Mods, please correct the editorialized and wrong title. NumWorks isn't open source and never was.<p>What it is is <i>source-available</i>, because the source is available. Or at least it still was available the last time I looked at it.<p>NumWorks used to be fun because it had an unlocked bootloader, allowing users to download their own software onto the calculator. But then they did a face-heel turn.<p>To NumWorks' credit, I'm sure the UI is still miles ahead of Texas Instruments calculators.<p>EDIT: it seems NumWorks now allows users to download "apps" onto their devices. This is nice, of course, but still a far cry from the unlocked bootloader situation.
I think the creators do legitimately want to build a truly open source calculator. The problem is getting the calculator registered for exams - the examiners naturally want to make sure that the calculator isn't being used for cheating. And any method to replace the firmware, add custom applications, etc. can and should be viewed as a way to cheat on exams.<p>Personally, I'm hopefully never going to take another standardized exam in my life - I'd like to see a graphing calculator that <i>doesn't</i> attempt to get certified for exams or school use, since this seems to be such a significant hurdle. But I know I'm in the 0.1% of graphing calculator users who don't care about AP/IB/the SAT/whatever.
There’s a forked version of the OS called Omega that’s really nice: <a href="https://github.com/Omega-Numworks/Omega" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Omega-Numworks/Omega</a><p>And apparently a jailbreak for Epsilon 16+: <a href="https://phi.getomega.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://phi.getomega.dev/</a>
It doesn't support Rust at all.<p>There's just a GitHub repository with a toy example in Rust, that uses nothing but direct unsafe calls to five C functions.<p>But Python, yeah, definitely. That's the beauty of this calculator.
I have one. It's great. It's quite an amazing bit of tech.<p>I wish they would split out the market, though, one for the educational market for tests and the like, and one for the professionals with wireless and more open capabilities.<p>I would like for instance to ship images of graphs to use in a web page. Or to use it as a keyboard to type equations and calculations into documents. Or to have it connect to PyPI say to grab programs that can calculate complex equations.... etc.
NumWorks is not open source. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28344087" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28344087</a>
I just stumbled upon NumWorks and was excited to see some competition for TI's calculator monopoly [1].<p>It looks like NumWorks is open source (including the hardware) [2] and supports Python and Rust! [3]<p>[1] <a href="https://gen.medium.com/big-calculator-how-texas-instruments-monopolized-math-class-67ee165045dc" rel="nofollow">https://gen.medium.com/big-calculator-how-texas-instruments-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.numworks.com/resources/engineering/" rel="nofollow">https://www.numworks.com/resources/engineering/</a><p>[3] <a href="https://github.com/numworks/epsilon-sample-app-rust" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/numworks/epsilon-sample-app-rust</a>
Numworks is interesting, but not really that great. The two things I don't like are: 1. the Android app is a strictly a physical calculator emulator, and does not try to be the best possible calculator for Android. 2. On the real calculator, the user interface is pretty slow- sure, it's responsive, but it's not very efficient.<p>So for example, it comes in last on this benchmark:<p><a href="https://github.com/jhallen/calculator/wiki" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jhallen/calculator/wiki</a>
The NumWorks is now a fauxpensource device. They changed their license months ago after a debacle with their exam mode. Delta/Upsilon firmware are based on the pre-license change firmware.<p>Where does the statement around rust support come from?
This thing looks a whole lot like the HP Prime[0] calculator. From the icons to select the "applications" (aka modes) and the pop up menus. That said the HP has a color screen and from the looks of it better buttons.<p>Too bad HP didn't care enough about calculators to make the prime live up to its potential.<p>[0]: <a href="https://hpcalcs.com/product/hp-prime-graphing-calculator/" rel="nofollow">https://hpcalcs.com/product/hp-prime-graphing-calculator/</a>