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

First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

blog.alexellis.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 81 posts

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#21

Post by matthewaveryusa »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #16
Stampo00 wrote: post #3

The idea of using it as a self-hosted Github Actions runner spoke to me. I wouldn't have thought of that. Thank you!

Personally, I'd prefer to get a standard Raspberry Pi 4 model for any server-like duties. Get the 8GB RAM model and it's easy to run a lot of virtual machines on it for all of your different mini-server needs on a single device. Managing a lot of different little Pis for different server-like things is fun for experimenting with clustering and multi-server management tools, but it gets old fast if you really just wan…

>VMWare ESXi is even available for the Raspberry Pi now

Wow, thanks, I'll definitely be checking that out

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#22

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

foxfluff wrote: post #18
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They sit in the awkward space where they're larger and faster than a microcontroller but practically speaking require an OS that wastes a lot of the available resources; for running Linux applications, they feel way underpowered. The Raspberry Pi isn't competing with a microcontroller. They're on opposite ends of the computing spectrum. If an application can be quickly developed and run on a microcontroller, using…

> The Raspberry Pi isn't competing with a microcontroller. They're on opposite ends of the computing spectrum. The spectrum is wider than that, but if you're comparing Pi and MCUs, today you have 32 bit multi-core ARM microcontrollers that run at hundreds of MHz and make a 486 look wimpy. And for a microprocessor, the first gen Pi is pretty darn wimpy (wikipedia compares it to a 300MHz Pentium II). Yet the performanc…

> very niche circumstances

Which happens to be exactly where the pi excels. I'm currently writing an application to record my homebrew information and also capture basic sensor data. A PC + arduino/sensor platform would be overkill and an ESP8266/ESP32 would slow me down.

Pi 2B running PHP? Perfect.

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#23

Post by xor99 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #5

Does anyone else have feelings about “there’s too many tiers of Pi” yet? I’m not sure if I feel that but it’s on my mind.

Not really: the pico is in the mcu space, compute module for industrial projects, pi4 as large sbc, and pi zero as small sbc. Seems like a good range. I think the least differentiated are the pi4 and pi zero but there's still a big difference when you think about applications (e.g. trying to stick a pi4 in a diy smart speaker or multiple VMs).

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#24

Post by rasfincher »

alexellisuk wrote: post #2

I know many of you may be wondering if you should get one of these, and if they can be used to create a cheaper cluster than RPi4s. I try to answer that as well as talk about my experience with the RPi Zero and how quick it is with Go and Node.js compared to the older generation. Are you running Zeros now or other models? What would you run on an RPi Zero 2?

Thanks for your RPi content Alex. Even though I'm not really active in the space, I still enjoy reading/watching about what's going on.

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#25

Post by dsr_ »

foxfluff wrote: post #18
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They sit in the awkward space where they're larger and faster than a microcontroller but practically speaking require an OS that wastes a lot of the available resources; for running Linux applications, they feel way underpowered. The Raspberry Pi isn't competing with a microcontroller. They're on opposite ends of the computing spectrum. If an application can be quickly developed and run on a microcontroller, using…

> The Raspberry Pi isn't competing with a microcontroller. They're on opposite ends of the computing spectrum. The spectrum is wider than that, but if you're comparing Pi and MCUs, today you have 32 bit multi-core ARM microcontrollers that run at hundreds of MHz and make a 486 look wimpy. And for a microprocessor, the first gen Pi is pretty darn wimpy (wikipedia compares it to a 300MHz Pentium II). Yet the performanc…

In end-user space, Pi has a bunch of good niches:

* There's an application that runs on Linux already and you want a cheap way of running it in a small space -- like a shairport-sync audio client feeding a local music system, or a web-connected clock/calendar/tasklist/notification.

* Very low cost, replaceable desktop for a kiosk, a classroom, whatever where it will run either simple office applications or be mostly a web terminal. (If you just want low cost, a used laptop might be a better value -- but if you need to be able to repeat and/or replace it, a Pi is better).

* Friendly target for someone who doesn't really understand embedded systems and will be tinkering for a long time.

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#26

Post by moffkalast »

devwastaken wrote: post #20

Raspian still relies on inferior wifi management. You have to replace with network-manager to get it to connect to Enterprise wifi. Is there any specific reason why it's not the default?

Well that's stock on both Debian and Ubuntu still, right? It's more of a question why they haven't replaced it either.

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#27

Post by bri3d »

blippage wrote: post #19
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

Does anyone else have feelings about “there’s too many tiers of Pi” yet? I’m not sure if I feel that but it’s on my mind.

Yes, I think there are too many. Everyone tends to go for the latest and greatest. The Pi is heading towards becoming a PC replacement, but I'm not sure what advantage that is. Instead of have faster computers, I want a faster OS. Or preferably very little in the way of an OS. Something like a DOS, perhaps. Something where you could write blazingly-fast software because the kernel is straightforward. And I want a rea…

STM32MP1 is a good example of your hybrid idea - it combines a Cortex A7 Linux application-side stack with an STM32 Cortex-M4 based microcontroller on the same SoC.

This is very useful for running hard realtime tasks on the microcontroller and "control" / GUI / application-stack intensive tasks on the Linux side, as you suggest.

With that said, all this does for toy OS development is makes it more complicated.

I think what you are looking for for your use cases might really be just an RTOS on a microcontroller with some provided driver blocks. Take a look at ESP32 as well :)

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#28

Post by michaelt »

Waterluvian wrote: post #5

Does anyone else have feelings about “there’s too many tiers of Pi” yet? I’m not sure if I feel that but it’s on my mind.

I don't know about too many tiers, but they've certainly run out of sensible naming ideas.

Who the hell signs off naming a product 'Zero 2' let alone the 'Zero 2 W' ?

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#30

Post by jandrese »

devwastaken wrote: post #20

Raspian still relies on inferior wifi management. You have to replace with network-manager to get it to connect to Enterprise wifi. Is there any specific reason why it's not the default?

Probably because SystemD network management is harder to use on a headless install. With a Raspberry Pi you just need to edit a couple of lines in the boot.conf to have it connect to WiFi on boot.

You can deploy one without ever plugging in a keyboard or monitor.

Post reply on HN