Raspberry Pi: yeah we're pretty much all on desktops again

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Raspberry Pi: yeah we're pretty much all on desktops again

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Mantle: May 15, 2004

Lots of options

Wireless network
Wired serial connection
Bluetooth serial dongle

# ¿ Mar 26, 2019 21:23

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 21:06

Mantle: May 15, 2004

A better first step is to flash a new sd card and test Ethernet without destroying your current installation.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2019 22:39

Mantle: May 15, 2004

GutBomb posted:

It’s not worth your time to use a raspberry pi as a router. Just get a real router. A nice router will also have VPN functionality

https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/

I like something from this list because I like the Merlin firmware.

You might not be able to run Pi hole on the router but you'll be able to run it elsewhere on your network. Also a real router will have real antennas so you will have better coverage.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2020 02:31

Mantle: May 15, 2004

There's also an opportunity to do something cool with the gpio instead of using a monitor.

For example, you could set off a relay to trigger a smoke effect or a bang. You could also use a 7 segment display for the countdown timer. There should be tutorials for these online already and you just need to hook it up.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2020 04:39

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Has anyone run Raspberry Pi Desktop on a really old and lovely computer? I have a 1.5ghz VIA C7 with 2gb ram which was a lovely computer when it was new back in 2008. If you can believe it, I upgraded the IGP with an old Voodoo 3.

I would like to turn it into an offline learning toy for my niece and nephew running scratch and Minecraft type software.

However, I'd like to have some idea of what the experience is going to be like before I dig it out of my parents' garage. Last time I tried to put lubuntu on it around 2012 it still sucked as a general purpose computer but I think as an offline machine it might be better since the web has become so much heavier since 2008.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2020 18:40

Mantle: May 15, 2004

clockworkjoe posted:

I'd like to try to set up a 24/7 music stream on Youtube with my raspberry pi 4 4 gig ram. The easiest way I can see is for me to install windows on it - is there a good guide on how to do that?

Consume or broadcast a 24/7 stream?

# ¿ Apr 19, 2020 05:55

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Which guide did you follow for the read only boot thing?

# ¿ May 5, 2020 19:39

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Warbird posted:

I've seen no end of pi projects to have the board operate as an open source'd Chromecast, but is there a way to actually make the thing a Chromecast proper? I've got an old gen one that's just not doing the drat thing anymore and it would be nice to have to pi to take a swing at it to verify it is/isn't an old hardware issue.

In short, no(t yet). I looked into this a few days ago and the term you want to follow us Google Cast Protocol.

The Google Cast server is closed source and proprietary. Google wants you to build to cast to their devices only.

# ¿ May 10, 2020 19:17

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Just an FYI the Xbox 1 remote and ir dongle has native support in libreelec and it works well.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2020 18:23

Mantle: May 15, 2004

I have a GSM/GPRS Arduino shield that is going to become useless in Canada at the end of this year. Are there any goons in India or other places with GSM networks that could use it?

# ¿ Aug 24, 2020 21:09

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Sockser posted:

I need to wire a neopixel strip to a Raspi GPIO
I don't want to solder directly to the GPIO and I think female jumpers are going to be a bit too fragile

What's my best option?

I'm currently thinking of just grabbing a 2x3 header and yanking 3 of the pins out with Pliers so I have access to 5v gnd and GPIO 2/3 and soldering wires to that, which feels kind of weird

If it's quasi permanent use a prototype hat: https://www.buyapi.ca/product/raspberry-pi-prototyping-hat/

If it's temporary or in dev use a breakout breadboard: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1754

# ¿ Apr 25, 2021 00:32

Mantle: May 15, 2004

GreenBuckanneer posted:

What's the typical use-case for a 4 or 8 gb ram raspberry pi?

same as all the others, pihole

/s

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 21:39

Mantle: May 15, 2004

GreenBuckanneer posted:

What about a pihole that's also just a cheap nas?

Like, for example could you use the Pi as a fileserver, and the transcoding done on a regular computer? Would 2GB ram still be enough?

I think it makes way more sense to do it the other way. Get a cheap NAS, and run a docker container on it with pi-hole.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 22:36

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Here's an alternative setup to explore

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/raspberry-pi-chromecast/

# ¿ Nov 13, 2021 17:22

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Warbird posted:

If you need it now you can always spin an instance up in a VM.

https://hub.docker.com/r/pihole/pihole

# ¿ Jan 9, 2022 17:23

Mantle: May 15, 2004

sb hermit posted:

https://ubuntu.com/blog/canonical-enables-ubuntu-on-starfives-visionfive-risc-v-boards

Previously, Ubuntu had promised support for a RISC-V board that goes for about $179.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-22.10-Sipeed-LicheeRV

Well, for those of you who are looking to do RISC-V on the cheap, Ubuntu 22.10 is going to support a $17 board that's 1 GHZ and 512 MB RAM.

I imagine that real solutions would use yocto or buildroot to build a cut-down version of an OS for production use but an Ubuntu image would certainly be useful for prototyping.

How does Ubuntu promise all the applications in the distro are going to work? Are they really taking responsibility for compiling every application? Or does it cause a split where different applications are supported on different architectures?

# ¿ Sep 19, 2022 04:37

Mantle: May 15, 2004

MikeJF posted:

Is there a name for a gpio header cable with two outs like this?

I'm trying to find a 40-pin one and can't.

If you don't need all of the pins you might be able to repurpose an old dual head ide Pata cable. Otherwise you can make one pretty easily from components. They sell parts at my local electronics store but I'm sure you can buy the parts from digikey or something.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2023 08:55

Mantle: May 15, 2004

MikeJF posted:

What's the best pi-equiv with an x86?

To do what? If you just want to do home server and pihole type stuff I like a Synology device that has support for docker. I got an old 2 bay one for free but you can probably find one for less than $200 and it will do your NAS duties too.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2023 03:19

Mantle: May 15, 2004

cruft posted:

Yeah, it has HDMI out up to 4k. It's a neat little box.

Shipping to Australia, dunno. I've been told it's a huge pain, never tried it. Maybe someone else ITT can advise.

Buying a used one of those old HP or Dell boxes that are a little bigger than a slice of bread might be your pro move.

Another keyword to search is Lenovo Tiny. An old one with 8gb ram is about $100.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2023 23:31

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Pham Nuwen posted:

I don't have a clue about how well face recognition actually works on animals, but you could actually test it really easily. Take a few pictures of each cat, then use the command line tool from https://github.com/ageitgey/face_recognition and see how it does on a new picture not in the training set. If it does well, you should be able to wire up that library (or the Go equivalent https://github.com/Kagami/go-face if you prefer Go) pretty easily.

I petsit as a hobby business and have tons of photos of my dog clients, and Google Photos very frequently gets them all wrong. As in, they are identified as dogs in the photo, but dogs that aren't even the same colour will be tagged as the same dog. It would be great if you could beat that!

# ¿ Feb 27, 2023 23:51

Mantle: May 15, 2004

You might want to keep the pi2 around after you decommission it. I read it's the best bang for the power consumption.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2023 05:58

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Pilchenstein posted:

I've got a pi4 that I use for streaming stuff from my pc to the telly but I'm wondering if there's any way to get it to stream from disney+ because there's no app for that on our smart tv. I have chromium media edition but when we tried that it ran like poo poo and I assume I've hosed the configuration up somehow and should just start over - is raspbian + chromium the best option for that or should I try a different os?

The pi is on a wired connection (and can stream 4k video from the pc) and disney+ works fine on other devices in the house so I don't think it's a bandwidth issue but any advice is helpful at this point.

Consider getting a Chromecast with Google TV to replace the function of the Pi. There's a VLC app you can install on it to handle streaming from your own sources, plus you can stream Disney+ either from your phone to it or use the standalone app.

# ¿ May 10, 2023 17:39

Mantle: May 15, 2004

I think as a rule of thumb, unless your project uses the GPIO, the Pi is probably the wrong solution. There's so many better and cheaper ways to do things like stream media to a Chromecast or run home server stuff in a container on your NAS or even your router. My ancient RT-N66U can run a PiHole equivalent and it still gets regular (community) patches.

# ¿ May 11, 2023 22:02

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Cojawfee posted:

What software are you running on your RT-N66U? I was running tomato on mine for a while but kept having issues and swapped back to the default firmware. Seems like every time I buy a router, it's the wrong one and the most popular alternative firmwares barely support them.

I've been running John's fork of Merlin, but it looks like it FINALLY is getting unmaintained: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ALJXk06IprzMMDc&id=9332FC159A7E129%215702&cid=09332FC159A7E129

There's also the mainline Merlin fork from the ASUS firmware that is also unmaintained: https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/about

I probably should switch over to a Google home and run PiHole on my NAS in a Docker container.

# ¿ May 12, 2023 01:45

Mantle: May 15, 2004

https://beepberry.sqfmi.com/

Just ordered one of these, looks like a great portable chat terminal.

# ¿ May 19, 2023 18:08

Mantle: May 15, 2004

What really made me want the beepberry is that they sourced blackberry keyboards for it. I never used one before, but I figure they've gotta be a better user experience than any other home made design. Also, as the pi0 improves over time, this should be a forward compatible drop in upgrade so it's a good candidate for a "forever" computer. I'm tired of throwing electronics away.

# ¿ May 21, 2023 02:26

Mantle: May 15, 2004

I have a C.H.I.P. for sale/free if anyone has a use for it. Comes with the HDMI and composite cable accessories. It's an original run with 8GB flash and the back cover (no PocketCHIP). Is anyone here still using it as a platform?

Alternatively, is anyone selling a PocketCHIP without CHIP that I could buy? I'd set it up as a computer for my niece/nephews.

# ¿ May 24, 2023 19:35

Mantle: May 15, 2004

AlternateAccount posted:

Is there a reliable method to buy a microSD card on Amazon and not get scammed?

This doesn't directly answer your question, but this analysis of manufacturing practices may give you some more information on deciding what card to buy and from where: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022

# ¿ May 24, 2023 19:51

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Handles Are Dumb posted:

So I've browsed the last few pages of this thread and read the thread title, and it seems like general consensus is the pi doesn't have very good value right now?

I really want to set up a pihole or equivalent on my home network. What do you suggest as the most cost-effective ± simple way to get this done?
I do not want to leave my PC on 24/7 so a virtual machine won't work.

Am I in the wrong thread?

It's 2023, you have tons of computers in your house already that are on 24/7. Some of them, like your router or your NAS can run DNS black holes.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2023 05:36

Mantle: May 15, 2004

sb hermit posted:

keep in mind that if you get a zero W, you will also need a mini hdmi cable or adapter (the pi4 uses hdmi nano and I think the rest use standard hdmi) if you want to see any output

If you want to attach any usb devices (likely if you don’t want to use a bluetooth keyboard or etc to connect to it), you’ll need a USB OTG adapter that is known to work with the pi zero (the cable has to be straight or angled in the correct fashion).

You don't need to see output for headless use-- one way is to set up the usb port to enumerate as a network device when you plug it into your PC, then ssh to it. You don't even need a USB OTG cable for this, any micro HDMI cable will do.

E: tldr add g_ether to your device tree: https://learn.adafruit.com/turning-your-raspberry-pi-zero-into-a-usb-gadget/ethernet-gadget

# ¿ Jul 27, 2023 18:05

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Klyith posted:

It claims "mechanically and electrically compatible" with a Pi Compute Module 4, so presumably you can plug it into any of the IO boards available for that?

There's also a 3rd party ecosystem. Here's an example: https://www.clockworkpi.com/

# ¿ Aug 29, 2023 20:13

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Hasturtium posted:

Are there any decent resources online to compare a Pi 4 against contemporary x86 chips? I�m wondering how a Pi 4 would compare against the dirt cheap AMD A9-9400 mini PC I snagged on Amazon a little while back.

The fastest Pi 4 looks like about the same order of magnitude of performance as a core 2 duo: https://cpu-comparison.com/raspberry-pi-4-b-broadcom-bcm2711/intel-core2-duo-e6700/

Even then the c2d is 50% faster than the Pi 4.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2023 01:33

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Hadlock posted:

ARM builds are pretty ubiquitious at this point

ARM6 for the first gen raspi were pretty hard to find but modern ARM7 (which everything seems to support) is cake nowadays, build chains have gotten really mature since everyone has to support Apple CPUs now

Unfortunately, the Pi 0 is also ARM6 and that hasn't really been replaced by the Pi 0 2 because of its ultra low power, price and availability.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2023 06:52

Mantle: May 15, 2004

god please help me posted:

I happen to be in the market for something like a flash drive-sized PC just to stream videos on, but alas, the Compute Stick seems to have died a couple of years ago.

The real solution is a Chromecast with google tv running VLC streaming from your Synology NAS.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2023 07:35

Mantle: May 15, 2004

I really feel like the Pi B series is actually losing utility each new release since the Pi 4. Losing the full size HDMI means that it is not as convenient to use in a place where there are no mini HDMI cables. Increased power draw means they are not as useful in embedded or off grid applications, and they need more complex and less common power supplies that one might already have lying around the house.

Yes, the loss in utility is offset by better use as a "desktop" but it still isn't a good desktop. It feels like that is the way the Pi B is going though. My wish for the next Pi B is that if they keep moving it in the direction of being a desktop replacement, the USB-C port can start supporting things like DP-alt mode and USB-3.2 or USB-4.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2023 07:38

Mantle: May 15, 2004

I think only Pi 4 and newer supports the Poe hat.

E: I'm wrong

Mantle fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Oct 8, 2023

# ¿ Oct 8, 2023 19:13

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Programmable power supplies seem new to me and I don't see a lot of them being advertised with the capability yet. Is it possible to know from this blog post which modes this power supply supports? It claims to support USB-PD 3.0 and PPS.

https://frame.work/blog/power-adapter

# ¿ Oct 25, 2023 20:23

Mantle: May 15, 2004

Dicty Bojangles posted:

And the Beepy, which is quite fun.

I've got one as well-- the two apps that I use on it are nchat for WhatsApp and mocp for mp3s. I want to find a TUI client for YouTube music and set up my camera to configure WiFi using QR codes.

What are you using yours for?

# ¿ Nov 8, 2023 06:21

Mantle: May 15, 2004

MJP posted:

Any recs/warnings/cautions about using a Pi for LibreElec/Kodi? I installed it on an HP thin client that likes to freeze sometimes if I fast forward or just plain hang if the TV is off sometimes.

I don't need 4k, I'm fine with 1080/60. It'd run a mix of internet and local sources. I'm not a futzer, i'm happy to set it and forget it and use Kore on my phone as a remote control. I'd use wired networking to connect it to an Orbi mesh satellite.

I recommend a Chromecast with Google TV. It has all of the streaming services of course and if you set up a DLNA server for your local media you can use the VLC client. Total set it and forget it.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2023 18:37

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 21:06

Mantle: May 15, 2004

MJP posted:

Can I still install Kodi add-ons? I can't seem to find a clear yes or no.

You can install Kodi on the Chromecast, so I'm guessing you should be able to install add-ons. Is there a specific add-on you are looking for?

# ¿ Nov 23, 2023 04:36

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