Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#81

Post by thrwyoilarticle » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

pridkett wrote: post #74

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried using a Pi4 for a pihole and it kept crashing. Overheating I think. But, if I solve that, the SD card would kill it eventually.

Be careful with the gear you use on your Pis, just like any system. If you’re using a no-name USB-C power supply and dirt cheap generic SDHC cards, you will likely have problems. By default, the Pi4 doesn’t come with a power supply and while you might be tempted to power it from your PC, spend the money for the official power brick, or, even better, get the official Pi Power over Ethernet hats. For SD, buy from a rep…

I walked into the Cambridge Raspberry Pi shop on launch day and bought a Pi 4, a power supply, and an SD card with NOOBS. It isn't my hardware that's at fault and, even if it was, it doesn't excuse developing hardware that doesn't work with in-spec USB-C power supplies and depends on inherently fragile storage media.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#82

Post by tenebrisalietum » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

542458 wrote: post #80

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the stuff I used to do on a large and clunky hot power hungry noisy Intel box is now comfortably running on a cluster of Raspberry Pi's tucked away in the basement ceiling where nobody can see them. I wish they were a little faster in some cases (particularly serving the Nextcloud UI) but overall I much prefer this setup, especially since I can add Raspberry Pi's to facilitate specific roles like I would in a pro…

> particularly serving the Nextcloud UI Nextcloud is an absolute dog. Even on a server with loads of power and an SSD-based database over a local connection with all the caching options turned on… it’s still not snappy. I wish we had better FOSS options in this space.

Agree totally. It's not FOSS but I've had good experience with FileRun.

I loved Pydio but it was simply too slow.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#83

Post by sigg3 » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

Damogran6 wrote: post #20

My RPi's are like lottery tickets. I buy them with the thought of all they could be used for...then collect duct in the junk drawer. I also tell myself I'm supporting the manufacturer, though it would appear they don't need my help.

Use one for an offline emulator (using e.g. RetroPie). Kids love it and they don't have to be so careful with it.

We mostly play SNES games but I sometimes play stuff from my childhood when they're not awake.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#84

Post by irq-1 » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

peckrob wrote: post #44

Damogran6 wrote: post #20

My RPi's are like lottery tickets. I buy them with the thought of all they could be used for...then collect duct in the junk drawer. I also tell myself I'm supporting the manufacturer, though it would appear they don't need my help.

I use mine all the time for experiments. They're super useful for doing quick one-off experiments to see if something will work. Sometimes I'll keep using them, other times I'll switch to a different platform. Friday I was trying to figure out if I could remotely read realtime usage off my power meter. I've tried using a SDR for it but it uses some proprietary frequency hopping system that is difficult to understand…

There is also the $4 Raspberry Pico: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico/

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#85

Post by blackandsqueaky » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #70

Damogran6 wrote: post #20

My RPi's are like lottery tickets. I buy them with the thought of all they could be used for...then collect duct in the junk drawer. I also tell myself I'm supporting the manufacturer, though it would appear they don't need my help.

All the stuff I used to do on a large and clunky hot power hungry noisy Intel box is now comfortably running on a cluster of Raspberry Pi's tucked away in the basement ceiling where nobody can see them. I wish they were a little faster in some cases (particularly serving the Nextcloud UI) but overall I much prefer this setup, especially since I can add Raspberry Pi's to facilitate specific roles like I would in a pro…

Beware of proper insulation, even low energy devices can start a fire

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#86

Post by hateful » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #78

hateful wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use one for the clock in my bedroom. I use FullPageOS to load a web page that contains the time, date and weather (Open Weather gives you 60 checks per minute for free - way more than I need). The clock is on a full size monitor so the wife and I can see it without our glasses on. I basically deployed a nodejs app and configured FullPageOS to load that local page. The clock itself is just HTML and JavaScript (jQuer…

what do you use for the display?

Just an old monitor (2 actually, I mirror it on the other side of the wall) - 17in - I don't think it's even 1080.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#87

Post by benttoothpaste » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

albertzeyer wrote: post #9

We use a small drink kiosk touch pad powered by Rasperry Pi, using this simple software project: https://github.com/rwth-i6/drink-kiosk Works great. Except the SD card seems to be dying now after 3 years of constant usage (well, less usage during the enforced home-office times).

3 years for SD card is very long. Mine requires SD card replacement after 3-4 months. I hate that storage medium.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#88

Post by mypastself » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

irq-1 wrote: post #84

peckrob wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use mine all the time for experiments. They're super useful for doing quick one-off experiments to see if something will work. Sometimes I'll keep using them, other times I'll switch to a different platform. Friday I was trying to figure out if I could remotely read realtime usage off my power meter. I've tried using a SDR for it but it uses some proprietary frequency hopping system that is difficult to understand…

There is also the $4 Raspberry Pico: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico/

Unless you have embarrassingly poor soldering skills like I do, in which case you have to pay a little extra for pre-soldered pins. But it’s a great little device, and with Thonny and MicroPython, you can get small projects up and running with a really quick turnaround.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#89

Post by MatthiasWandel » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

theHIDninja wrote: post #69

smarx007 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The third one I tried had a fault where it would spontaneously shut down if I had any USB devices plugged into it for any reason at all (in this case it was a mouse and a flash drive). I have a power supply that is so weak that Pi would reboot when I plug a USB keyboard in it. Solution: never use weak power supplies on Pi's. > I have never seen the micro HDMI port on anything made before 2013 so the adapters requir…

I tried multiple power supplies. I even tried bench power supplies and overvolting them. Nothing worked. It fails for the same reason power strips fail if you plug too much into them. The Pi needs ~110% of what the input can even supply (that's ignoring the spec that says it should be 2.5 amps) and anything plugged in down-stream will need to take pieces out of that. >Pi 4 has 2 HDMI outputs! Two full-sized HDMI port…

Possibly the engineers working there took account not only the size of the HDMI connector, but also the plugs that go into them. if you put two connectors next to each other, you would only be able to use one at a time.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#90

Post by jandrese » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

Damogran6 wrote: post #20

My RPi's are like lottery tickets. I buy them with the thought of all they could be used for...then collect duct in the junk drawer. I also tell myself I'm supporting the manufacturer, though it would appear they don't need my help.

I just pulled out one this weekend after my ISP decided to refresh my IP and gave me on that was apparently used by Satan himself. All google services were just blackholing my traffic, it was breaking everything. I have never seen it that bad before, I've gotten CAPCHAs before, but never have I seen it just plain never respond to SYNs. I tried to force it to refresh but their router was insistent on me keeping that cursed IP address.

For a temporary workaround I set up a VPN endpoint on a VPS and configured a disused Pi3 to route through to the VPN endpoint, then turned it into an AP and had everybody connect through the Pi instead. It bypassed the breakage for the day so I could leave the connection off overnight to force my ISP to reallocate that IP.

It is this kind of Swiss Army Knife type job where the Pi is a perfect solution.