News Raspberry Pi computer, is it rational?

[jedidia]

You could get a real desktop computer for the price of this little board, which would be many times faster and responsive.

For 55 bucks? I'm not sure what kind of desktop computer you'll get for that. Also, the Pi is still an astonishingly durable piece of machinery.

Still, I get what you're saying, and I agree. The Pi 4 really starts having issues with power consumption and heat. You could switch out a Pi2 with a Pi3 or even 3B+ without thinking much about it, but the Pi4 doesn't quite fit the same bill anymore. I do hope they keep the 3B+ in production...

 

[DaveS]

For 55 bucks? I'm not sure what kind of desktop computer you'll get for that.

Here's a couple of very low-budget examples (OK, they're both above the $55 mark, but still):

 

[Enjo]

More and more it feels like they are going the wrong way with this. You could get a real desktop computer for the price of this little board, which would be many times faster and responsive.

On the other hand, it's power consumption, heat dissipation and price raises eyebrows for the "edge computing" tasks.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/raspberry-pi-4-review-price-release

Beyond the world of single-board computers, the Pi 4's performance in that test is about as fast as a decent 2007-era Intel Core 2 processor. It's six times slower than our reference AMD Ryzen 5 1600 based desktop PC. But then again, that AMD CPU alone costs three times as much as the whole Pi 4.

Plus as jedidia said - durability.

I'm slowly moving away from having a desktop PC at my own desktop - I pay a low cost root server and will soon place the desktop PC with a good GPU for batch machine learning tasks in a place where the power is cheap.

 

[Artlav]

For 55 bucks? I'm not sure what kind of desktop computer you'll get for that..

There are quite a few motherboards with embedded CPUs out there at that price range and less. I.e. GIGABYTE GA-E3000N is $35. Add in some RAM and a PSU, and you'd get a working system as bare as RPi is for about $50.

Also, they can run Windows, which most people would expect from a desktop PC, while RPi can't (in a practical sense).

 

[Enjo]

There are quite a few motherboards with embedded CPUs out there at that price range and less. I.e. GIGABYTE GA-E3000N is $35. Add in some RAM and a PSU, and you'd get a working system as bare as RPi is for about $50.

Maybe slightly more than $50.

Also, they can run Windows, which most people would expect from a desktop PC, while RPi can't (in a practical sense).

I see it as a big positive, that I might precompute my data on a x64 workhorse machine, and send it to a x64 low powered one in a compatible binary form for reuse. It's not possible for RPi in this case. However RPi isn't a market for "most people" but it targets a nerdy niche.

 

[Fabri91]

I mean, the 1GB version is still 35$ and perfectly fine for lots of projects.

Personally I'm glad that versions with more RAM are available for those who'd like to make use of these resources.

Shameless plug: I've bought a domain and made the website of my NOAA imagery receiver public - https://www.fabri91.eu.

@Artlav: I continue forgetting trying to add Meteor-2M receiver functionality using your software - I will get around to it when I have some more time to tinker with it.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

Most of the use cases I'm seeing aren't really for desktop computing. The 3b+ I have serves as a wireless SDR signal relay in my truck. Its built-in GPIO and other communication protocols are useful for a multitude of embedded and headless applications such as home automation, remote sensing, robotics, etc.

 

[llarian]

For those of you planning to indulge and get a Raspberry Pi 4, do a good read on the cooling requirements for it. It does run a lot hotter than previous variants to the point that active cooling is pretty much required to prevent thermal throttling. Plan on a fan and a fairly open case to allow good ventilation.

 

[Marijn]

It seems 5G networks need more antenna's to cover the same area as 4G. So there is little hope of having an internet connection above 1500ft in The Netherlands. Also, powering a h.265 hardware encoder would be a challange. Perhaps when satellite internet becomes mainstream, I can pick this idea up again.

 

[Artlav]

Meanwhile, i've been sorting through my pile of old boards, and marvelling just how many revisions of Raspberry Pi there was.

The earliest one i got is revision 0002, with serial number starting with 101 (still 6 digits, however).
Got a few of revision 000e, which looks similar, but behaves differently. Twice the memory and no browning-out the flash drives.
A zoo of zeros, with 4 revisions and 5 different firmware versions.
Then a 2 Model B by Embest and a compute module CM3.

Found a table, and apparently there had been several dozens of them, and with rather confusing naming scheme.

And to think just a few (7...!) years ago there was basically just one, which i wanted to get, preordered from several locations, filled the paperwork, eventually received and... had zero use for until about now.


Speaking of use, so far the best uses i had for them were cameras and IoT gateways/servers.

I've also been hacking it on OS level now, and apparently all the clunky interfaces to the GPU you see in the libraries are *actual* hardware interfaces. A "mailbox" interface to talk to a proprietary OS running on the GPU... Sometimes using shell-like commands...
Sad.
Like, why? Why lock down and close firmwares? Don't you want people using your product?

 

[Linguofreak]

I've also been hacking it on OS level now, and apparently all the clunky interfaces to the GPU you see in the libraries are *actual* hardware interfaces. A "mailbox" interface to talk to a proprietary OS running on the GPU... Sometimes using shell-like commands...
Sad.
Like, why? Why lock down and close firmwares? Don't you want people using your product?

My understanding is that before the Raspberry Pi, the GPU interface for that series of SOCs wasn't even documented without an NDA. When the Raspberry Pi team chose that SOC for their product and the Raspberry Pi became popular with the Open Source community, there was a bit of unhappiness over how locked down the GPU was, and the manufacturer decided that having good PR with their biggest customer's user base was more important than secrecy, so they released documentation for the interface. I may have a few details wrong there, as it's been a while since I read up on that.

As to why that SOC is was chosen for the Raspberry Pi, ARM is the go-to choice for low-power, low-cost, reasonably capable CPUs, and my understanding is that you won't generally find much better in the ARM market, which mostly caters to embedded systems: embedded developers are used to it, the general public tends to be used to the dumb versions of the types of things embedded CPUs are used in, and so forth, so there doesn't tend to be a large number of end users for ARM that expect to be able to tinker with their own code. Opaque firmware, NDA-only interfaces, and peripherals that have more control over the SOC than the CPU tend to be the norm (on the Raspberry Pi it's the GPU, which actually performs bootloader functions for the CPU, on many phones it's the cellular modem).

 

[Marijn]

In The Netherlands, two internet providers have 98% of the marketshare. These providers offer routers with dual access points. This extra access point can be used by all customers of the provider. That means, there is Wifi available in most places in populated area's.

Google offers an IP geolocation service. If you upload a list of access points, Google answers with a latlon. That way, you can create very small tracking devices.

I just ordered a couple of these tiny boards to have a play with.

I already experimented with the Wemos D1 mini boards based on the ESP8266. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug in the firmware which causes the security protocol negotiation to fail at times. Hopefully, the ESP32 does not have this problem.

The idea is to create a cat collar so I can learn where they hang out. If it works, it would also be nice addition to regular GPS trackers. The device can be very small and last quite long on a battery. And most important, it's not required to have a view at the sky for satellite reception. Wifi will work in garages too.

 

[Notebook]

CatSat, MoggyMinder!
Brilliant, the cats won't know anything about it and all their plans for world domination will fail.

 

[Marijn]

Low Earth Orbit by a commercial grade Raspberry Pi

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has today released an image and video of the Earth captured from Low Earth Orbit by a commercial grade Raspberry Pi camera and computer on board a Demonstration of Technology satellite called DoT-1, launched on a Soyuz rocket in July 2019.

The image is of the Mediterranean Sea, targeted over the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, and is believed to be the first acquired in Low Earth Orbit by a commercial off-the-shelf Raspberry Pi camera.

 

[Urwumpe]

Low Earth Orbit by a commercial grade Raspberry Pi

Pretty good image quality, did they do something with the optics to prevent fogging?

 

[Notebook]

I suppose we'll find out how long it lasts.

It must have some shielding?

 

[Marijn]

Pretty good image quality, did they do something with the optics to prevent fogging?

You're asking whether they prepared the Pi before launch to remove all traces of moisture?

More info here: https://www.sstl.co.uk/media-hub/latest-news/2019/sstl-releases-spectacular-raspberry-pi-camera-imag

 

[Urwumpe]

You're asking whether they prepared the Pi before launch to remove all traces of moisture?

More info here: https://www.sstl.co.uk/media-hub/latest-news/2019/sstl-releases-spectacular-raspberry-pi-camera-imag

Yes, but also by outgassing of plastic components, erosion and chemical reactions at the surface of the objective.

 

[Marijn]

Yes, but also by outgassing of plastic components, erosion and chemical reactions at the surface of the objective.

If they did, then it won't be a 'commercial grade' imho.

 

[Urwumpe]

If they did, then it won't be a 'commercial grade' imho.

Sure - or they had really been great in selecting commercial parts that don't look like they have been left in the smoker over the weekend after mere hours in space.

Which of course, would be even more great - where can I buy some of those?