Guest Alphonsox Posted June 8, 2016 Share Posted June 8, 2016 The elusive Raspberry Pi Zero seems to be back in stock at some vendors. From the PiHut its down to a stonkingly good £4. That's a lot of processing for the price of a pint. https://thepihut.com/collections/raspberry-pi-zero/products/raspberry-pi-zero?variant=14062715972 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted December 23, 2016 Share Posted December 23, 2016 Christmas gift from the Pi people. Now you can make your £2000 Macbook Pro look like a £30 Raspberry Pi. The Pixel desktop environment has been released for x86 processors - In fact it's a complete OS based on Debian. Could be a good contender for reviving a very old laptop or similar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 Another release from the Pi-People. Compute Module-3, a small form factor version of the Pi-3 with 4GB of onboard flash. https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/compute-module-3-launch/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 Yes, I saw that, not much use for the DIYer though. I did get myself a Zero the other day. It is a pig to get networked reliably. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 Agreed the Zero looks the more useful device for DIY use, unfortunately they seem to be almost impossible to get hold of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 (edited) Got mine from PiHut: https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero I bought the kit as I needed the HDMI adapter, the USB adapter and a new PSU. I have a USB to Ethernet cable on order. But to be honest, it is not as small as I hoped when things are plugged in (it would not fit within my CC energy monitor base), so shall stick with the normal ones. Edited January 16, 2017 by SteamyTea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted February 28, 2017 Share Posted February 28, 2017 Next in the continuing series....... The elusive Pi Zero now with added 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.0 at around £10. https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero-w-joins-family/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 28, 2017 Share Posted February 28, 2017 I saw this earlier (email shot from The Pi Hut) and it looks good, but I wish they'd found room on the board for an IPX connector. I fear the WiFi range won't be that great with the pretty small on-board antenna. I've just modded a standard Pi Zero by fitting a small WiFi board with an IPX connector, and this in turn is connected via an IPX to SMA pigtail to a decent patch antenna. The Pi Zero is working as a hi def IP camera, and seems to have a pretty good range. The idea is to see if I can maintain a good link from the other end of the garden, from the garage, back through our fairly radio-opaque walls to the WiFi access point in the middle of the house. I reckon that with around 12dB of gain from the antenna it may do it, with luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted January 19, 2018 Share Posted January 19, 2018 Potentially interesting new (to Rpi) development system from Digilent (National Instruments) :- The Pmod HAT allows a large range of expansion modules to be easily attached to the Pi. https://store.digilentinc.com/pmod-hat-adapter-pmod-expansion-for-raspberry-pi/ Lots of options - Sensors Comms, Analog I/O displays, buttons, switches, etc, etc https://store.digilentinc.com/pmod-expansion-modules/pmod-boards/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted January 19, 2018 Share Posted January 19, 2018 Neat idea, especially for all those who don't want to get involved in soldering up leads or making up their own interface solutions. What would be nice would be for someone to come up with a nice and easy way to make modular/adaptable housings. As the boss of the first lab I worked in used to say, "when starting to build a homer **, start with making the case, as other wise you will find you never finish it". It's sound advice, as finding or making a housing, drilling/punching/milling out holes and then makign mounting arrangements for all the internal components is invariably the hardest, most time-consuming and least interesting part of any project. **"homer" a generic term for a personal project being built illicitly in the lab.................. PS: In the post above I mentioned modding a RPi Zero W by fitting an IPC connector and disconnecting the on-board antenna, and using an external antenna. I have done this to one board now, and although is was a very fiddly job to get the 0 ohm link moved, and a bit fiddly to solder the SM IPX connector in place, it does make a tremendous difference to wifi performance. I now have a very solid link from the house down the garden to the garage, something that wasn't possible at all before I did this. The snag is it almost certainly renders the certification of the RPi Zero W invalid..................... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 The Raspberry Pi 3 B+ has been released today https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-plus/ Changes include faster processor and ethernet, dual band WiFi. Most interesting for me is the news that it is POE capable with boot over ethernet support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 (edited) Still don't have the two things that would be really useful though, a real time clock and analogue ports. Edited March 14, 2018 by SteamyTea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 10 minutes ago, SteamyTea said: Still don't have the two things that would be really useful though, a real time clock and analogue ports. Both available on HATs though..... The thing I would want to see is an upgrade to the storage options - USB3 and/or SATA in some form would be good. The current USB2 implementation is looking very long-in-the-tooth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 16 minutes ago, Alphonsox said: Both available on HATs though..... True But that is like buying a small 2 seater and then getting a trailer to get your shopping home. If the ESP2866 can fit analogue ports on for a couple of quid, I am sure the Raspberry Pi Foundation could do the same. SATA would be nice, but don't see it happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryE Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 USB3, extra RAM and SATA would be good. The SBCs that have these are about the same price and are a far better for a SBC server. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted October 19, 2018 Share Posted October 19, 2018 Another interesting addon - A DVB TV HAT. Seems to provide recording and local IP streaming of broadcast TV. Could be useful to those of us on metered broadband connections where streaming TV is not an option. https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-tv-hat/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted October 19, 2018 Share Posted October 19, 2018 Neat. I wonder how long it will be before they come out with a DVB-S2 version? Seems they are thinking about it, but a Freesat compatible RPi HAT would be a really great thing to have for those of us who can't receive terrestrial TV. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted November 8, 2018 Share Posted November 8, 2018 Another interesting Pi-Clone alternative worth keeping an eye on - seems to tick a lot of "missing" Pi features - up to 4GB RAM - Real GbE - USB 3.0 - eMMC interface - M.2 storage interface http://wiki.radxa.com/Rockpi4 https://www.zdnet.com/article/raspberry-pi-clone-rock-pi-4-starts-at-just-39-but-with-powerful-rk3399-chip/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryE Posted November 10, 2018 Share Posted November 10, 2018 On 08/11/2018 at 10:15, Alphonsox said: Another interesting Pi-Clone alternative worth keeping an eye on ... I keep humming and haring about doing something like this but to be honest, my Pis typically run at a few % utilisation and well within their memory constraints. There are lots of reviews of these RPi super-clones, but when you them look at the forums, stability and project / community support is always an issue. I find myself saying -- let's wait another 3 months to see if something better comes along. Certainly, it's a lot easier if you only want headless server support and for most people DietPi makes configuring such devices very easy. My main two RPis use SSDs for primary storage and eMMC seems to be an excellent way of avoiding this as an issue. The SBCs that I've seriously considered are the Odroid C2 or the Asus Tinker S (must be the S version to have on-board eMMc). There are better performing SBCs out there and being reviewed, but buying them is another issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted November 10, 2018 Share Posted November 10, 2018 I've recently bought an Odroid HC1 plus a 2Tb HDD, which one day I'm going to get around to setting up as a replacement for my existing OwnCloud home file server (which runs on a RPi3). My primary reason for doing this is just to improve the file server speed a bit and be able to use an off-the-shelf SATA HDD (or SSD, but big ones are still too pricey for my budget). Having a SATA or mSATA native port on the next generation of Raspberry Pi would be the one thing that I'd like to see. Running everything through an onboard USB 2.0 hub, as the RPi does at the moment, isn't ideal, IMHO. You can make things work over USB 2.0, but it seems to be a sub-optimal hardware solution to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted November 15, 2018 Share Posted November 15, 2018 Less is Less Pi-3A+ A stripped down Pi-3 with less RAM and no ethernet but with a lower cost (£19) and USB boot https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/ Not what I'm currently looking for but may have its uses for some. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted November 15, 2018 Share Posted November 15, 2018 Sounds like a good option for something like data acquisition and storage, which doesn't need much processing power or the plethora of ports that the full size RPi has. Can't say I have a use for one, though, as in many ways a RPi Zero W would do pretty much the same tasks, but in a cheaper, smaller, package, perhaps with lower power consumption. The latter is a significant issue if looking to battery power any of the RP SBCs, as none seem optimised for low power, and there are one or two applications where low power consumption is very useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryE Posted November 20, 2018 Share Posted November 20, 2018 (edited) I am also not sure where the sweet spot for this is. If you want to stay native RPi then the RPi0 seems a better fit as an I/O processor. This NanoPi NEO4 is similar form-factor but in most ways outperforms the RPi3B (2Gb RAM, eMMC, USB3, Proper thermal management / heatsink) at RPI3B prices. Edited November 20, 2018 by TerryE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryE Posted June 27, 2019 Share Posted June 27, 2019 And the RPi 4 is now out: thePiHut -- Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. USB3 so SSDs are about 7x faster and now supports TRIM protocol. The Gb Enet is now proper 1Gb throughput. The CPUs are maybe 50-100% faster and you have 1,2, and 4Gb RAM options. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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