How are people dealing with subpar SD card storage option which is guaranteed to fail if there are ANY consistent writes?
Why don't they add M.2 port?, it would instantly make Pi lot more reliable.
First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
31–40 of 81 posts
Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
#32Does 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, but that's because I largely dismiss the early Pis altogether. 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. Pi 3 seemed powerful enough to be interesting and I did a small project with it, but Pi 4 pushes it to where I'm ac…
> for running Linux applications, they feel way underpowered
I think that's because the Raspberry Pi's might be best used as tiny consumer servers, not desktop (or embedded) computers. They seem perfect for running things that require an OS and a moderate amount of processing power - say, DNS, Syncthing, audio streaming, ssh tunnel point, a VPN, a small personal (static) website, or a NAS that doesn't have particularly high performance requirements.
So, Linux "applications" but not in the sense of Firefox, or other interactive GUI programs.
(this ignores the lower barrier to entry that they have than actual microcontrollers, which is a different kind of use-case)
Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
#33How are people dealing with subpar SD card storage option which is guaranteed to fail if there are ANY consistent writes? Why don't they add M.2 port?, it would instantly make Pi lot more reliable.
I've switched to only buying SD cards from AAA+ platinum-rated photography websites (B&H, Adorama), they seem to be the only reliable places to buy non-counterfit SD cards these days. I've never had an issue with an SD card since I made this shopping change. Shipping and price are about 10% higher, but guaranteed quality product is worth it.
If you buy your SD cards from Amazon or Ebay you can't guarantee quality for these products.
Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
#34Raspian 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.
It’s not.
Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
#35Will existing HATs for pi zero work for this one? I'm wondering about the ANAVI Infrared pHAT
Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
The first product I ever shipped with a Pi was a controller that needed a nice UI and some data storage. For a one-off, the $35 cost for a Pi2 probably saved at least $1,000 in dev cost than if I were to throw a microcontroller at the problem.
Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
#37Earlier 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…
There are some game servers implemented using RPi, specially in open source games.
Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 thin…
Thanks for posting that!
On the table next to me I have a system that's comprised of a SOM running Linux for a UI and an STM32 for real-time control. They talk over a serial port. I didn't realize that ST had combined the two. That's definitely useful information!
Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
#39Raspian 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.
How do you edit boot.conf without a keyboard or monitor?
Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How do you edit boot.conf without a keyboard or monitor?
Mount the sd card elsewhere, the boot partition is FAT formatted and can be edited on most OSes.