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Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

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Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#121

Post by ajford »

theHIDninja wrote: post #110
mattmoose21 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Anecdotal evidence. They are built like absolute trash and it's a miracle anybody says they work for any reason. As is your experience. I have had about 8 pi's (zero,2,3,4) without any issue and I have never heard anybody else with the amount of issues you've had. I think they are ubiquitous because they are inexpensive, well documented, and fairly well made. They would clearly not be as popular if everyone had your…

>well made They are made from the floor sweepings in Sony's factory. You don't hear about the failures because most people just buy them and throw them away. I would venture to guess that about 60% of their customers are one-time buyers that try to power it on once and throw it away because it doesn't work. The other 40% either won the lottery or put up with its constant stream of shit because they have a near monopo…

I'd argue that you don't hear about failures as most people aren't experiencing them.

Out of at least a dozen people I know using them, every single person has multiple RPis that has been in pretty regular use. On top of that you have a plethora of documented uses and projects across the internet, ranging from home automation to arcade machines.

You seem to be painting an entire community with the same brush, but most of the people in this community would gladly help you solve the issues you seem to be facing. Perhaps the issue lies not with the RPis but with how you're using them....

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#122

Post by peckrob »

yissp wrote: post #118
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…

Do you worry you might get in trouble if a technician sees some strange device attached to your meter? I know you're not actually doing anything wrong, but I feel like it could be awkward trying to explain that to some angry representative of the utility company.

I do. That's why I was trying every possible way to do this using SDR or some other non-noticeable way. FWIW it's not even really attached to the port, because the port itself is behind the glass, it's just that the IR LED inside the port is visible. So really it's kind of sitting on top of the glass bubble.

I also checked the local municipal code (my utility is city-owned) and there doesn't seem to be anything in the code that says I can't do it.

That said, I intend to put a notice next to it that says something along the lines of "This is a non-contact measuring device that counts IR pulses. Please call XXX with any questions."

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#123

Post by peckrob »

mypastself wrote: post #88
irq-1 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, this is me too. I have essential tremor, so soldering anything takes a great amount of effort. I'll always pay extra for the ease of using the pins.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#124

Post by louwrentius »

I've been using the Raspberry Pi3/4 for:

1. Pihole + p1 power meter 2. Internet quality monitoring 3. Grafana + Graphite for my home computers 4. Always on Ubuntu Repository Mirror with external 8TB drive 5. A 3b hosting my website powered by solar

I should add 'router' but my internet is faster than my Pi4 can handle. Maybe the compute module or pi400 can handle gigabit internet.

However, almost everything I listed here could be hosted on a single low-power x86 box and that would even be more power-efficient too.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#125

Post by MonaroVXR »

II2II wrote: post #75
throw10920 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you still haven't found a use for them: they make for good low-power, always-on, headless networked servers for processing-light tasks. Other commentators mentioned pihole/DNS, WireGuard, and music streaming, but you can also use them for a (slow) NFS server, persistent Syncthing node, Maestral host[1] (third-party Dropbox client written in Python (that can actually run on the Raspberry Pi, unlike the official Dro…

I do the same thing, with a different mix of services: - The obligatory PiHole. - An ssh server, which I use to access my internal network. - A script that scrapes a website daily. - A database to support a web development project. - A web server to support a web development project. - An NFS server, for data backups. While it is probably underpowered to serve the needs of some people, it serves my needs. Since I don…

>- A database to support a web development project.

What language, frameworks, modules and how do you store and present it?

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#126

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

beezischillin wrote: post #116
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.

As long as you use something like the official PSU and don't connect particularly power-hungry USB devices to it you should be fine. As far as the SD card goes you can boot off an external hard drive or SSD via USB and that should guarantee longevity. My biggest problem with headless Pis was that they would randomly disconnect from the wifi network and disappear, turning off power saving on wifi didn't solve it. In t…

I hate to beat the drum but, as I've said in some other replies, I used the official PSU.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#127

Post by syntheticnature »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #55
kd913 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I heavily recommend the use of them as a pihole + Wireguard VPN + DNSCryptProxy Server. Pihole -> Great use for a network wide adblocker/DHCP server. Wireguard VPN -> In combination with a DDNS setup and some port forwarding enables the use of a global private VPN. I think it's a prerequisite for a decent home-automation setup. DNSCryptProxy -> Great for ensuring all DNS requests on the network via DNS over HTTPS…

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.

If it was one of the original Pi4s you would need to get the FW update that fixed the USB chip power that was the source of many overheating issues -- though that came out relatively soon after release.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#128

Post by syntheticnature »

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #81
pridkett wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I missed this -- but my comment elsewhere about the FW update for overheating definitely applies for a launch day Pi4!

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#129

Post by kingosticks »

squarefoot wrote: post #96
theHIDninja wrote: post #36

That is surprising. I guess it's still economical for them to use these horrible computers despite the fact the mean time between failures is at best three weeks.

There are better solutions other than the Raspberries, often even cheaper, less power hungry and more open, but they struggle to gain visibility because they don't spend in advertising as much as the Raspberry Pi Foundation (Broadcom?) does. Here's a list of over 400 boards. There's also a .csv file to downlaod for offline quick comparison. https://hackerboards.com/

Out of interest, where do you see their adverts?

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#130

Post by firecall »

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've thought about getting one or two...

I can see the appeal.

But I have come to the sensible conclusion that an Intel NUC is far more useful, to me, as a general purpose computing device, media server, file server, linux dev box and occasional casual Minecraft gaming device for the kids!

Seemingly once I've specced up a RPI, they are not exactly super cheap at that point!

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