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

71–80 of 81 posts

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#71

Post by ThatPlayer »

occamrazor wrote: post #69
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 wouldn't say so. RPi doesn't discontinue products, but it doesn't really make sense to buy most older models. In practice there are 4 RPi's: the Zero (5$ is hard to beat), the Zero 2 W (small, cheap, with WiFi) and the 4 Model B. Then there is the Pico, but it is a microcontroller, a completely different product, and the CM4, for large scale deployments.

I also like the 3 A+ for an inbetween Zero 2 W and 3/4. Don't need a USB OTG adapter you'd need for a Zero, and not as big as the 4.

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#72

Post by [deleted] »

spicybright wrote: post #57
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?

Just a question on pi clustering in general. Is there an advantage vs buying a single more powerful computer, or a few powerful machines instead of a dozen+ pis?

[deleted]

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#73

Post by askvictor »

djanogo wrote: post #31

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.

Am using (high quality) USB for my pi storage now. Recent firmware can boot directly, though before that I was using the sd card as boot partition only, having everything else on USB. Depending on the application, network boot (i.e. completely diskless) might also be an option - probably the most reliable one, but needs wired ethernet so not possible on the Zero.

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#74

Post by foxfluff »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #60
foxfluff wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is the first time I'm hearing of the Pico. Is there any reason to use it, instead of the ESP32 or ESP8266 boards, or one of the many Arduino compatible uC's? The competitors seem to be much more common than the Raspberry Pico (i.e. it is much easier to find expansion boards, examples etc. for them). They seem to cost roughly the same too, and the ESPs even include WiFi and in the case of the ESP32 even Bluetooth…

I don't see any real killer (technical) feature. But I think that's always been the case for the Raspberry products: you could always get the same (and often better) features in other boards (though this may be less true as of the Pi4 which actually was and still is very competitive in the SBC market).

The Raspberry Pi was developed for teaching, as a low cost board that's easy to work with and that has good community support. It wasn't intended to be the most advanced board for your projects, and you could always find something cheaper if you really wanted and didn't mind the hassle..

The Pico is very similar. You get it for less than 5 eur from official distributors in Europe, you plug it in and it shows up as a USB mass storage device onto which you drop your program and off you go. I can see it being a very popular way to get started with microcontrollers, and just like Arduino, that popularity is not a function of features.

I'm curious to see where they take it though. It's their first in-house chip afaik, and the board is rather bare. I wouldn't be surprised if they release variants with more features.

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#75

Post by LeoPanthera »

djanogo wrote: post #31

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.

Three options:

1. Use an "endurance" SD card, these are usually advertised for dashcam use.

2. Boot from a USB device instead of SD, now natively supported.

3. Boot from LAN, also natively supported.

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#76

Post by jacquesm »

monocasa wrote: post #43
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?

I run rpis in my house with an RTOS I wrote. It'll be nice to dump support of armv6 for space constrained use cases that I used a W.

Neat!

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#77

Post by jacquesm »

foxfluff wrote: post #12
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, 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…

> but practically speaking require an OS that wastes a lot of the available resources

They don't actually require that, but that's what we usually end up doing. That's a choice though, and there are alternatives, they're just a lot of work.

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#78

Post by Teongot »

kiwijamo wrote: post #49
hadlock wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What SD brands do you usually buy? Are the Sandisk Extreme range any good?

I find Samsung much more reliable than Sandisk in my pis

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#79

Post by tinus_hn »

throw10920 wrote: post #32
foxfluff wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 particular…

In the always-on space where it is rather energy inefficient to run normal hardware.

Re: First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

#80

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

sitkack wrote: post #63
marktangotango wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dream device for clustering is dual core 1Ghz+, 1GB ddr4 (ddr3 in a pinch) and wired Gb ethernet. In bulk (where bulk ~ 100) price $5-10. Some of the allwinner and rockchip based pi clones get close but price is a lot more.

You can hit this now with the CM4 modules, For qty 1 @ $30 you get 2GB and 4 cores, you could put 2 more ethernet ports on the PCIe port for a total of 3. That gets you into the same-ish performance regime. I am all for aggregates of low end compute, but I think something with more processing power and more PCIe lanes would scale better. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC02...

Availability is a Real Issue, tho. 16-week leadtime on that URL.
Post reply on HN