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Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

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Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#111

Post by StillBored »

scottlamb wrote: post #84
rektide wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odroid series come with a wide variety of chips. The Amlogic S905X3 has good upstream support (largely via a very active volunteer community) & is on their Odroid-C4. If performance is your top concern, you should stick with x86. There's no ARM gear with anywhere near the bang/$ of an Odroid H2+, which is an rpi-like $120 x86 single-board system. It is fantastically well supported by the cpu vendor.

The ODROID H2+ is perfect for one of my applications, with the extra CPU power, second NIC, included real-time clock, onboard SATA and an official case option that fits 2 3.5" drives, and onboard eMMC socket. $120 [edit: plus RAM cost] rather than $35 is a whole other price category though.

Sure but the rpi's can be quite price misleading. If you go pick them up at your local retail store that carries them its frequently a $120 date by the time case, heat sink, powersupply, and disk are thrown in. The base cost for the 8G rpi is something like $70, Then you still have to figure out what to do about the missing RTC, SATA, whatever, for a lot of applications.

So, yes its obvious that the $35 model (which at a minimum is really more like $45 because its not usable without a powersupply and maybe SD card) is sufficient for a lot of things. But its also being wedged into places where its not $35 anymore and in those cases its fair to compare with more expensive boards if those boards come with features that someone is adding a hat or external device for.

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#112

Post by hanklazard »

enobrev wrote: post #86
LeoPanthera wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two play music, one into my hifi, one into my home audio distribution system. One is setup for RetroPie. One has LibreELEC installed, showing TV from my HDHomeRun. One has a GPS hat and is a local NTP server. And one boots into an Amiga emulator because I'm very old and nostalgic.

Can I ask what software you're using for music on your home audio system? I have an HTD system with speakers throughout and while Chromecast Audio was great for a while, stability has been an issue that I'm no longer interested in hassling with. (Also looking forward to researching this netboot solution you speak of)

Not the parent but I have a similar setup. I use volumio music software on 4 raspberry pi 3b+, each with a hifiberry amp to drive speakers. If you couple these with snapcast, you have a diy whole house sonos-like setup. Works well and I control volumes through home assistant.

Not familiar with netbooting, but will be looking into it!

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#113

Post by stjohnswarts »

joezydeco wrote: post #107
grahamm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people forget what it was designed for. It was to reboot IT education which was (is) badly floundering. It's success was so good it started to be used in small commercial applications. The Foundation tried to help fill this gap in the market with the compute module. Even though there is a lot of open source features the use of the Broadcom chipset was probably driven by cost as keeping the Pi price down was a…

I’m tired of pointing this out. The reply is consistently “So what? It’s my cheap Linux SBC now and until you can find something better for $40, go away.” I‘be been booting off of eMMC on an A7 for years now. I don’t get any of this anymore.

It has a huge support community that is very friendly, that's as valuable as anything.

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#114

Post by stjohnswarts »

paulmd wrote: post #97
grahamm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people forget what it was designed for. It was to reboot IT education which was (is) badly floundering. It's success was so good it started to be used in small commercial applications. The Foundation tried to help fill this gap in the market with the compute module. Even though there is a lot of open source features the use of the Broadcom chipset was probably driven by cost as keeping the Pi price down was a…

I can't imagine having to sysadmin a bunch of raspberry pis in a serious "production" setting with all the reliability problems they have, that would be godawful, you'd go through a brace of SD cards every month

Why? I supported 40 of them (rpi 3) as remote serial hosts and custom reboot/repower for a QA farm. Not a single one failed and don't think I had a single issue during that whole time. As far as I know it's still going just fine. It was a cheap and dependable solution. 99% of the SD card issues go away when you don't cheap out and don't go cheap. get a large card that is 32GB plus from a respectable vendor. That's not the rpi's fault on the failures, it's the cheap ass SD cards that people buy.

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#115

Post by scottlamb »

StillBored wrote: post #111
scottlamb wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ODROID H2+ is perfect for one of my applications, with the extra CPU power, second NIC, included real-time clock, onboard SATA and an official case option that fits 2 3.5" drives, and onboard eMMC socket. $120 [edit: plus RAM cost] rather than $35 is a whole other price category though.

Sure but the rpi's can be quite price misleading. If you go pick them up at your local retail store that carries them its frequently a $120 date by the time case, heat sink, powersupply, and disk are thrown in. The base cost for the 8G rpi is something like $70, Then you still have to figure out what to do about the missing RTC, SATA, whatever, for a lot of applications. So, yes its obvious that the $35 model (which…

That's true for the ODROID H2+ too—you need to add in the power supply, case, eMMC, battery, SATA cables, and also RAM. (I forgot to mention RAM in the parent, so the difference is more like $85 + whatever you pay for RAM.)

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#116

Post by ComputerGuru »

colordrops wrote: post #35
systemvoltage wrote: post #32

Not a fan of Raspberry Pi. It hides behind proprietary Broadcom chip, no DSI/MIPI support and you're at the mercy of Raspberry PI for any sort of commercial implementation (RPi Zero and independent module). They do guarantee upto 2026 availability for their DIMM modules which is nice. We wanted to build commercial device using RPi but its a no go due to its blackbox nature. What they should do is to leverage their po…

> Raspberry Pi is an ecosystem which is based on proprietary technologies and masquerading as an open source friendly thing It depends on what layer you care about. At the application layer it is completely open. Even if the chip designs and drivers were open source, you could claim that there are proprietary processes and supply chains for the hardware and material themselves. Unless amateurs could build one from sc…

As a long-time rPi user and embedded developer, it’s really not about ideological purity (or at least not entirely). There are real ramifications for the lack of open documentation for the GPU interfaces on the Raspberry Pi that make it really hard to use (as in utilize) if not running a mainstream Linux w/ binary blobs and device overlays. The GPU even does the system startup and initial boot loading; it’s not just closed source, it’s also entirely opaque and undocumented (documentation only available for bulk purchasers from Broadcom and under NDA, purchasing Raspberry Pi in bulk doesn’t get you the SoC documentation).

(Unlike typical devices, the CPU doesn’t do system startup and initialize the GPU as an add-on or co-processor, on the Raspberry Pi the situation is more or less reversed.)

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#117

Post by scottlamb »

ausjke wrote: post #103
scottlamb wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ODROID H2+ is perfect for one of my applications, with the extra CPU power, second NIC, included real-time clock, onboard SATA and an official case option that fits 2 3.5" drives, and onboard eMMC socket. $120 [edit: plus RAM cost] rather than $35 is a whole other price category though.

at that price range why not just go all the way to mini-itx, when you hook SATA etc you will need a larger case with some cooling space inside, mini-itx seems to be a much more practical option then, a quick search found https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813157930 there are many to choose from actually. or just nano-itx, both are easier to get cases and power supplies etc.

I think we're getting more and more expensive. The Raspberry Pi 4 made a lot of deliberate trade-offs to stay at $35. Going to the ODROID-H2+ means paying another $85 plus (I forgot this in the parent) RAM cost. Then going to a "real mini-itx" board probably means paying for a "real" mini-ITX case and power supply. It'll be nicer for sure but there's significant price creep. Looks like the CPU isn't included either.

The ODROID-H2 Case Type 1 has a fan and space for two 3.5" drives for $20. The ODROID-H2 power supply costs $9.40. I'll be astonished if anything compatible with that ASRock board will match that.

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#118

Post by LeoPanthera »

enobrev wrote: post #86
LeoPanthera wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two play music, one into my hifi, one into my home audio distribution system. One is setup for RetroPie. One has LibreELEC installed, showing TV from my HDHomeRun. One has a GPS hat and is a local NTP server. And one boots into an Amiga emulator because I'm very old and nostalgic.

Can I ask what software you're using for music on your home audio system? I have an HTD system with speakers throughout and while Chromecast Audio was great for a while, stability has been an issue that I'm no longer interested in hassling with. (Also looking forward to researching this netboot solution you speak of)

I use Moode Audio. https://moodeaudio.org

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#119

Post by LeoPanthera »

pbalau wrote: post #99
thisisbrians wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, too, would appreciate a brief Google Doc or Pastebin on this if you can spare the time. I've never setup netboot before, but have been interested for years... reply

Unless you are running your own router, like the op, most likely his setup won't help you. You should start by understanding all the components of the system and then figure out how to make it fit in your environment and maybe what changes you need to make. Start here [0] 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment

The Pi doesn't use PXE. It's different, but documented here:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...

Re: Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB

#120

Post by shakna »

paulmd wrote: post #97
grahamm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people forget what it was designed for. It was to reboot IT education which was (is) badly floundering. It's success was so good it started to be used in small commercial applications. The Foundation tried to help fill this gap in the market with the compute module. Even though there is a lot of open source features the use of the Broadcom chipset was probably driven by cost as keeping the Pi price down was a…

I can't imagine having to sysadmin a bunch of raspberry pis in a serious "production" setting with all the reliability problems they have, that would be godawful, you'd go through a brace of SD cards every month

I can talk to managing Pis in an educational setting, and honestly, it is less bad than expected. (Disclaimer: No longer a school sysadmin. But was for a number of years.)

First some comparisons. Kids are seriously rough on technology. We had a fleet of about three hundred laptops, two hundred iPads, and two hundred Pis in the junior school.

In a year, we'd end up with about a hundred laptop screen replacements, two hundred keyboard replacements and about a hundred hard drive replacements. About ten "I accidentally dropped the laptop in the river"s. We'd cycle the laptop out for a brand new one at four years, if it survived.

In the same year, about sixty iPad screen replacements, ten or so battery replacements, and twenty or so river dunkings. Only ever had one hard drive failure, apart from water damage, but the iPads were on a short two-year upgrade cycle.

The Pis were used for the robotics clubs (optional) and programming (compulsary). Pis aren't great for kids and robotics due to lack of protection on the pins for dumb mistakes. We had about twenty fizzle the mysterious smoke every year. About twenty more than experienced SD card failure in the year, usually related to yanking a power cord, not direct write failure. We also had a couple students a year who snapped theirs in half.

All in all, the cost of maintaining the Pi fleet was negligible besides the rest.

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