anderson
Hi anderson,
the initial configuration of the MoodleBox is fine. After you copied the image to an microSD card you just can start without any restriction. The installed Moodle on the MoodleBox 4.9.0 is Moodle 4.5.3. You can update this Moodle up to the latest Moodle 4.5.4+ or Moodle 5.0 .... but only if you are connected to the internet. Without an internet connection you must take Moodle 4.5.3 as it is. https://moodlebox.net/en/help/moodle-version-update/
Yes, the MoodleBox wifi can only be used by 20 to 24 devices at the same time but you know this restriction before you start. You also know that a Raspberry Pi 5 will run better and faster than a Raspberry Pi 4B, 3B+ or 3 ... and if you use a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 your Moodle will rather slow.
In every Moodle you need to get user accounts for yourself and for your users. When you get a fresh MoodleBox only one user account exists. It's the moodleadmin account and nobody should use this account to make courses and to visit courses. The best idea to get a lot of user accounts in a short time is to upload a csv file. A csv upload needs to have 5 fields for every user: username, password, firstname, lastname, email. No, the MoodleBox does not send emails but it's a normal Moodle and Moodle needs email addresses. You need to inform your users about their usernames and passwords. There is no way to send the things per email automatically.
Now you want to get course content without internet. You can't link to an external website or to an external video. Everything you want to have for your users must be on the MoodleBox. If you want to import courses you made on another Moodle or you got from a friend you can upload couse backups with maximal 50 MB. If you have bigger course backups please use an usb stick which you connect to one of the blue usb ports of the Moodlebox ... the blue ports have usb3, the black ones only usb2. After you connected the usb stick you will find its content in the file picker item "USB drive". https://moodlebox.net/en/help/using-files-with-the-moodlebox/ Yes, on this way you can import very big courses with a lot of documents, photos and videos inside. But remember ... the documents, the photos and the videos ... everything must be locally in the course because you can't use linked media from the internet.
Okay, you asked for plugins. You can install a lot of plugins but you must ask yourself if you will need them. For every imported course you must know if the course uses the standard Moodle or does it uses any additional plugin. If the plugin is not installed on the Moodlebox the content of the plugin will not imported and the features of the plugin can't be used.
You asked: How does the MoodleBox address the issues that arise when many users connect simultaneously via Wi-Fi? The MoodleBox wifi allows maximal 20 to 24 connections at the same time. If all all connections are used no more devices will get a new connection to the wifi. The users must wait and try again.
With the MoodleBox you can use the mobile Moodle app. With this app the users can download content of their course into the Moodle app and work offline without a MoodleBox connection. The users can read documents in the Moodle app, they can watch downloaded videos, they can read forum post ... and they can write own forum posts without a connection to the MoodleBox. Next time they are connected the content will synchronize. But remember: the Moodle app is restricted. Every user can only download two courses to work with and when he needs a next course he has to delete the offline content from one of the other courses.
You're referring to a forum thread from 5 years ago https://discuss.moodlebox.net/d/157-new-moodlebox-installation-not-providing-connectivity-what-is-devops . The bugs from 5 years ago have been resolved if you're using the current MoodleBox 4.9.0. There may be new issues, but the old ones have been addressed and resolved.
If you want to use the MoodleBox you should start and try it. It's easy to start! If your first launch is unsuccessful... don't worry! You can't break anything. You can simply copy a new microSD card and start from scratch.
And once your Moodle is running, you should definitely remember to regularly back up the entire platform. With BalenaEtcher (and other tools), you can take your computer and completely clone the microSD card. Nicolas described how to do it with the integrated tool rpi-clone here in the forum: https://discuss.moodlebox.net/d/366-clone-your-moodlebox-to-a-usb-drive ... but knowing that it the cloning works and is easy isn't enough! Backups are important if you don't want to lose your work at some point.
I hope this helps! I am using the MoodleBox since 2016 😎 https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=331170
Best regards,
Ralf