> H.264 decoding cards What's the purpose of installing one of these in a home server? (Genuinely curious)
Media server
Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
201–210 of 227 posts
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#202I spent $300 on a refurbished 3ghz HP tower for my HTPC. I don't understand why everyone wants to run Plex and do all that downloading on toy hardware. The time saved during setup and operation due to it being a faster machine pays the difference.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#203I guess it depends on your use case, but after years of running a couple ARM based devices as a home network/NAS server I switched back to an x86. Keeping the ARMs working is just to much effort, and the ARM devices with good support (rpi) don't have reasonable storage or networking options.
The prime example was crashplan. Every year or so they would push a new package, and I would end up taking their jar files apart to replace the native x86 packages with ARM binaries. Then there was the ongoing problems with performance or running out of RAM on machines with soldered RAM. Today you can get low power skylake motherboard/celerons which are sub 15 watts in normal operation and and have very fine grained power controls which allow them to go into suspend or idle below 5W.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd imagine it be prudent to remove the battery if that is the case (which you can't on many newish laptops). I know it's tempting to utilize that free UPS but I wouldn't trust a laptop battery that's pushed way passed the intended use.
Is "pushed" the right word? Rather it seems like the battery is not doing much apart from a little "ambient" discharge for which it occasionally gets automatically topped back up to 100%. For the plugged-in laptops I use as servers, I have a repeating task in my todo system to unplug and drain them once every couple of months. The intention being to keep the thing's own idea of its calibration honest, in case it ever…
Well, I'm no expert but my thoughts are that the temperature alone is damaging for the battery (and it will be ~warm since it is basically inside the laptop). Unless you have a way to change it the charge will also be at 100% which is also not ideal.
The margins of error are quite small considering that they sometimes explode well within their intended use case (which is not powered on 24/7).
The consequences of a fire in a battery is quite severe, and unlike normal laptop usage you probably won't be around it when it starts (or, worse, you might be asleep).
So, I'd err on the safe side and buy a UPS that at least covers the intended use case. For something as efficient as a laptop it isn't expensive either.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#205One of the main advantages of the Raspberry Pi that I rarely see anyone mention is the composite video output.
It's incredibly easy to build an emulation box with a Raspberry Pi that you can connect to an old CRT TV an have the true retro game experience.
If I wanted to do the same on a normal desktop PC, I would need to look around for an old graphics card with a composite output or for some HDMIcomposite adapter (which are quite expensive IIRC)
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#206Another option is just to use an old laptop. This is what I tend to do for media servers, TV computers, and the like. People give away or throw away perfectly usable machines all the time.
I'd imagine it be prudent to remove the battery if that is the case (which you can't on many newish laptops). I know it's tempting to utilize that free UPS but I wouldn't trust a laptop battery that's pushed way passed the intended use.
This is a great point. I'd likely have a tough time buying a laptop that didn't have a removable battery but sometimes with hand-me-down, I don't have a choice.
Usually, though, by the time they become my HTPCs, the batteries are completely shot already and so I recycle them at work.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#207I use my Raspberry Pi to play around with sensors (such as humidity, temperature, RFID, etc) through the GPIO pins. That's the main selling point, I think. It's an educational product more than anything.
This is why I bought mine as well - what language are you using to access the GPIO pins? I've been meaning to look into using Golang, but haven't seen many people using it for that.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#208I use Asus 1001PX subnotebooks that way. They're available for about $40 on eBay. You get a keyboard, screen, WiFi, Ethernet, 250GB hard drive, and USB ports. Usually a power adapter, too. (Only use the real ASUS power adapters; the no-name 3rd party units overheat, don't provide enough power, or in at least one case, catch fire.) When I get one in, I put in the Xubuntu USB stick and run the memory diagnostic for an…
You should try out a Thinkpad x100e for your normal laptop, the keyboard is miles ahead of the Asus. Looks like there are some for around $40 on ebay as well.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, all the same hardware makes it possible to exchange images, bit for bit SD-card copies, that run on any of the same model RPis, this is incredibly powerful and handy. For example, installing ROS (Robot Operating System) on Linux can be a PITA, but there is a ready made ROS on Ubuntu Mate for RPi3, so you have it fully functional in minutes.
Well, I was able to recover from damaging my RPi B+ by simply slotting its microSD card into a brand new RPi2 and everything ran, which is completely astonishing as they are not identical.
Most of the userspaces are just compiled for ARMv6. If you've got your firmware (bootloader, kernels, devicetree overlays) up-to-date, then you should be able to boot the OS on any Pi (the bootloader detects hardware version and inits the right stuff, including loading kernel7.img for the Pi2/3, instead of kernel.img for the 0/1/1+ models).
Ubuntu and some of the other 3rd-party OSes are compiled for ARMv7, and won't run on the 0/1/1+. A couple are compiled for ARMv8/AARCH64, and won't run on anything but a Pi3. There's a lot of work that went into making things like Raspbian as close to foolproof as possible.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't know it was mandatory, thought it was just practically necessary for VPN tunnels etc. http://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm I've recently bought one of these and it's been great so far. Though its a NanoBSD currently you can squeeze an SSD in there.
Twice the price of FX160 :) I have one FX160 for over a year with bunch of home software inside docker containers and works like a charm :)
Yes true, I might pick one up. The Atom I wasn't too impressed with in an old Shuttle but that has changed I think.