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Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#141

Post by vidarh »

userbinator wrote: post #113
bayesianhorse wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For teachers one big issue is that you don't know if you can buy 100% compatible devices in a year's time in comparable conditions (price, bulk, availability etc). With Raspberry Pi you know you can.

I wouldn't be so sure about that - the article hints that they're trying to move away from the BCM2835, and in a few years' time the BCM2836 would probably suffer the same fate. In any case I don't think I've seen anything from them about how long they'll continue making Pis, since they depend on Broadcom to provide the SoC. On the other hand, AllWinner's answer about how long it will produce its SoCs... is surprisin…

The answer does not really give people much reason to feel certain, on the other hand. How many OEMs will be able to continue to order 50k lots of A10's for very long? For that answer to give confidence, you will need to find an OEM you have reason to trust will be able to maintain that kind of volume.

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#142

Post by techrat »

mkesper wrote: post #92
tbrock wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odroid blows it away. I've had mine for about two months and love it.

How could you compare it against the brand new raspberry?

C1 came first, is available now and has a fully open GPU whereas the Pi still relies on Broadcomm's mostly proprietary chip.

C1 also allows you to add NAND directly to the board where the Pi is still limited to MicroSD. C1 also confirmed to not have the same bus limitation that plagues the first Pi an is unconfirmed to exist in Pi2.

C1 also has a built in RTC and a 5v Barrel Pin jack so you don't have to rely on MicroUSB for power.

http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php

It's simply much better thought out.

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#143

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

gorgas wrote: post #122
gcb0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's probably a bad dongle. i connect my htpc via a Wi-Fi USB dongle as well. it runs both Linux and windows 7. and despite the os and drivers one model always hang after a day or so. another one, different model from same brand is online for months at a time. it's mostly badly designed/tested hardware.

I was expecting a answer like "my dongle X just works on the Pi" :-) I do not doubt it is a problem with the hardware or the drivers, I just say it is a common problem with many dongle vendors specially in the Pi. I know I could buy a RPi-certified dongle, but I do not like wasting hardware if I can fix it just with a few scripts. No offense :)

WiFi on the Pi 'just doesn't work.'

You can get it working for a while, but it's nowhere near the reliability of standard domestic WiFi.

I've built various sensor/hardware projects and tried various dongles, and I've always had to switch back to a cabled connection.

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#144

Post by asb »

jvdh wrote: post #114
throwaway000002 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you're referring to me. Arguing the whole openness of the video driver is a dead end [1]. If you want an open video driver use Intel, or AMD and be done with it. Give me a hand-cranked universal Turing machine and I've basically got the same device as a RPi. The only difference, it's cheap, and I don't have to get a workout hand-cranking it. Video is just a (semi-)fixed functional unit. Sure, it'd be nice t…

Do you think it is feasible to release a similarly priced, similarly capable device with completely open hardware? The RPi has sold immensely to home users, but also in education. The foundation is also open to criticism and has shown in the past that they are willing to change their production when given the opportunity. They have moved most of their production to the UK for example, whereas the first boards were al…

It would be difficult in the near term. With lowRISC (http://www.lowrisc.org), some of us are working towards a complete open source SoC (i.e. the RTL is available under a permissive open source license). Although our longer term goals include being an acceptable SoC for a phone or tablet, the first iteration won't feature a GPU.

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#145

Post by chisleu »

aswanson wrote: post #28
schappim wrote: post #4

What's the same: - Same form factor as the model B+ (your enclosures and daughter boards should still fit). - Same full size HDMI port - Same 10/100 Ethernet port - Same CSI camera port and DSI display ports - Same micro USB power supply connection What has changed: - A new turbocharged Broadcom BCM2836 900MHz quad-core system-on-chip with performance at least 6x that of the B+. - 1GB of RAM Source: http://raspberry.…

What's the same: Broadcom is still the non-datasheet-releasing, our-chips-implementing-standard-phy-spec functionality are subject to manhattan-project secrecy, assholes.

Open or not... I want a working DSI or I'll go with something else with eDP.

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#147

Post by vacri »

gcb0 wrote: post #99
vacri wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not particularly - there are several datacenters that offer raspberry pi servers as a commercial offering. I can't remember the name of the one near me (had a slick photo of black and green pi cases on their dc floor), but a little googling found this one: http://raspberrycolocation.com/

hosting pis without needing/being able to access gpio and such is a silly marketing fad. it must be so ineffective in term of space and heat that i would be surprised that they have a single beefy server running several pis in emulation for the clients.

Sometimes people do things for fun rather than economic maximisation.

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#148

Post by wolfgke »

throwaway000002 wrote: post #58
jacquesm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. I find it rather rude to call a company 'assholes' for doing something that is 100% within their rights. They're releasing a chip that powers a relatively cheap fairly powerful computer, have supported the effort in as many ways as they could without giving up their competitive edge (when you're in a leadship position it is sometimes quite risky to open up too far), nobody forces anybody to buy the product and la…

I think aswanson is simply expressing his feelings. Broadcom has garnered goodwill from being involved with the Raspberry Pi foundation. Goodwill, I must add, from a broad swath of people who are not too technically inclined. Yes, the computer (or device if you're lacking generosity) is a god-send for those without the capacity to buy an Intel/AMD-based PC, but let's not kid ourselves: the device is less open than a…

> All this said, if you want cheap and software open, go with the Odroid C1

According to http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php the Odroid C1 uses a Mali-450 MP2 GPU. This is at least as closed as the VideoCore IV used in the Raspberry Pi.

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#149

Post by DanBC »

pjc50 wrote: post #138
bayesianhorse wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Raspberry Pi is a platform optimized for and bundled with its community. The Raspberry Foundation can produce/license any conceivable number of these devices at the same price point. The difference of for example $35 vs $70 doesn't matter very much for individual buyers. It does matter when dealing with educational budgets and a desire for predictable spending. Even when a school/hobbyist course requires students…

You've got it exactly. The whole thing is modeled on the original BBC computer learning project of 30 years ago. The physical Pi device is just a platform for the delivery of educational material. People miss this because most of the commentators here don't need the educational material as they're not schoolkids or educators. The Foundation is doing this in a highly vertically integrated way because it gives them pre…

One important difference is cost - the BBC micros were expensive compared to their competition.

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#150

Post by StavrosK »

gorgas wrote: post #85
sdenton4 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the onboard ethernet pretty constantly, mainly because I find the wireless to be finicky and hard to troubleshoot when you're running a headless setup. I can always plug in an ethernet cable, though...

Agree. However Finally I was able to keep an uptime greater than 2 months on my Pi by using a wifi dongle and a bunch of cron scripts to keep alive the connection when my router reboots or the dongle 'freezes' which seems is a common issue when using RPi of any kind :(

I had that issue as well, where it would freeze if it transferred lots of data (as in, a large number of files in a dir would freeze it when doing ls on the terminal), and the problems went away with a higher-amperage power supply.
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