This is one of those moments where I notice the stark difference in good vs. bad branding (in my opinion). Raspberry Pi. Dell Optiplex FX160.
You mean Raspberry Pi B+, Rpi B3 or Rpi Zero W ?
Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
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Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#182This is one of those moments where I notice the stark difference in good vs. bad branding (in my opinion). Raspberry Pi. Dell Optiplex FX160.
I think that Dell would claim that their brand is the more valuable for their purposes.
I think parent comment was discussing the names rather than the hardware.
When I think "Raspberry Pi" I think "Oh yeah there's not very many of those, and they're super cheap and low power and useful"
When I think "Dell", I think "Conglomerate"; when I think "Optiplex", I think "stupid-expensive desktop machines"; when I think "FX160" I think "oh great a !@#$ing model number to look up specs for". Yeah, it's 'cheap' and 'powerful' and 'useful', but far more effort goes into identifying its purpose. And, since it doesn't have any GPIO, it's useful in a different way.
Honestly, it's like comparing apples to oranges. One just keeps the doctor away while I use the other as the base for soups.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#183A raspberry pi with external HDD running is about 5W. That's 130 kWh less than a FX160 over an always on year, or $27 at average Australian energy prices. Sure these servers might be handy for some things, but the Pi still has a lot of advantages. For me it's small form factor, low power consumption and GPIO.
I have used such pi setup to enable a distributed backup with pi and the disk placed at a remote office. Worked really nicely. The only inconvenience was Ethernet cable that I have to pull to a storage room. Now with WiFi it would be even simpler.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#184Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really ? Because this is trivial to make using a microcontroller. Or you can use any FT232 serial interface. I mean I'd think you'd prefer an arduino for this application over pretty much everything else since you can quickly upload small programs to the arduino that keep the "fast" logic on the arduino.
Arduinos cost more than a lot of Pis, though. And the network interface of a Pi enables some really interesting capabilities that don't exist, or are harder to obtain, with a device that doesn't have one.
I think ESP8266 boards (running something NodeMCU) are becoming the more popular replacements for Arduino. They're super cheap, and have integrated Wifi.
Cool thing about them is that you can write in C-like AVR code (like Arduino), or micro versions of Lua, Python, and other choices.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#186Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#187The article claims the Intel Atom 230/330 CPU is vastly superior to the Raspberry Pi CPU, then says "look at these benchmarks" and links to a page last updated in August 2013. I would like to know how the single core Atom compares to recent versions of the Pi that have a quad core.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gah - thanks for pointing this out! I made an error that I'm guessing a few others' did -- I compared the $35USD against the $59AUD price. This makes a little more sense. There are a few things that offset this, though. The eBay OptiPlex ships without RAM. The author points out that this adds a minimal $20AUD, but that offsets the sticker price difference. In addition, if Hacker News is the target audience and you fo…
I keep having awful luck with USB power adapters and RPis, to the point that I buy a specific adapter to go with each Pi.
It can be a little tricky, but if you know what the adapter is rated to handle it usually isn't too tough to find one that works. About 5 years ago I ordered some 4-port 2.1A Monoprice PoS adapters for a few bucks a piece. I routinely use these for my RPis, but with only one RPi plugged in (add any second device and the thing will start flaking).
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#189The raspberry pi's selling points are: 1. It works nearly out-of-the-box. You only have to prepare an SD card. 2. It is tiny 3. It is quite power efficient 4. It has GPIO pins, which make it usable for experimenting with hardware. 5. It has a great community (you can easily find many projects for it, and there are some great OSes available, which run nice educational software) 6. It is cheap All of this makes it fant…
Exactly, all the same hardware makes it possible to exchange images, bit for bit SD-card copies, that run on any of the same model RPis, this is incredibly powerful and handy. For example, installing ROS (Robot Operating System) on Linux can be a PITA, but there is a ready made ROS on Ubuntu Mate for RPi3, so you have it fully functional in minutes.
Re: Consider a Dell Optiplex FX160 Instead of a Raspberry Pi
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I've configured it to boot off of the Hard Drive. You don't even need an SD card in it to boot. Woah, that's awesome! I had no idea the pi 3 could do that. I have a Raspberry Pi 2 B and a 3 B at home. I host my website using the 2 B with cloudflare in front of it [1], as well as use it as a login server, but every couple of months the SD card gets corrupted. The last time that happened was a couple of weeks ago and…
TIL there's even a PXE boot option on the Pi 3, and several other boot modes as well. https://github.com/raspberrypi/documentation/tree/master/har...
The network boot can be made to work on the RPi 2, I believe. You still need an sd card in there to host the updated boot ROM but it won't be used for anything except booting, so it should be pretty safe from corruption.