colleague of his) is running on old 32 bit atom boxes, except for science and main-screen this suffices.
    We'll need to optimize a bit to get it running smoothly on raspberry-pi like devices but that would make it a lot more compact and cost effective.
  • Bobsico said:

    We'll need to optimize a bit to get it running smoothly on raspberry-pi like devices but that would make it a lot more compact and cost effective.

    "a bit" is an understatement... most likely the whole rendering of ui needs to be redone.
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