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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sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

The first batch are landing in end users' hands as of today according to rumblings on Twitter.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2012 12:10

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 08:11

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

They're not really comparable except for a fairly narrow overlap of use scenarios.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2012 01:26

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

OptimusMatrix posted:

So I got one of these when they first came out cause I wanted to use it to stream movies from my computer to my TV but I've got not the time nor the patience to learn how to set it up. So if any of you goons wanna buy it, they shipped it today and should be here in a couple days. I'll sell it to you for what I bought it for which is $35 bucks plus the price of shipping. Just lemme know if you want it.

Very nice of you to make this offer. I almost took you up on it but I have so many things to get to before I can play with an r.pi in good conscience.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2012 18:09

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

TSSOP is easy to deal with if you're making your own pcb or if you can find an adapter board that isn't terribly overpriced.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2012 23:09

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

I'm surprised this hasn't been posted yet, but there is an offer from EDIS for free r.pi colocation in Austria. It might be very interesting to some of you.

https://manage.edis.at/whmcs/cart.php?gid=6

EDIS posted:

Raspberry Pi Colocation
FREE!
1 IPv4
112 IPv6
100Gb Traffic p.m.
FREE reboots
Shipping back is 5EUR for EU and 10EUR global

Please supply
USB power cable (A plug -> PI)
USB stick with your OS on it - preconfigured with the IP we gave you

# ¿ Oct 5, 2012 07:17

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Lukano posted:

And if anyone with a brain hadn't already discounted the rPi as a feasible colo-box....

Plus, am i mistaken in assuming thats a referral id in that url you dropped? Sure doesn't seem to be a product id.

I have a VPS that I use every day that is less capable than an r.pi... not everyone has need for lots of hardware in a remote box...

And you are mistaken about the referral ID. You really think a referral ID would be "6"? And why would they give out any kind of referral bonus for getting more people into a FREE service?

Honestly, what is your problem? This is a really cool thing if you want some remotely hosted hardware for almost no cost. Maybe it's not for you, so just move on to another thread.

edit:

Lukano posted:

Even if the rpi is free and i get to keep it when i cancel, I'm not comfortable with an rPi for even kind-of-critical hosting.

Thank you for your insight. Tell us more about why a $35 piece of kit in a free hosting environment should not be used for anything critical.

sleepy gary fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Oct 5, 2012

# ¿ Oct 5, 2012 07:52

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

I don't think you understand that not everyone has mission critical server needs.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2012 07:57

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Lukano posted:

I'm making a new reply, just incase DNova beats me to the punch again.

The rPi fondation folks, including their own host, have tried hosting anything but hobby-sites on rpi's (even with a solid backbone behind it). By and large, its just not capable (or ready?) for that kind of load. Period. Go ask them if you don't believe me, it was 'big news' back during the early days after launch, for the 7-8 of us reading the rPi blog at the time :v

You have some pre-defined notion of what a server is supposed to be capable of doing and rigidly applying that to every situation. My VPS tends to choke on more than a simple website, too, but I don't care because -- get ready for this -- I don't host any websites on it!

I am not suggesting any particular use for someone's colocated Raspberry Pi. Rather, I am assuming that anyone who would consider such a thing would understand the limitations of both the hardware and the uncertainty of the longevity or quality of the free hosting.

Yes, if you attempt to migrate your business's $thousands worth of infrastructure onto a $35 anemic computer with free hosting, you are a special person, but I don't believe anyone anywhere is considering it or suggesting it.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2012 08:11

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Lukano posted:

Ok, i'll admit i perhsps kneejerked to an offer that sounded too good to be true.

So i can buy an rPi, sd card, and sufficient power cable, and ship it to austria where it'll be hosted, in what i assume must be a reliable and trustworthy datacenter, for free, then shipped back to me when i say boo?

This DC would also have no issue if i were to set up FDE, as they aren't actually supporting my device?

Honestly, my sarcasm is beyond my control at this point, as i fail to see what benefit such a venture would net a rather innocuous host in Eastern-Europe.

Free international press during a time of company expansion for basically no cost to them. 100gb/mo, 1 IP, it's a low end plan and costs them maybe 5 watts per unit. That's my best guess as to their motivation.

Again, what is the risk? That this established international host will abscond with your hardware? Come on.

And sure, set up FDE, why would they care? It's unmanaged hosting. Also, Austria is Central Europe

quote:

Edit - if you're advocating this as a slight shady, but still technically free, vpn/shell/proxy/tor-node, just come on out and say it and stop beating around the bush. We're all grownups itt.

Sure, those are all great examples of what this hardware and hosting is capable of doing easily. I don't know why you think it's so shady though.

sleepy gary fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Oct 5, 2012

# ¿ Oct 5, 2012 08:24

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

The deal is sold out now, but I believe that many people who signed up will not follow through on sending in their hardware.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2012 09:25

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

syphon posted:

Has anyone set one of these up as a webcam server? I basically want to set up a little web portal so we can watch our dog while at work.

I hooked mine up to a USB camera I have. I've gotten it working with 'motion', but only barely. It seems really flakey on when it'll capture images, and the control web server dies all the time. Occasionally it even hangs the entire system and it has to be rebooted.

I'm not terribly interested in motion detection, I'd be happy with a timed image snapshot. I'm not adverse to setting up Apache and building a web page around this, but I don't know what the best route is.

Honestly, spend $60-150 on a cheap wifi camera. At the upper end of that range you'll get pan/tilt as well.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2012 19:06

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

syphon posted:

i've already got the raspberry pi and a webcam that works ok, I just need to get the software figured out. If I were really interested in the best webcam solution possible, I'd go that route, but I'm more interested in custom building something.

The problem is I'm having spotty results with terminal-based webcam controls. Motion takes great pictures, but keeps crashing and provides a bunch of features I don't want. I tried mplayer, which seems to work, but takes terrible quality pictures and I don't know how to adjust it. I couldn't even get images to work with VLC. The problem is that I just don't know what options are out there.

I understand completely and I felt kind of bad about making that post as soon as I made it, sorry about that.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2012 08:06

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Puddin posted:

gently caress me. So I put the case on my Pi and it somehow breaks one side of the clip that holds the SD card in.

Which also means the car doesn't stay on the contacts, so now its useless.

loving hell.

tape the card down or something. or send it to me I'll use it

# ¿ Oct 29, 2012 20:41

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

movax posted:

People will Kickstart almost anything Pi related it seems.

It's a decent idea; I didn't realize you could get $34,000 for a breakout board that lacks any SMA connectors as well. (Though maybe the modules you solder to the board have the SMAs).

quote:

EVE..can you find out from Grandma's EVE if she's had her pills and if not to remind her.

Grandma eat the pills

# ¿ Nov 19, 2012 16:00

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Son of a Monkey posted:

I got my pi a few days ago and felt it was missing a case so I made this :

Seems to do the job - plus it should keep it ventilated being full of holes !

Hah, nice! I didn't think you could make 3D perler bead structures.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2012 23:34

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

ozmunkeh posted:

Currently tearing my hair out with one of these things. A co-worker bought one for her son to play around with python. She wanted me to install an OS and generally get it as plug/play as possible for her.

So far I've gone through four different micro-USB cables, three keyboards, two mice, two cellphone chargers, an apple charger, various workstation USB ports and two SD cards.

I think the keyboard has worked probably six times so far. Sometimes I can see the keyboard/mouse recognized as it starts up, sometimes not. Sometimes it works for a while, most of the time not. One time when it was working I came back to it a couple hours later and it had frozen, had to pull the power, the keyboard wasn't recognized when it came back up.

This morning it froze half way through the download phase of an apt-get upgrade with just the power, sd card and nic plugged in. I power-cycled it and now the NIC doesn't work - no link/activity lights on from boot but no nic errors in the boot log either. What a piece of poo poo.

Did you stop to think maybe it's broken?

# ¿ Dec 21, 2012 21:16

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

NecroBob posted:

Does anybody know of a good way to detect water levels in a smallish reservoir? I would like for it to be small, safe to put in consumable water, and discreet so that inquiring noses don't mistake it for food and eat it.

I tried two exposed tips of copper wire in the water, but they didn't conduct.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10221

edit: There does not seem to be information about whether this is food safe.

sleepy gary fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Feb 23, 2013

# ¿ Feb 23, 2013 10:01

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Gunga-Din posted:

Just ordered my Pi after finding a hdmi 7 inch screen in the free bin at work.

where do you work???

# ¿ Mar 7, 2013 23:49

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Luminaz posted:

What will be the real applications of this camera ? Except in-house camera for security.

The guy you quoted mentioned OpenCV, which is probably what a lot of people have in mind.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2013 12:19

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

JasH posted:

I recently ran into a problem and hopefully someone can assist me.

Every couple of weeks, I create a backup of my rPi SD card using Win32DiskImager.
Recently, during the backup process, the program stops at 5% (my rPi continues to run though).

This causes me to worry so I bought a new SDHC card (4Gb, just like my main card, although that one is a MicroSD with an adapter).
Unfortunatly, when I try to write my latest backup to my new card, I get the following error in Win32DiskImager:

I tried to format my new SDHC card with 512 bytes per sector, but Windows doesn't let me.

Anyone know what I am doing wrong?
Can I solve this by buying another SD card? Which one? Why is there an incompability between my image and my SDHC card?

"4 gigabytes" is basically a rounded figure. Flash devices with the same nominal capacity are not always the exact same real size. That is what is happening to you. Your original card is 124,032 sectors (60.5MB) larger than the new one. You can't make a sector-by-sector image of the old one to the new one because there are not enough sectors on the new one.

If you can shrink the partition by ~65MB and then image the partition rather than the whole device, that could work.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2013 15:20

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Or you can buy an N270 netbook that already has memory and a hard drive and a display and a keyboard for like $75.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2013 23:26

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

eddiewalker posted:

One of my Pis has been running nonstop for over a year, writing then erasing 500gb of audio a day. HTC phone power supply, $10 Sandisk bulk-packaged SD card. Maybe I'm lucky.

How big is that card?

# ¿ Feb 17, 2014 19:52

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Mr. Bubbles posted:

What are the benefits of a switching power supply?

Better efficiency (and possibly more flexible input voltages depending on the design) than the linear regulator it had before.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 00:01

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Standard silicon diodes have a forward voltage drop of around 0.6 - 0.7 volts.

Amberskin posted:

If he is just going to interface ONE pin, using a logic converter is probably overkill. Wouldn't a simple voltage divider do the job?

It depends on the amount of current that the pins will source/sink. If they are high impedance then a voltage divider won't really work.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2014 20:13

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Baconroll posted:

100 nano-seconds for this one - I can live with that delay

You're a very patient person.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2014 15:26

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Factory Factory posted:

I'm working on a project that needs an awkward amount of 5V power. I need to power a B+ Pi, an Arduino, two HDMI gizmos, and a string of LEDs - about 6 A total plugged into a combination of barrel connectors and USB ports. Right now I can do it in three wall sockets - two wall warts and a phone charge station with four USB ports (two 2.1A, two 1A). What's the best way to get this down to one socket, preferably efficiently?

http://www.adafruit.com/product/658

or anything like it

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 02:44

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Xenomorph posted:

Could I have a Raspberry Pi run a script with a cronjob that cuts power to one of its USB ports?

Like, for something that just gets power from USB (no data), I want to simulate the unplugging of the cord, and plugging it back in.

I have something that I'd like to powercycle or reboot on a regular basis.

I saw this, which mentioned that newer kernels may not be able to cut power so easily:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4702216/controlling-a-usb-power-supply-on-off-with-linux

If I cannot get a script to cut power to USB, would rebooting the Pi be sufficient to drop power to the USB ports? I guess this one is simple enough for me to try on my own. I was just wondering if anyone else had done this already.

Not as far as I know, but you could use a GPIO to control a relay to accomplish that with some extra work.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2015 23:16

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

adorai posted:

I'm a normal IT guy with zero electronics experience but a few raspberry pi powered projects in mind. I have my first pi, and have created a very basic proof of concept for my first project. It's very basic though, and I need to do some more experimentation. I know that at this point I really want a cheap rear end variety pack of resistors, relays, and leds for testing. Unfortunately, googling that phrase wasn't necessarily helpful and I don't want to order a bunch of individual parts when I know someone else probably sells a starter kit that is exactly what I am looking for. Can someone point to such a starter kit?

I want to make sure I am clear, I don't need a Pi or Arduino, I don't think I want a breadboard at this point, and I don't need all kinds of weird poo poo, just the basics. I have a soldering iron, plenty of wire, and general knowledge of what I need to do to accomplish my EXTREMELY basic projects. I just don't have all the components and don't want to try to piece everything together myself at this point, because I know I'll buy what I think I need then discover I needed a different resistor or something.

edit: bonus points if it has two magnet switches in the kit

On ebay just use [component] kit.

For example: first result for "resistor kit" - http://www.ebay.com/itm/600Pcs-30-V...=item3f3c83d00c

You can find similar kits for capacitors, transistors, and diodes.

Note that the link above is shipping from China, so expect to wait 2-12 weeks. If you need it faster, pay more for listings that are shipping from the US or whatever country you are in.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 00:32

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

TheOtherContraGuy posted:

Hey I want to set up my Pi as a tiny dev server but I'm kinda out of my element (first time). Is there a way to connect my Pi to my computer so that I can do all the heavy lifting on my desktop. I find it kind of annoying to disconnect my monitor and develop directly on my Pi. I guess I want to turn my Pi into a non-virtual virtual machine. Is that crazy?

VNC?

SSH?

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 01:54

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Addz posted:

Minibian.

Ooh, nice.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 12:35

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

They look like regular people to me :confused:

# ¿ May 11, 2015 19:11

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Jamsta posted:

I've been spending too long reading the Yospos poo poo Kickstarter thread...

My personal opinion is they wont ship it, or if they do it wont be in the timescales stated (Kickstarter project creep). You'll note they don't have any track record of prior work, they're also quite young (by my standards) which means they wont have a lot of real world experience to rely on - especially in the project management side which is often the hardest part.

Maybe they're the next Eben Uptons, but I wouldn't bank on it (figuratively or otherwise).

You're right to be skeptical. I am too. I am hoping they will make it happen though because I want it to be real and when/if it is generally available I will order some. That said, I did not contribute to the Kickstarter.

# ¿ May 11, 2015 22:17

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

mod sassinator posted:

No you need to pull out the power cord to turn off the Pi. However make sure you always log in and run the shutdown command before you remove power. If you don't do this you will very easily corrupt the entire SD card and have to reinstall the operating system. SD cards are not designed to suddenly lose power and the file system will get destroyed if power is pulled when it's moving around blocks and changing other card state.

How likely is this really? I'm going to have one doing some very basic work 24/7 soon and while having a backup image is very simple in this case, having to restore from it every time there's a power outage (rare, thankfully) or the device has to be unplugged (maybe less rare) could get frustrating.

While I was writing the software and testing with external devices, I managed to kill the pi a few times from trying to get too much power out of it, and it never corrupted the SD card. So I'm hoping this corruption thing is not really that likely on a per-incident basis.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2015 13:46

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

I have a Raspberry Pi B and an Edimax USB wifi dongle (the popular tiny one). Is there anything wrong with eliminating the need for a powered USB hub by cutting a USB extension cable open and hardwiring 5v on the Edimax side and then connecting "directly" to the Pi (with only D+ and D- intact from Pi to Edimax dongle)?

# ¿ Jun 21, 2015 18:36

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 08:11

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

mod sassinator posted:

Try connecting the dongle directly to the Pi without a powered hub. As long as you power the Pi with a ~1-2 amp power supply it should be fine. I use my Edimax dongle directly with my Pi's without any issues.

Welp. That's working fine. Thanks, that saves me some money and hassle.

Would I be asking too much to also add a USB flash drive to the mix? This is a B rev. 2 (two usb ports, 512mb RAM)

# ¿ Jun 21, 2015 19:28

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