Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 222 posts

I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#1

Post by MarkusWandel »

My brother gave me a Raspberry 400 (starter kit) because he knew I'd geek out on it and really evaluate it.

If you give it fast enough "disk" storage it really moves. I plugged in a Kingston brand 120GB SSD on a USB3 adapter. hdparm -t gave 292MB/s read speed and the default LXDE environment was really crisply responsive, with even a first launch of Chromium taking less than two seconds. With such good storage, the only real limitation is that heavy Javascript stuff is too slow - 5+ seconds to switch between folders in Chrome, or for the thumbnail gallery to appear in Youtube. Also, video calling is marginal. Aside from that the CPU is fast enough.

Then I accidentally yanked a cable. And the SSD was bricked. I was able to unbrick it again with the long-powerup-without-data-cable trick, but plainly this setup is too fragile.

USB boot is a game changer. A junk drawer 8GB USB stick works just fine, aside from the fact that it takes many minutes to copy the OS image onto it in the first place.

An old 60GB SATA laptop hard disk in the same USB3 case that I tried the SSD in is pretty good. About like a decent SD card, but without the scary wear/corruption issues. I can post the brand (Can$14 on Amazon) and the workaround needed for its broken (or at least Linux incompatible) UAS.

Bluetooth Audio actually works. In the typical use case, with this thing plugged via HDMI/DVI adapter into an old junk monitor, you can use additional clutter, like a $3 USB headset adapter and computer speakers to get sound or at least plug in a headphone. But if you have a bluetooth headphone or speaker, you don't need cables at all. I can post the recipe that worked for me for this.

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#2

Post by MarkusWandel »

Skype is not possible at this time. I tried 32 and 64 bit OS images, Chromium and Firefox. All are browser not supported, or it works but then doesn't make any attempt to use the webcam or a microphone (even the setup menu entry for this is missing). This being a web app, it could of course change any time. The other stuff that I tried - Zoom and Google Hangouts - worked, just not fast enough for good frame rate.

A modern computer should have suspend/resume. This doesn't, but all kitted out with accessories - 7 port USB hub, USB headset, spinning laptop hard disk - it idles at 6-7 watts, plus it boots fast and shuts down almost instantly, so that's not a big issue.

Now for a list of things that I think this is good for:

1. As an accessory to the family TV - for online video that the "smart TV" is too dumb for, for games and such.

2. As a classroom computer, with a few sample setups.

2a. Overlay mode (i.e. immutable SD card image and no wear) and everyone uses the same generic userID but then logs into their own google account.

2b. Overlay mode, immutable SD card image and everyone brings a USB stick to store their data on.

2c. Completely diskless mode, everyone has a USB stick they boot from (this works very well even with a typical slow USB stick).

2d. Completely diskless mode, PXE boot from a server (needs gigabit wired ethernet for adequate performance)

2e. Like 2c but with NFS home directories. This needs some sort of centralized account management.

Practical as that is, probably Chromebooks are too well established for this to get any traction.

3. As the standard experimenter's Raspi. Costs about the same as a Raspi4 with a good aluminum fanless case, so you get the keyboard for free.

4. As a small NAS/DVR/whatever server node. Same as 3. You get Raspi4 performance and passive cooling for about the same price but a free keyboard.

5. As an extra homework/Youtube/whatever screen in a screen-constrained budget conscious family. Get a $10 monitor from Craigslist/Kijiji, a $2 HDMI/DVI adapter for it and you're off. Except for the sound thing; suggest Bluetooth for minimum clutter for that.

Really a practical little machine, comparable to a decent 10-12 year old laptop with an SSD upgrade.

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#3

Post by severine »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #2

Skype is not possible at this time. I tried 32 and 64 bit OS images, Chromium and Firefox. All are browser not supported, or it works but then doesn't make any attempt to use the webcam or a microphone (even the setup menu entry for this is missing). This being a web app, it could of course change any time. The other stuff that I tried - Zoom and Google Hangouts - worked, just not fast enough for good frame rate. A m…

That's a great review, keep'em coming, people!

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#4

Post by MarkusWandel »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #2

Skype is not possible at this time. I tried 32 and 64 bit OS images, Chromium and Firefox. All are browser not supported, or it works but then doesn't make any attempt to use the webcam or a microphone (even the setup menu entry for this is missing). This being a web app, it could of course change any time. The other stuff that I tried - Zoom and Google Hangouts - worked, just not fast enough for good frame rate. A m…

1080p video playback is pretty decent. Youtube in Chromium or Firefox is mostly perfect but plainly with some frame drops. A h.264 encoded .mp4 file at that resolution, played with mplayer, is rock solid. VLC too, except mysteriously, it currently gives a black screen when set to fullscreen.

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#6

Post by MarkusWandel »

behohippy wrote: post #5

I have one as well, and my experience with BT speakers is odd: It works fine in VLC, but not in Chromium or any of the pre-installed games.

I used PulseAudio and removed "bluealsa". So far it's worked fine with everything. Unfortunately the standard LXDE volume/device selector icon doesn't play nice with PulseAudio so I have to use pavucontrol for that. The standard audio icon does pairing very well; by comparison "blueman" isn't as good.

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#7

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Sounds like a neat bit of kit. For anyone unfamiliar, it's essentially an ARM-powered PC, in the form factor of a keyboard. [0]

> I was able to unbrick it

I know it's a nitpick, but if it can be repaired, it's not bricked.

[0] https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit/

Re: I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

#9

Post by justin66 »

> I plugged in a Kingston brand 120GB SSD on a USB3 adapter.

> Then I accidentally yanked a cable. And the SSD was bricked.

People who are going to use this as as their setup ought to buy a real, fast USB SSD, instead of relying on SSD drives plugged into adapters. They're engineered to deal with stuff like this and they're fast. (the Samsung T5 and T7 both benchmark even faster than what you saw, well above 300MB/s)

Post reply on HN