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Raspberry Pi 400 – First Impressions

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Re: Raspberry Pi 400 – First Impressions

#21

Post by lxgr »

tyingq wrote: post #9
gambiting wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's "yet another" dongle for this machine which is meant to be an easy to use all-in-one friendly to beginners. Them using micro HDMI is already bizarre seeing as there's loads of room for a full size port and most people will need a dongle/adapter here, but not including an audio jack is crazy, seeing as the proper Rpi4 does have one!

You would also want a dongle that has a driver already bundled with the OS. Not sure if that's typical or not. Probably unlikely that the dongle itself comes with a suitable ARM/Linux driver.

USB audio devices are standardized (just like flash drives, as USB mass storage, and keyboard/mouse, as HID respectively), so you don't need device-specific drivers for most of them.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 – First Impressions

#22

Post by beagle3 »

tyingq wrote: post #2

"The 400 doesn’t have an audio-out." That does seem like a miss for an otherwise decent platform. HDMI out support is fine, but since this setup is quite portable, exposing a headphone jack seems obvious. I suppose bluetooth is the expectation now?

Apple, Samsung and others have eliminated the audio jack (for different reasons) and there was a lot of outrage but the bottom line is: acceptable Bluetooth headphones can be bought for about $10-$25 now, and are widely available.

Between Bluetooth headphones, HDMI out to the screen, HDMI audio splitters and $5 USB audio dongles, it really is a fine design choice - especially given that the RasPI’s analog audio out circuitry is low quality to begin with.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 – First Impressions

#24

Post by gambiting »

lxgr wrote: post #21
tyingq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would also want a dongle that has a driver already bundled with the OS. Not sure if that's typical or not. Probably unlikely that the dongle itself comes with a suitable ARM/Linux driver.

USB audio devices are standardized (just like flash drives, as USB mass storage, and keyboard/mouse, as HID respectively), so you don't need device-specific drivers for most of them.

Yes, but this isn't a USB audio device. You need to be able to select and control an HDMI audio output for this to work.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 – First Impressions

#25

Post by HeyHoJoe »

> I own several Raspberry Pi computers (1, 2 and 3). Most of them are the Model B format, but I have couple of Zeros too. All of them sit in a box, unused.

Same for me and most people I know who have bought an rpi. Buy it because it seems like a cool toy and then stick it in a box and never use it for anything.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 – First Impressions

#26

Post by atmosx »

Theodores wrote: post #17

> I own several Raspberry Pi computers (1, 2 and 3)... All of them sit in a box, unused. I’ve played with them, then put them away. Part of that is because the performance hasn’t been that great, but the form factor is a major factor. It feels like the Raspberry Pi 400 has the power I need (for casual projects), and comes in a form factor that I can happily leave plugged in on my desk. Amazing how the addition of a k…

I wonder if an after-market website for selling or giving away your old RPis makes sense. I run a k3s on RPi3, but I have a few RPi2 spares which can be used for small side projects.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 – First Impressions

#27

Post by cesarb »

butz wrote: post #10
tyingq wrote: post #2

"The 400 doesn’t have an audio-out." That does seem like a miss for an otherwise decent platform. HDMI out support is fine, but since this setup is quite portable, exposing a headphone jack seems obvious. I suppose bluetooth is the expectation now?

That's a bummer. I was planning to connect CRT TV to it through composite, that was passed through headphone jack.

I personally suspect that removing composite output was the real reason for removing the headphone jack. From what I've read, to enable composite output on the Raspberry Pi 4 you have to enable a special setting on config.txt, which when enabled slows down some of the clocks so that it can produce the correct frequencies for the composite output to work. Not having composite output removes the need for that wart.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 – First Impressions

#28

Post by tarruda »

I would consider using this for serious work if they had added support for 2.5 or m.2 drives.

There are some third party raspberry pi 4 cases that support m.2 via an internal USB 3.0 adapter [1].

Considering they designed a custom PCB for this product, adding a native M.2 or SATA is a reasonable feature for something designed to replace a desktop PC

[1]: https://www.argon40.com/argon-one-m-2-case-for-raspberry-pi-...

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 – First Impressions

#29

Post by lxgr »

gambiting wrote: post #24
lxgr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USB audio devices are standardized (just like flash drives, as USB mass storage, and keyboard/mouse, as HID respectively), so you don't need device-specific drivers for most of them.

Yes, but this isn't a USB audio device. You need to be able to select and control an HDMI audio output for this to work.

What "this" are you referring to? The grandparent post is talking about USB dongles as a workaround, which in my experience work very reliably.

Re: Raspberry Pi 400 – First Impressions

#30

Post by simonh »

HeyHoJoe wrote: post #25

> I own several Raspberry Pi computers (1, 2 and 3). Most of them are the Model B format, but I have couple of Zeros too. All of them sit in a box, unused. Same for me and most people I know who have bought an rpi. Buy it because it seems like a cool toy and then stick it in a box and never use it for anything.

This seems like a much more practical and useful package for most people, especially the full kit with all the connectors and such you need included. Just hook it up to a hand me down / cheap TV and you’ve got a very capable little computer. If this had come out when my kids were younger, learning Scratch and getting into Minecraft, I’d have been all over it.
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