Funny how Vodafone manages to write an entire article about a femtocell they built without using that word a single time.
This.
Also calling a piece of hardware a 'network' sounds weird to me.
Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer
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Re: Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer
#62If we could get an off the shelf SOC that's powerful enough to manage a PCIe daughter card, that would make me so happy. Software defined radio, offloaded eBPF, RAID controllers, are just the most obvious compute peripherals but there are a million others that could exist but don't. edit: acronym typo
Offloaded eBNF? You must be dealing with extremely large grammars if you need dedicated hardware to manage it :0
I think they mean a NIC that you can offload eBPF programs onto.
Re: Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer
#63Ok this is cool but maybe Vodafone can focus on more customer-oriented things like figuring out how I can pay them the -7000 CZK they've been harassing me about for 2 months. Effectively I overpaid last year (due to their billing stupidity) and now they've been threatening to disconnect if I don't pay them minus US$315-ish. I don't quite know how to do that legally... Stupid company.
You just made me realise something. For 10 years , every month I'd received an SMS saying: > Your latest bill $-0.02 on [... blah blah...] From a telco provider I no longer use. Turns out they finally stopped messaging me in November last year. I wonder if they worked it out or whether their system gives up after 10 years. Hopefully you don't have to wait that long!
Ha hopefully not! To be honest given that home-office is quite important nowadays I'd like to just have some closure. Being told you have to pay an unexpected, positive quantity of currency is annoying but if you want to resolve that it's usually achievable. Being told you have to pay negative amount and that your contract is in jeopardy feels like you're on a bit of a knife-edge. Throw in Czech customer service (lol) and the company either playing games with their systems being "down" when I go, or pretending they can't understand me because I'm a foreigner and my Czech is a little off sometimes - it's a little stressful.
Sorry for the diversion, I'll make another pilgrimage to the Vodafone place nearby tomorrow, it's possible they had "billing our customers negative numbers" above Raspberry Pi fun on their TODO list!
Re: Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
...call their customer support? This is a pretty simple problem to explain no?
Do you really think the outsourced customer support agent paid a few bucks a day is going to 1) understand your problem, 2) care about it enough to investigate it and 3) will be given the tools and access required to investigate it, 4) has a suitable escalation path to escalate what is clearly a billing system bug to the engineering department and that 5) there is actually an engineering department with competent dev…
In my experience the only way to escalate is to stop your subscription and tell them why.
Re: Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
SoC in this case is a system on a chip - despite the "a" it's abbreviated the same https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip
Probably see SBC's used more as a term for them than SoC's as they incorporate more than just the die (imho)
Well, except once you have a PCIe daughter card it's no longer an SBC; you have at least two boards right there.
Re: Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are so many other SBCs as well. Arguably the arduino products are more useful to kids anyway. Much easier to use, you just plug them in to the computer you are already familiar with and can start running code on them. No need to set up SSH or a second monitor/kb
But no easy wifi
ESP32 has wifi and bluetooth and costs hardly anything.
Re: Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer
#67For certain industrial uses or to cover large areas I see the benefit of private 5g networks, but for home/SMB (the apparent target) didn't femtocells dissapear years ago because they were killed off by WiFi calling? This seems to be a solved problem.
Re: Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
An uplifting quote from: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/raspberrypi "Raspberry Pi wasn't invented to boost shareholder value or turn its founders into billionaires: it was created as a charity to increase the number and calibre of students applying to study computer science at Cambridge, to give young people access to programmable hardware at a low price, and to equip a new generation" Whereas Raspberry Pi today: "We'…
That was 10 years ago; those then-students are now engineers. This is what success at equipping a new generation looks like - the transition of needing tools to do stuff with[0] and not just play with and learn on. [0]"Industry"
I mean, most educational tools don't just decide to give up on students when the first cadre age out.
Re: Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer
#69This is the reason why you can't get a Raspberry Pi computer. Eben Upton, (Raspberry Pi Founder) sold out his his base. When the chip shortage hit, Upton made the decision to prioritise supply to industrial buyers over retail/hobbyists/education. His rationale was that companies that had bills to pay and salaries to pay should get priority because people's livelihoods depended on getting those Raspberry Pi's. Sounds…
This looks interesting as an alternative: https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-pro-p550 > "This is a premium software development system ideal for developer desktop machines and rack-based build/test/deploy servers for RISC-V software development. RISC-V has no limits."
I don’t seem to be as phased or disappointed by the Rpi shortage as everyone else.
There are so many alternatives that are often cheaper and more powerful. Here’s a recent summary of the alternatives:
Re: Vodafone unveils prototype 5G network built on a Raspberry Pi computer
#70This is the reason why you can't get a Raspberry Pi computer. Eben Upton, (Raspberry Pi Founder) sold out his his base. When the chip shortage hit, Upton made the decision to prioritise supply to industrial buyers over retail/hobbyists/education. His rationale was that companies that had bills to pay and salaries to pay should get priority because people's livelihoods depended on getting those Raspberry Pi's. Sounds…
I've literally just bought a 2 year old 10nm Tiger Lake Intel i5 16GB, 512GB_ssd, Lenovo Slim 7i notebook, on Ebay, for 400 USD. Thanks to M1/2 these devices are going for cheap: 500 dollars in general for like-new (mine had a few scratches), and they perform 5x better (at least) than an RPi 4, have at least 2x the RAM, have an actual SSD, keyboard, monitor, backup battery, power supply. Mine even does AVX512. The SBC space has become very poor value compared with recent x86 devices cast aside because of the (admittedly amazing) macbooks. Admittedly RPi has a good software support story but the x86 devices are gold standard here and they're crushing the ARM SBCs right now on value. You can get a 150 USD full-fledged notebook with a Celeron that is 50-100% faster than an RPI and includes 64GB of Emmc, screen, keyboard, power supply, and impeccable software support, in the form of Asus L210, and others.I still have an RPI4, I like it, but the Upton interview on Explaining Computers in December really put me off because he sounded like a banker or corporate consultant. The RPi ethos is gone. And so is the value.