Slashdot Asks: What Do You Do With Your Raspberry Pi? 328
The Raspberry Pi is a small single-board computer that's exploded in popularity over the years thanks to its wide array of uses. While it was originally designed to promote the teaching of basic computer science in schools and in developing countries, the computers have been adapted to be used for robotics, media, game and print servers, and even as replacements for traditional desktop PCs. That last one may be even more of a popular use case with the Raspberry Pi 4, the newest version announced today featuring a more powerful quad-core 64-bit ARM processor, up to 4GB of LPDDR4 SDRAM, and dual monitor support at resolutions up to 4K. For those of you with a Raspberry Pi, what do you use it for? Do you have any plans to upgrade to the $35 Raspberry Pi 4?
Industrial Automation (Score:5, Interesting)
I use it as the central logic controller in a custom-built industrial PLC... which is used to drive automation systems in Beer Breweries (think large craft brewers) and greenhouses. They're awesome little devices. :)
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Do you have hot-swaps ready to go if they fail? Just curious about how you set it up in an industrial production environment. I think the greenhouses could handle them being completely out of commission for a few weeks. Maybe you could just underclock them to ent-timescales.
Re:Industrial Automation (Score:5, Interesting)
MTBF so far on them has been on the order of >50 years... depending on how you calculate that (based on a sample of >400). The only failures I've had have been attributable to physical or electrical damage from external sources. They're easy to swap out, and our systems have all kinds of reporting and alerting - the software is all cloud based, and if a system doesn't report in I know about it within 30 minutes.
They also self monitor... the one indicator I have of a Pi thats going to fail is CPU temperature. I find if a GPIO is shorted out, the CPU will start climbing in temp - possibly over days or weeks - before it freezes. Anything over 65C is enough for me to proactively address the situation.
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There is that design issue about the GPIO pins shorting out, but I wonder if some Dupont connectors placed on them, just as a way of insulting them, would be an answer. That, or perhaps some cap that can slide on. I have wondered about something easily removable like candle wax just to ensure no debris can bridge the pins that are not used.
One thing I do to help mitigate this is to use enclosures. I have been extremely pleased with what Thingiverse offers, so by tossing on the two heat sinks and using an
Re:Industrial Automation (Score:5, Interesting)
The systems we run don't need real-time timing... I get latency under 0.02 seconds worst case (from analysis) which is orders of magnitude more than required for these applications.
The GPIO shorting issue is a real hardware issue - they should be opto-isolated on the Pi board itself, however we take care of most of that in our board where the Pi plugs into it (the Pi is almost a "hat" for our system, in the end). Most of the times we've had that as a problem it was due to simple human carelessness when installing, or when attaching sensors/etc.
My biggest issue is actually with the USB bus on the Pi. There's an extreme edge case where if I'm using a GPIO pin at the exact same time as certain things happen on the USB bus, the system will freeze. It's worst when I'm bit-banging the GPIO's to do serial on pins other than the built-in UARTS. We tend to avoid using USB devices due to this, and I've implemented a hardware-based watchdog into our board to reset the pi if this ever happens. On 400+ systems in the field, it may happen once every three months or so... so it's rare, but significant when it happens.
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That is interesting. I wonder if the Raspberry Pi 4 will help in this department due to the new I/O setup it has, or perhaps change things around where this edge case doesn't happen, or doesn't happen as much. I am guessing that it might get better because it has both a USB3 and USB2 subsystem in place, but on the other hand, this means the CPU may have to do more polling, adding latency.
It is interesting what you can do with a Pi on an industrial scale, and thank you for sharing your love for tech, and f
Re:Industrial Automation (Score:4, Informative)
I've found the SD cards to be far less reliable than the Pis. Crap SD cards are a big problem for industrial systems. You can buy supposedly higher quality "industrial grade" ones but all they seem to do is test them before shipping, i.e. they don't seem to be any more reliable in service.
Re:Industrial Automation (Score:5, Interesting)
For an AC that clearly knows NOTHING about our particular system (nor the Raspberry Pi in general, it seems), you're making some pretty ludicrous accusations.
Of course I've built in redundancy, fail-safes, watchdogs (hardware and software), etc., to ensure things are exceedingly safe and reliable. I'd be more worried drinking beer at any brewery that DOESN'T have our system... they couldn't tell you what's happened to their beer whatsoever over the 2-3 weeks it ferments, other than maybe what a little red LED said the temp was once or twice a day when they happened to look, if you're lucky. I can tell you the (calibrated and redundant) temperature for every minute it was in the tank, and send you alerts the moment anything goes out of spec.
We also work VERY closely with the USDA and have achieved some of the highest certifications for food safety possible - being the first in this state for several types of certification at ALL.
So, before you spout off paranoia and technical ineptitude, do your research. I'm not some closet hack, this is a properly engineered and supported industrial platform... yes, running around a Raspberry Pi. It's a LOT more than just the Pi though, which is lost on you.
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Basically sounds like a fermentation controller. Nothing it could do could ever harm you. It could be wrong and make terrible beer, but once properly boiled, cooled, and inoculated there really isn't anything 'food safe' to worry about. I brew beer without any fancy controls by just setting it in buckets in my basement. I'm not sure how the controller could make my beer 'less safe'.
Re:Industrial Automation (Score:5, Funny)
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It pays to be paranoid. :)
Sits on a shelf (Score:5, Funny)
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Drawer filler (Score:2)
I keep in a drawer with the arduinos and esp8236 that I can't bear to throw out.
Re: Drawer filler (Score:2)
Sigh. Add particle photon, 10 Xeniaâ(TM)s, a WiPy, lots of Bluetooth Arduino, an Adafruit Blufeather, a Calliope and a Bareconductive Board and you got me. I wonâ(TM)t comment in the amount of unused sensors either
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Not as sad as posting as AC
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Mine is configured as a KODI box sitting behind the TV that I never watch. I'm glad ta I'm not alone having a device that gathers dust..
Media server, of course (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm the boring one who just wants it as a media server. I've been waiting for HEVC hardware support. Pi 3s software HEVC decoding was extremely hit and miss.
Just went to order and it's not actually out yet. This is pre-order only for Aug 1. Sigh.
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This is what I'm interested in as well, I have an old Windows 95 laptop I use to run VLC and WinAmp into my TV and stereo (it has an IR remote that makes it handy, otherwise pretty reliable to just sit there and play my media!)
Will the Pi4 be able to handle something like VLC? It mentions the Chromium browser as well, any idea if it would it be able to play media from a browser too? That would be a plus..heh..movin' on up in the world! ;)
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Yep, same here. Been waiting for HEVC hardware decoding and now that it's finally here I can trash my ATOM 525 I've been using as my main HTPC.
My secondary TV's all have a Pi3's attached, alongside a Chromecast.
And fortunately I don't have to wait until august :-)
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Home Automation, and Internet Radio ... (Score:5, Informative)
There are two Raspberry Pi in my home.
The older one is a 2B, and now runs the MPD Music Player [musicpd.org], which is controller from MPD clients on my desktop as well as on my Android phone. Mainly used for internet radio streaming.
The newer one is a 3B, and runs Home Assistant [home-assistant.io] which controls an alarm system, garage doors, temperature and humidity sensors, as well as retrieving weather alters from Environment Canada. Very handy, highly recommended. Provides a plethora of integrations with various products and services.
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Home automation as well, integrates Insteon, Hue, Sonos, and a few other things to simplify things.
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I am going to be using one for a panel for my RV. This way, I can have battery voltage, voltage from the generator, amps used, and other items not just on a screen, but able to keep tabs of it over time. There are a ton of useful things one can do with a Raspberry Pi, and having 4 gigs of RAM can make them even more useful.
What I'm glad is that the price hasn't gone up. Most companies would be charging 2-3 times as much when boards advance, but $5 for a RPi Zero is pretty inexpensive, and even the $55 fo
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The problem is that you can buy only one RP Zero per shipping address. At least, last time I checked. Apparently they don't want to cannibalize the sales of the more expensive models, even though they could sell a much larger volume.
Current Weather Clock with Radar Map (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Current Weather Clock with Radar Map (Score:4, Insightful)
While I dig the DYI, wouldn't a cheap walmart tablet do the same thing for a lower price? (Or am I missing something?)
Re: Current Weather Clock with Radar Map (Score:4, Informative)
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I can respect that. Thanks for the clarification!
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One reason I prefer a Pi is because there are a ton of custom cases available for them. Download a case's STL file from Thingiverse, slice it, print it, assemble it, and you are good to go. A Walmart tablet would work, but it is nice to have everything in one place, and if by chance the computer died, a replacement would be pretty easy to obtain and reload.
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Almost anything doesn't have a microphone if you don't want it to - a small nail or other pointy object can generally destroy it without even opening the case, or open it and cut the wires if you want to do it properly with less risk of causing a short.
Lots of stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
I use two for my 3D printers (allows monitoring and printing over the network).
I use 4 of them as Kodi media players (one in each room; all using a shared storage server).
I use two more as thin clients. Plus some broken spares laying around for parts (most common death is from something conductive falling on the GPIO pins and shorting the 3.3V rail to the 5V rail; very stupid design to put them so close together and offer no internal protection against this very common fault).
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What kind of spare parts can one use from an RPi? There aren't that many parts on the motherboard that I'd dare to resolder.
Re: Lots of stuff (Score:3)
most common death is from something conductive falling on the GPIO pins and shorting the 3.3V rail to the 5V rail; very stupid design to put them so close together and offer no internal protection against this very common fault
Why not put the Pis in cases? Very few electrical devices can survive dropping conductive trash on their circuit board. The design of the Pi is fine, your decision to leave the board out in the open is very stupid IMHO.
I eat it. (Score:4, Funny)
Raspberry Pi is delicious.
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That's the one I was waiting for. Why do I still feel disappointed?
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Well played. Glad I searched for "eat" before being redundant.
Various (Score:3)
>"Slashdot Asks: What Do You Do With Your Raspberry Pi?"
We used them (plus Linux, of course) to:
* Create 7 interactive signs.
* Create a facility door monitoring system.
* Create some single-purpose firewalls.
All with great success. They were chosen specifically because of small physical size and low power requirements. Great little machines.
>"Do you have any plans to upgrade to the $35 Raspberry Pi 4?"
No, but we will probably upgrade them all to the $55 Pi 4. The limited memory on the older units has always made things a bit more "challenging" than we would have liked.
Sprinklers (Great!). Media Player (so-so) (Score:3)
I've got one box running my home sprinklers (OpenSprinkler). Works great.
I've got a second box that I setup as a media player. That Pi is connected up to my home audio/video receiver. This didn't work as well, as Pi couldn't handle HD. So, it basically just serves up music. If I get some time, I might play with this new Pi to evaluate it's ability to decode HD video...
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Pi couldn't handle HD.
All Pi versions can decode H.264 video @1080p in hardware.
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The pi had been used since the early days as media centres precisely because it CAN decode HD video, though back in the early days mpeg-2 needed a license to enable the hardware decoder.
The only thing the RPI struggles with is video chaining DTS / AC3 audio tracks.
WiFi hotspot plus VPN (Score:4, Interesting)
Subject says it. Connect to the Pi's WiFI and your device appears to be in a different country.
Got 4, using 3 for pihole, libreelec, & pirate (Score:5, Interesting)
I got 1 older Raspberry Pi 1B+ I'm not using at moment. And picked up 3 of the newer raspberry pi 3 B+ models when they came out.
1 runs Pihole, a DNS server adblocker: https://pi-hole.net/ [pi-hole.net]
While I got adblock browser plugins, it also blocks ads on mobile apps and such, overall just a little extra protection from ads, malware, and tracking.
1 runs LibreElec, "just enough os for Kodi", for television: https://libreelec.tv/ [libreelec.tv]
And a 3rd I have running an offline Piratebox: https://piratebox.cc/ [piratebox.cc]
At my apartment, I got a wifi antenna up about 35 feet connected off my mast my ham radio antenna is on. I run the piratebox offline and use it where anyone within a couple block radius can connect, it autoloads a page that offers chat, forum, and fileserver. I treat it similar to an old school bbs. Ive noticed folks chatting, or they can post in forum and have a sorta neighborhood forum, and I dump music/movies/etc on fileserver, and the box itself has no internet access so it's more just a little "gimmick" mainly.
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Interesting.
I use a B+ as an IPFire https://www.ipfire.org/ [ipfire.org] for internet firewall, a bit tricky to set up with versioning - but stable and handles my 30 mbps. Terrible US data speed.
Like you, I have Pihole, on an old B, which is less important to me in ad-blocking. The main purpose is to proxy DNS requests over HTTPS to Cloudflare and 9, using DNSCrypt.
The original Pi I bought some years back, hosts the UNiFi controller software for my wireless setup. https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us... [ubnt.com]
All of these are in cas
Network control (Score:2)
I use my raspberry pi 3 B+ as a firewall and run pi-hole
Mobile PBX (Score:2)
ADS-B and DNS Sink-hole (Score:3)
PiAware: https://flightaware.com/adsb/p... [flightaware.com]
Pi-hole®: https://pi-hole.net/ [pi-hole.net]
SDR and ADS-B feeder (Score:2)
I've got one setup with an SDR (Software Defined Radio) to surf the airwaves.
Another is hooked up with a PiAware SDR feeder to capture local ADS-B signals from aircraft and pass those along to FlightAware, as well as feed my local display.
Great little devices for the price.
Scaled testing (Score:4, Interesting)
I deal with distributed computer clusters. It is sometimes hard to simulate real-world scalability, so instead of doing that, I use RPis to test scalability limits in the lab, as things scale fairly linearly in my application. For example, 100 req/sec on a RPi would scale to 1000 req/sec on a beefier server. Doing testing on a smaller system means I can notice performance regression issues faster.
Pi-hole (Score:2)
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Home Automation, Kodi, etc. (Score:2)
I have a few PIs running:
Old PI 1B+ to turn on and off the irrigation system for our garden. Simple relays [amazon.com] to control the water valves [amazon.com]
PI 2B connected to an arduino to interface with house alarm system to read and store events. Also uses RF transmitter [amazon.ca] to control lights connected with wireless outlets [amazon.ca]
PI 3B running Kodi as media server connected to TV. Also has 8 digit 7-segment display [amazon.ca] to show time and temperature.
PI 3B+ running Kodi as media server for other TV, plus a 3.5" TFT display hat [amazon.com] which show cur
Audio, network related mostly (Score:2)
I've had a handful that I've used for projects. Right now, the three I am running:
I have a dedicated music player in the house. I added a small DAC board, and run Rune.
I do something similar in my car, but use a touchscreen and a different interface that I wrote.
I made one into a pi-hole, and then made a few additional pi-holes that I gave to friends.
RetroPi/Mame (Score:2)
I have mine doing duty as a Mame box. Works great!
UniFi Controller (Score:2)
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Three and a half uses... (Score:2)
Rpi 3B+ is in my living room running RetroPie for old-school video game goodness.
Another 3B+ is at my mom's place, with a USB hub and a couple of 1TB USB drives in RAID-1. It's my off-site backup.
I work as an embedded developer, so I took a Pi Zero W to work. I use it to asset RESET on the board I'm working on so I can work from home and reset the board of it hangs.
I have an ASUS Tinker Board in my living room; I use that for light desktop computing, email, web browsing, etc.
I use it with Octoprint (Score:2)
I use my pi as the server for Octoprint, a 3d printing platform.
It was easy to setup and works like a charm, much much better than sending or managing prints any other way.
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Yeah, I have one doing Octoprint too. It really is incredibly good for the job - almost a shame the printer needs an Arduino Mega to make it work.
Just while I'm here, I have one of the early models sending me Telegram messages when the doorbell is pressed. There's also one embedded in the 'hub' for my heating controller (it's all proprietary, so I haven't looked inside or tinkered with it, but I believe it's got a z-wave hat on it).
Lastly, I'm still cobbling together a 1U box with some DMX outputs so I can
Time server (Score:2)
I have a couple with wired connections, gps modules, crystal clocks and backup power. Each is paired with a different set of internet time sources as well.
I modded a Tardis cookie jar to house them. I have a few arduino based clocks I built around the house that function as NTP clients and pull time from these and also obviously use them as the time source for... well just about everything I can feed through NTP.
P.S. It is bs that I have to custom make clocks that sync to an NTP client in order to avoid pay
Nothing major (Score:2)
Run a pair of Pi 3 B+ units.
One of them is running Pi-Hole and the other is running a wireless controller for an Ubiquiti Wireless Access Point and acts as a syslog server for the router.
The good news is with the Ram increase on the new model, I can combine both functions into one unit.
No idea what I'll do with the pair I have if I do so.
Time machine Radio (Score:3)
Mine is in a time machine, coupled with the mp3 shield. Turning the dial on my radio moves the pip up and down through the century.
There are only 3 "channels" to tune NEWS, MUSIC, AUDIO.
Done a few things. (Score:2)
Built a PI-NAS which I used for a few years until I acquired a Synology, cheep.
I live in a radio dead zone, so I have one streaming my favorite radio station, and playing out through a cheep FM Transmitter, I can listen to the radio anywhere in the house or garage.
My GF has a Retro-PI games machine, due to the fact I was unable to get her a Nintend
Upgrade? No. (Score:2)
My existing Pi 3s will remain--no plans to replace/upgrade them. They're being used for things like music players, local DNS, Nginx servers, etc. Any new Pis will be 4s---most likely the 4GB version.
Re:Upgrade? No. (Score:4, Interesting)
That is the beauty of them. If they are good with a task, why upgrade? If a MAME console works fine, there is no pressing need to gut it and add more stuff unless one wants to.
This is such a refreshing change from the upgrade treadmill of most devices these days, where it is expected that if something electronic is doing the same exact thing, it has to be upgraded in 2-5 years... just because.
I am just glad the devices are so relatively inexpensive.
Personally (Score:2)
I bitch and moan about lack of features, open device drivers, and performance. Just kidding I use it for its intended purpose (prototyping and hacking) and buy something better if its required.
Torrent Box and File Server (Score:2)
RPi 1 + 3A power source + USB harddrive + lots of tinkering and patience.
Learned a thing or two about Linux (I'm not exactly a Linux guy), had some nerdy fun, got pretty accomplished when I finally made the thing work as intended.
Cheap stuff and very low power usage. Really worth it.
I run my PDP8. (Score:3)
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I love this. I plan for an 11/70 - the machine I cut my baby-teeth upon.
Plex, Octoprint, pianod2 + HiFi Berry w Linear AMP (Score:3)
Here is what I do with my PI3
Plex Video Server mounting a NAS (Build you own in house Netflix) https://www.howtogeek.com/4009... [howtogeek.com]
Octoprint (3D Print Server) https://octoprint.org/download... [octoprint.org]
pianod2 (Pandora Player and Local file player) http://deviousfish.com/Pianod2... [deviousfish.com]
Also added a HiFiBerry because the stock audio generator on the PI is really noisy https://www.hifiberry.com/shop... [hifiberry.com]
The PI is an amazing, low power consumption device. 5VDC @ 2A = 10Watts at full CPU
If you want the best sound with the HIFI berry, connect a linear amplifier to the Hifi Berry power input and skip all the noisy PI circuits. The HiFi berry will also power the PI.
Mine (Score:3)
Have two weather stations, both submitting data to weather underground. Another I have as a pbx with 4 phones. Very reliable. Fun computing platforms.
Various (Score:2)
Next I'm looking into using a small battery and wiring one up to the back seat entertainment system in the car to make 12 hour roadtrips easier on the kids.
Many things (Score:2)
I have three Rpi3 of them, their tasks are:
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Many useful projects (Score:2)
I've got four, but I'm up for a fifth (Score:2)
1 first-gen Pi running Pi-Hole,
1 B+ running nginx as a reverse proxy.
1 3B+ running RocketChat.
And another 3B+ doing absolutely nothing at the moment.
The thing the new generation Pi might do is replace the Optiplex 3010 I have running Turnkey LAMP and Team Password Manager. I originally had that on the spare 3B+, but even as a single user, it was just too slow. With the 3010 running TPM on an SD card, it only takes about 14W to run, so it's far from power hungry. Still, putting it on the new Pi would be nice
E-Paper Information Board (Score:2)
Pi-hole (Score:2)
Household server, squeezebox clients, spare (Score:2)
Got one running as a generic file/media/various server for our household, two running piCorePlayer [picoreplayer.org] for streaming music from Logitech Media Server (a solution which is a real blessing for someone who is heavily invested in the now discontinued Squeezebox product line), plus a spare which may eventually be used with some Arduino projects.
I think Raspberry Pi is a fantastic product. Flash Raspbian, you got yourself a fully functional Linux server. Great price, specs and form factor for tinkering. Cheap, low-po
One is a pinhole the other Kodi (Score:2)
Extremely shocked and impressed with LibreElec as a produce
Detest the name, it was so off-putting I avoided it without knowing what it was.
Long story short. If you're a fan of Kodi on the HTPC, but you're utterly sick of windows 10 as the base OS for your htpc. This is for you.
It SHOULD be called "Kodinux" or "LinKodi" it's a strupped down Linux distro which runs Kodi. It can run it off SdCard or USB stick, it can run on X86 or Arm and it's very very efficient and simple. Works very very reliably, no more t
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Pi 3b+ will play virtually any x264 content you throw at it, very high bit rate. X265, also but lower nitrate.
It just works and it works well.
It's the remote control that is a problem.
The Amazon Fire TV has a great remote that is intuitive and doesn't need line of site. If I could find something that simple to plug into the Pi I would go back to OpenElec (or LibreElec which I'd not heard of) in a flash.
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The system supports some kind of dead cheap IR receiver, it's seen in this video.
https://youtu.be/6mxY0r2gr0Q?t... [youtu.be]
Therefore you can use any IR remote, cheap or pricey.
Plus Android remote.
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
Plus Apple remote.
https://apps.apple.com/au/app/... [apple.com]
My girl and I can both control the TV at the same time, over Wifi.
Considering it's a $35 device and how well it does 1080p x264, even at v.high bitrate over ethernet, I'm very, very surprised.
Multipurpose device on a boat (Score:5, Interesting)
I've developed all of this during 5 years and learned an awful lot :)
several (Score:2)
have one for libreElec, i have one for lakka.
i have a few dedicated to emulate one platform, amiberry for example.
then i use raspi's to add functionality to old retro systems; you can have the pi emulate a c64 diskdrive, use it with an atari to do networking, etc...
Webcam (Score:2)
Footfall counter/temperature sensing/flight noise (Score:2)
Octopi (Score:2)
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Yeah. I've got a pile of Orange Pis, but only one runs 24/7.
Orange Pi Zero running Ubuntu with Samba and Transmission. It has a USB-powered 1TB HDD plugged in, and serves torrents on just 2-2.5W of power.
Re: Upgraded to an Orange Pi (Score:2)
How does the Orange Pi compare to the Rock Pi 4?
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Same here. Also comes without the annoying design mistakes and shortcomings the RPi comes with.
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The ironic thing is that you can lock a Raspberry Pi down extremely well. For example, you can have the VNC-accessible desktop environment request a 2FA key, limit access via SSH, use ufw (assuming Raspbian) to limit access to ports, and have many other measures in place.
Once things are set up, with your own users, lock or delete the pi account, and it is as secure as any other Linux device out there.
Now, physical security is another story, as there is no TPM... but with a Pi, you can always store it in a
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I still have one in my car to serve as DVR/Jukebox. It's either running XBMC/Kodi when watching video or a custom application that displays data from the car (speed, tach, MPG, temperature, etc.) when listening to music. I also have several other Pis in my home:
Two MythTV frontends
Solar systems controller
Two in robots (Pi Zeros)
one for testing/development
It's a great platform that does a ton of useful stuff. That being said, I probably won't be buying a Pi 4 any time soon unless I burn one of them out.
Re: I use mine for full self-driving in my car... (Score:2)
You built a car autopilot with a Pi? Please tell us roughly where you live so we can avoid the roads around there. A 100 mile radius would be fine
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Going for the 4GB model can't hurt, just because the RAM will help stabilize I/O, and the higher bandwidth from USB3 can only help.
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With Borg Backup and a provider like Borgbase, you can have the Pi dump data to a remote provider. This way, even if the Pi and the stored data isn't usable, you are still protected.
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It can't hurt to add the Spaghetti Detective to the OctoPrint modules. That way, you at least will get an alert if the print lost adhesion and the nozzle is printing into mid-air. This has saved me from the Blob of Death more than once, and even with a paid subscription, it is cheaper than buying a new hotend.
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Uh, that's now MY RaspberryPi. ;-)