It is the fault of Pi hardware when it still refuses to provide a hardware shutdown button for proper file system unmounts, after all these years.
Dependence on SD Cards and lack of orderly shutdown was what caused my company to not go with the Raspberry Pi. Even then we have back up power to allow the system time to shutdown.
Considering it was designed for IT teaching and not for embedded use, I cannot fathom why your company and many others contemplate using it in such a capacity.
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)
Also not the parent. For me, I want my speaker, position 4 meters away, to play some music from my phone or laptop. First, I tried to use use youtube feature to beam the video to my android smart tv connected to the speaker. However, it is a waste of resources to do that. Later, I found some scripts on the internet for my Pi 3 to play the sound via Bluetooth. It is a better solution than my original idea, I can use any app, not just youtube. However I recently found an even better way, by buying a Bluetooth transmitter dongle that can be connected to my speaker. It only costs me less than $2. I can ask my Pi 3 to do something else more important than this task.
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…
How on earth do you get a “hard-drive failure” on an iPad?!
By sitting the iPad in the mysterious gunk that lies at the bottom of a kid's backpack. After stewing for a few weeks in exotic biological material the internals can begin to break down.
The cases are sealed, but they're still permeable to stuff you wouldn't let near your computer because you have a slight respect for technology.
I found fungus growing inside more than one iPad case, usually directly in the boards.
I've heard some of Broadcom's stingeyness with documentation may stem from the risks created by the perverse environment created by IP laws. With a patent troll only one manual away, I can somewhat understand to a degree holding things close to your chest if you want to continue to exist. I mean it sucks massively, but I can at least understand it. It's part of why I strongly disagree with the "IP" side of semiconduc…
IANAL, but it would seem that the more documentation you release on your patented product the MORE you are protected, since it becomes less likely that they independently discovered your solution.
I think the issue is more one less of Broadcom wanting protection as much as having a chip foundry and selling chips, but not wishing to risk a legion of Non-Practicing Entities combing through their implementations with a fine tooth comb and a portfolio of held semiconductor IP.
How on earth do you get a “hard-drive failure” on an iPad?!
By sitting the iPad in the mysterious gunk that lies at the bottom of a kid's backpack. After stewing for a few weeks in exotic biological material the internals can begin to break down. The cases are sealed, but they're still permeable to stuff you wouldn't let near your computer because you have a slight respect for technology. I found fungus growing inside more than one iPad case, usually directly in the boards.
The iPad doesn’t have a hard drive. It has flash storage. The term “hard drive” is not a synonym for on-device storage: hard drives were a prevalent form of storage, but let’s not become so lax with terminology that it no longer means anything...
By sitting the iPad in the mysterious gunk that lies at the bottom of a kid's backpack. After stewing for a few weeks in exotic biological material the internals can begin to break down. The cases are sealed, but they're still permeable to stuff you wouldn't let near your computer because you have a slight respect for technology. I found fungus growing inside more than one iPad case, usually directly in the boards.
The iPad doesn’t have a hard drive. It has flash storage. The term “hard drive” is not a synonym for on-device storage: hard drives were a prevalent form of storage, but let’s not become so lax with terminology that it no longer means anything...
Yes, the iPad has flash storage. The same specific kind of flash storage that you'll find inside an SSD. And SSDs are typically referred to as hard drives.
Arduino is a for-profit company with open source hardware; Raspberry Pi is a charity with closed-source hardware. Nothing wrong with either approach. But your comment makes out they're a for-profit company with closed-source hardware acting like the good guys. Not sure it's fair to label them as just another company when they're not-for-profit and pump all their money into a) product development and b) education prog…
> To be honest, if the Pi was open source hardware, everyone would buy the clones (like they do with the Arduino ones) and the charity side would have much less funding. As opposed to now, when people buy such totally-not-clones as the Banana Pi and Orange Pi? For that matter, Arduino seems to somehow have stayed profitable in spite of getting murdered from every angle by the clones.
>For that matter, Arduino seems to somehow have stayed profitable in spite of getting murdered from every angle by the clones.
The clones are fine for simple stuff. But they really cut every corner possible, so even the chip is counterfeit, which means it doesn't behave like a real Arduino does. Deep sleep will use 1000x as much current on some clones compared to a real Arduino, for example.
You really can't only use clones. You have to develop/test on real Arduino hardware, then deploy to clones. Because the clones aren't reliable in their behavior.
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…
It's the standard pattern where someone comes along and says "hey, we made this thing which does X pretty well for a good price". Then someone else comes along and say "we wanted to use it for Y, but it's not good at that, therefore the thing itself is bad, and it's creators should have focused on making it good at Y instead".
AFAIK, Raspberry Pi was, among other goals, was designed to help poor students learn software and hardware. I am not sure how one can do this with such a huge proprietary blob.
I'm not sure I see the problem. Most servers will come up before a netboot/PXE boot timeout. At least in my experience they do.
That server should be on a UPS. Some people like to use an old laptop as a server at home, and that's even more ideal as it has a built in battery, often allowing the machine to stay alive for an hour or so before dying.
Thanks, this answers my question. In some developing countries you could have power cuts of over 10 hours.