Raspberry Pi: yeah we're pretty much all on desktops again

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Raspberry Pi: yeah we're pretty much all on desktops again

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BlackMK4: Aug 23, 2006; wat.; Megamarm

YouTuber posted:

Im beginning to get quite frustrated with Raspbian. It's a continuous battle dealing with out of date packages or stuff that just isn't in the repositories.

Does anyone have any experience with Arch Linux on the Raspberry Pi? I use that on my desktop and I've honestly never had problems compared to my Debian adventures.

You're not going to have fun with Arch if this is your complaint about Rasbian.

# ? Dec 14, 2014 05:04

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# ? Apr 18, 2024 08:02

River: Apr 22, 2012; Nothin' but the rain

My red led blinks sometimes. Not supposed to blink, is it? Is that telling me my cord is dodgy?

Is there any way I can see stats for power without needing a breakout board or something?

e: the pi still works fine though. The power supply is an ex-phone charger rated at 5v2a

River fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Dec 15, 2014

# ? Dec 15, 2014 11:32

BlackMK4: Aug 23, 2006; wat.; Megamarm

River posted:

My red led blinks sometimes. Not supposed to blink, is it? Is that telling me my cord is dodgy?

Is there any way I can see stats for power without needing a breakout board or something?

e: the pi still works fine though. The power supply is an ex-phone charger rated at 5v2a

Yeah, it means find a different power supply.

The following onboard sensors exist:

code:

/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp
/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_volts <id>

id can be replaced with

code:

core for core voltage
sdram_c for sdram Core voltage
sdram_i for sdram I/O voltage
sdram_p for sdram PHY voltage

There is no 5v rail monitoring. You can make one with a little soldering, GPIO, and some Python.

BlackMK4 fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Dec 15, 2014

# ? Dec 15, 2014 16:34

CommanderDonut: Nov 2, 2011

Hello, been a while since I posted here (eeeek :/ sry) but thought this might be the place to gain some knowledge.
So I am also trying to get my Pi to read a MIDI (or serial) connection from my Arduino.

Here is the whole setup, plz ignore my messy living room. Here you can see another Pi standing idly by; I got my Pi on launch and I can't get a jack server to run on it for the life of me, so my friend is letting me borrow his brand new Pi for my project. Same commands, files, and ISO installed on the two Pi's but the newer one will run the Jack server no problem.

The Pi has the keyboard and mouse from the previous photo plugged into the USB ports closest to the Ethernet port.
In the other USB ports is the Arduino and the MIDI controller using USB as power (and as a midi-USB device, I will get to that later).
As you can see in the picture I already have a midi interface hooked up; I bought the MIDI breakout shield from sparkfun.

MIDI controller

Jack server running, setup window open.
AMSynth running, setup window open.

Code

code:

byte commandByte;
byte noteByte;
byte velocityByte;

byte noteOn = 144;

//light up led at pin 13 when receiving noteON message with note = 60

void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(31250);
  pinMode(13,OUTPUT);
  digitalWrite(13,LOW);
}

void checkMIDI()
{
  do{
    if (Serial.available())
    {
         commandByte = Serial.read();//read first byte
         noteByte = Serial.read();//read next byte
         velocityByte = Serial.read();//read final byte
         if (commandByte == noteOn)
         {
             digitalWrite(13,HIGH);//turn on led
         }
    }
  }
  while (Serial.available() > 2);//when at least three bytes available
}
    

void loop(){
  checkMIDI();
  delay(100);
  digitalWrite(13,LOW);//turn led off
}

This code will blink the LED that's on-board the Arduino when one of the MIDI controllers keys is activated. This (to me) shows that the MIDI breakout is working and my Arduino is getting a MIDI signal.

code:

          Serial.write(commandByte);
          //Serial.print(commandByte, BYTE);
          Serial.write(noteByte);
          //Serial.print(noteByte, BYTE);
          Serial.write(velocityByte);
          //Serial.print(velocityByte, BYTE);

Not sure which lines I should use to send the MIDI data to the Pi, the example posted on the sparkfun page uses both and I'm not entirely sure if these are interchangeable or not but I'm pretty sure I should be using the Serial.write() command due to the fact the Serial.print version doesn't compile.

But I'm also not sure how to setup the Pi in recognizing the Arduino as a MIDI device. When I plug in the Arduino the Jack server connection window in qjackctl shows no new connection. Which would be fine I could get AMSynth to recognize the Arduino since I can use Jack to read the MIDI from AMSynth and output it where ever I would like (which would be AMSynth again). Though I'm not entirely sure why AMSynth is prompting me with an error with any path listed under OSS MIDI device, but I assume that if the Jack server connection window will update listing the Arduino then the same path as the OSS MIDI device would work (once again not sure if this assumption is correct or not).

So here is what lsusb returns, the first command is with everything BUT the Arduino plugged into it, and the second time I run the command I have plugged the Arduino into the Pi. Note the printout bellow was edited by removing the details of USB devices other than the Arduino in the -v printout.

code:

root@raspberrypi:/home/pi# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 04b4:0101 Cypress Semiconductor Corp. Keyboard/Hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 04b4:1220 Cypress Semiconductor Corp.
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 041e:3f00 Creative Technology, Ltd E-Mu Xboard 25 MIDI Controller
root@raspberrypi:/home/pi# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 04b4:0101 Cypress Semiconductor Corp. Keyboard/Hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 04b4:1220 Cypress Semiconductor Corp.
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 041e:3f00 Creative Technology, Ltd E-Mu Xboard 25 MIDI Controller
Bus 001 Device 008: ID 0403:6015 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd Bridge(I2C/SPI/UART/FIFO)
root@raspberrypi:/home/pi# lsusb -v
Bus 001 Device 008: ID 0403:6015 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd Bridge(I2C/SPI/UART/FIFO)
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0         8
  idVendor           0x0403 Future Technology Devices International, Ltd
  idProduct          0x6015 Bridge(I2C/SPI/UART/FIFO)
  bcdDevice           10.00
  iManufacturer           1 FTDI
  iProduct                2 FT231X USB UART
  iSerial                 3 DA00UJF5
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength           32
    bNumInterfaces          1
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          0
    bmAttributes         0xa0
      (Bus Powered)
      Remote Wakeup
    MaxPower               90mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           2
      bInterfaceClass       255 Vendor Specific Class
      bInterfaceSubClass    255 Vendor Specific Subclass
      bInterfaceProtocol    255 Vendor Specific Protocol
      iInterface              2 FT231X USB UART
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0040  1x 64 bytes
        bInterval               0
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x02  EP 2 OUT
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0040  1x 64 bytes
        bInterval               0
Device Status:     0x0000
  (Bus Powered)
root@raspberrypi:/home/pi#

Previously to stumbling across another thread I didn't know about the lsusb command, what is this telling me exactly? anything useful besides the fact that the Arduino is on the same bus as every other USB device (not surprising).

I am aware than when you plug a device into a Linux machine (like the Pi), that peripheral is in the /dev folder represented as a file. If you look at the desktop of the Pi print screen you can see that AMSynth gives me the option to select a OSS MIDI device (OSS being some kind of MIDI driver/protocol from what I understand). If i select OSS from the drop down asking me which MIDI driver would I like to use AMSynth prompts me with a error on boot saying the midi device could not be found; this error does not come up if I select alsa or Auto (which I assume is just running alsa). In order to try and use correct pathing in the OSS MIDI device path setting I did a ls -la >> file0 command in the /dev directory with the Arduino unplugged, then I ran ls -la >> file1 in the /dev directory with the Arduino plugged in. This is what i got as a result when I passed both files to the diff command

code:

pi@raspberrypi ~/Downloads $ diff dev0 dev1
7c7
< drwxr-xr-x  2 root root        2580 Dec 15 05:19 char
---
> drwxr-xr-x  2 root root        2620 Dec 15 05:20 char
16,17c16,17
< crw-------  1 root root    249,   0 Dec 15 05:12 hidraw0
< crw-------  1 root root    249,   1 Dec 15 05:12 hidraw1
---
> crw-------  1 root root    249,   0 Dec 15 05:20 hidraw0
> crw-------  1 root root    249,   1 Dec 15 05:20 hidraw1
19c19
< drwxr-xr-x  4 root root         180 Dec 15 05:12 input
---
> drwxr-xr-x  4 root root         180 Dec 15 05:20 input
43c43
< crw-rw-rw-  1 root root      5,   2 Dec 15 05:19 ptmx
---
> crw-rw-rw-  1 root root      5,   2 Dec 15 05:20 ptmx
63a64
> drwxr-xr-x  4 root root          80 Dec 15 05:20 serial
136a138
> crw-rw---T  1 root dialout 188,   0 Dec 15 05:20 ttyUSB0
159c161
< prw-r-----  1 root adm            0 Dec 15 05:19 xconsole
---
> prw-r-----  1 root adm            0 Dec 15 05:20 xconsole
pi@raspberrypi ~/Downloads $

I tried both /dev/serial and /dev/ttyUSB0 (even though I'm pretty sure I want the ttyUSB0 due to that c in the permission bits) as the OSS MIDI device option in the AMSynth setup window. Both of them give me the same error I get when I leave the default value (/dev/midi) and switch the preferred driver from auto to OSS.
Now back to that MIDI controller being recognized by Jack, does this mean that I could connect the controller to control the AMSynth program? Yes it does, but in doing so I would be bypassing the Arduino all together which is a major part of my project description.

Right now I would be happy with figuring out a way to get the Arduino to show up in my Jack servers connection window, or if I could get a softSynth on the Pi to recognize it; this as mentioned is probably one in the same problem. So basically either the original plan of getting the Pi to recognize the Arduino as a MIDI device or change it up as a Serial device, which ever is easier in setting up I suppose. I have to have my bod at 31250 in order to read the MIDI signal coming from the breakout shield; idk if it's possible to change the bod afterwards or if it's even worth it. I assume it should be easier to leave it at 31250 since the Pi is supposedly capable of picking up a device at 31250. With that being said does anyone have any idea of what my next step is/should be?

CommanderDonut fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Dec 16, 2014

# ? Dec 15, 2014 19:57

nmfree: Aug 15, 2001; The Greater Goon: Breaking Hearts and Chains since 2006

If anyone's interested LinkSprite has the pcduino3nano for $30+ very cheap shipping (it was less than $2.50 for me). It looks to be more capable than the RPi B+ (much faster processor, 2x the RAM).

P.S. Linux Gizmos has a nice roundup of all the different RPi-like devices on the market right now.

# ? Jan 1, 2015 02:00

Haquer: Nov 15, 2009; That windswept look...

nmfree posted:

If anyone's interested LinkSprite has the pcduino3nano for $30+ very cheap shipping (it was less than $2.50 for me). It looks to be more capable than the RPi B+ (much faster processor, 2x the RAM).

P.S. Linux Gizmos has a nice roundup of all the different RPi-like devices on the market right now.

After following this thread for a while I jumped on the odroid-c1 that just came out. It's pretty drat amazing for $35 (quad core cortex A5 @ 1.5ghz and 1gb DDR3; also gigabit Ethernet).

I retired my old A110 acer aspire one I was using for a linux download box for it and am also using it as an htpc.

# ? Jan 1, 2015 06:15

Jamsta: Dec 16, 2006; Oh you want some too? Fuck you!

Haquer posted:

After following this thread for a while I jumped on the odroid-c1 that just came out. It's pretty drat amazing for $35 (quad core cortex A5 @ 1.5ghz and 1gb DDR3; also gigabit Ethernet).

I retired my old A110 acer aspire one I was using for a linux download box for it and am also using it as an htpc.

Yup that's got an amazing spec for the price.

Is it reliable and is the performance as expected?

# ? Jan 1, 2015 18:25

Factory Factory: Mar 19, 2010; This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

I'm working on a project that needs an awkward amount of 5V power. I need to power a B+ Pi, an Arduino, two HDMI gizmos, and a string of LEDs - about 6 A total plugged into a combination of barrel connectors and USB ports. Right now I can do it in three wall sockets - two wall warts and a phone charge station with four USB ports (two 2.1A, two 1A). What's the best way to get this down to one socket, preferably efficiently?

# ? Jan 2, 2015 02:40

sleepy gary: Jan 11, 2006

Factory Factory posted:

I'm working on a project that needs an awkward amount of 5V power. I need to power a B+ Pi, an Arduino, two HDMI gizmos, and a string of LEDs - about 6 A total plugged into a combination of barrel connectors and USB ports. Right now I can do it in three wall sockets - two wall warts and a phone charge station with four USB ports (two 2.1A, two 1A). What's the best way to get this down to one socket, preferably efficiently?

http://www.adafruit.com/product/658

or anything like it

# ? Jan 2, 2015 02:44

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

The Rpi foundation is still aiming for a new hardware refresh in 2017, because they're afraid new hardware might break compatibility. I think by that time they'll be pretty much toast.

In terms of price and performance, the balance has been tilting away from the Rpi for ages. First it was "you can pay a little more and get a lot more capability", but now the competitors are offering just straight up better products at the same price point. Kinda reminds me of AMD - they're trying to run the budget and low-power niches, but then they don't have any countermove when a G3258/Z97 bundle drops to $100.

I get the appeal of "long term support" hardware/software, but if that's your selling point then you can't leave major bugs in your kernels for >2 years and complain when people point it out. To my mind, their support hasn't really been something you would be wise to rely on in the first place.

Their idea that "we'll maintain marketshare by selling a 7in touchscreen kit" seems pretty fanciful as well, to say the least. Such kits are already readily available.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jan 2, 2015

# ? Jan 2, 2015 03:51

mod sassinator: Dec 13, 2006; I came here to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum,
and I'm All out of Ass

Depends what you're looking for with 'better' hardware. Sure if you just want a faster CPU, GPU, etc. to run some games and media center stuff it will always be a competitive environment. However if you're looking for a good community to get started with hardware hacking, the Pi is really the best there is right now. All the other platforms like the Bannana Pi, ODroid, etc. can't match the Pi's support for hardware libraries, tutorials, etc. The raw speed of the Pi doesn't really matter that much when you're just twiddling some GPIO lines or talking to I2C, SPI, etc. devices (that communicate at maybe a mhz or two at most).

# ? Jan 2, 2015 04:00

Haquer: Nov 15, 2009; That windswept look...

Jamsta posted:

Yup that's got an amazing spec for the price.

Is it reliable and is the performance as expected?

I took an Uncharted 4 video I have which is 2gb for ~15min of 1080p video (it stays ~22mbps with some spikes up to 30) and Kodi on it handled it like a loving champ. The GPU has several formats that can be HW accelerated but it can play SD stuff easy enough using CPU decoding as well (I've not passed it anything HD that isn't h.264).

Also the GPU supports h.265 and the next release of Kodi should have support for it as well so it's something to look forward to.

# ? Jan 2, 2015 04:09

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

mod sassinator posted:

Depends what you're looking for with 'better' hardware. Sure if you just want a faster CPU, GPU, etc. to run some games and media center stuff it will always be a competitive environment. However if you're looking for a good community to get started with hardware hacking, the Pi is really the best there is right now. All the other platforms like the Bannana Pi, ODroid, etc. can't match the Pi's support for hardware libraries, tutorials, etc. The raw speed of the Pi doesn't really matter that much when you're just twiddling some GPIO lines or talking to I2C, SPI, etc. devices (that communicate at maybe a mhz or two at most).

If all you're doing is twiddling some GPIO lines or talking to I2C, SPI, etc at 1mhz, use an Arduino. For those given tasks, it's by far the easiest way from A to B, and the community is extremely strong there too.

And if you're really looking for an OS-based solution instead of a microcontroller - say, you want to connect this to the internet or something - the BeagleBone Black is going to be able to twiddle those GPIOs a lot better than the Raspberry Pi. Faster processor, more GPIOs, onboard ADCs, onboard timers, fast onboard eMMC vs the troublesome and slow SD card interface, etc. Again, pretty popular device that you will be able to get community support on - all at an equivalent price to the Rpi.

Like, I get the "it's good enough" argument - but you can buy something else that will be more than good enough for the same money, and then your next project won't be constrained by a lowest-common-denominator platform from 2011.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Jan 2, 2015

# ? Jan 2, 2015 04:10

SYSV Fanfic: Sep 9, 2003; by Pragmatica

Unless you are a school system using the raspi to educate children on hardware bit twiddling. Updating curricula, materials, and training is expensive. If a textbook is involved its worse.

The reason I was still being taught computer stuff on an apple II in 1994 wasn't because the school system was cheaping out on hardware.

Edit:
I can't imagine teaching a kid c or assembler so they can blink an led.

SYSV Fanfic fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Jan 2, 2015

# ? Jan 2, 2015 07:06

mod sassinator: Dec 13, 2006; I came here to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum,
and I'm All out of Ass

Paul MaudDib posted:

If all you're doing is twiddling some GPIO lines or talking to I2C, SPI, etc at 1mhz, use an Arduino. For those given tasks, it's by far the easiest way from A to B, and the community is extremely strong there too.

And if you're really looking for an OS-based solution instead of a microcontroller - say, you want to connect this to the internet or something - the BeagleBone Black is going to be able to twiddle those GPIOs a lot better than the Raspberry Pi. Faster processor, more GPIOs, onboard ADCs, onboard timers, fast onboard eMMC vs the troublesome and slow SD card interface, etc. Again, pretty popular device that you will be able to get community support on - all at an equivalent price to the Rpi.

Like, I get the "it's good enough" argument - but you can buy something else that will be more than good enough for the same money, and then your next project won't be constrained by a lowest-common-denominator platform from 2011.

The BBB is great, but it's not as nice for beginners. It has a somewhat wacky kernel that TI forked and is in the process of integrating their changes back into the mainline kernel. The major stumbling block with the BBB is that changing the hardware (like enabling I2C channels, SPI, ADCs, etc.) requires manipulating the device tree. They have a solution that works with their 3.8 series kernel, but it's not clear that work can or will be integrated into later kernels.

The Pi on the other hand was grandfathered in before Linus kicked all the ARM board configuration out of the kernel so it doesn't need to mess with any device tree overlay stuff. In the long run learning the device tree will be necessary with ARM boards, but for now it's a big pain in the butt if you want something that just works.

# ? Jan 2, 2015 08:38

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

Now that I've gone and shot my mouth off, here's something cool that the RPI community has gone and done:

http://maazl.de/project/vc4asm/doc/index.html

:stare:

# ? Jan 2, 2015 18:42

Computer viking: May 30, 2011; Now with less breakage.

Ok, that's rather neat.

# ? Jan 2, 2015 20:14

nmfree: Aug 15, 2001; The Greater Goon: Breaking Hearts and Chains since 2006

mod sassinator posted:

In the long run learning the device tree will be necessary with ARM boards, but for now it's a big pain in the butt if you want something that just works.

Is there a beginner's guide to this anywhere that's appropriate for a total dumb :downs:

like me? Is this a good explanation?

Paul MaudDib posted:

Now that I've gone and shot my mouth off, here's something cool that the RPI community has gone and done:

Again, I'm a total dumb, what is this? Just a way to compile assembly code for the RPI, or is it something else?

# ? Jan 2, 2015 20:57

SYSV Fanfic: Sep 9, 2003; by Pragmatica

nmfree posted:

Is there a beginner's guide to this anywhere that's appropriate for a total dumb like me? Is this a good explanation?

Again, I'm a total dumb, what is this? Just a way to compile assembly code for the RPI, or is it something else?

It is a way to do low level programming on the (relatively beefy) GPU, and then embed that code in a program that runs on the cpu to execute it easily. I guess like ghetto CUDA.

# ? Jan 2, 2015 21:27

Hadlock: Nov 9, 2004

I dunno if I'd call it ghetto, this is custom compiled code for that specific GPU, nVidia's CUDA is sort of an abstraction layer. Performance wise in theory this has the potential to be faster than abstracted CUDA.

Either way, that's pretty neat. Could you possibly compile large sections of OpenCV to run on the GPU?

# ? Jan 2, 2015 21:45

nmfree: Aug 15, 2001; The Greater Goon: Breaking Hearts and Chains since 2006

keyvin posted:

It is a way to do low level programming on the (relatively beefy) GPU, and then embed that code in a program that runs on the cpu to execute it easily. I guess like ghetto CUDA.

OK, that is pretty neat.

Of course the only real-world application that will probably see is buttcoins sooooo

# ? Jan 2, 2015 22:32

Computer viking: May 30, 2011; Now with less breakage.

nmfree posted:

OK, that is pretty neat.

Of course the only real-world application that will probably see is buttcoins sooooo

At this point, even a fairly expensive PCIe GPU won't earn you much on bitcoins; I can't imagine a RPi would pay for the SD card you booted from even if you left it for a few years.

# ? Jan 3, 2015 01:34

My Rhythmic Crotch: Jan 13, 2011

nmfree posted:

Is there a beginner's guide to this anywhere that's appropriate for a total dumb like me? Is this a good explanation?

For the most part, you can install this python library and be off running. It will do the dumb device tree garbage for you. You must run a 3.8 kernel to use it. The basic areas where the BBB is a pain in the rear end are:
1 - kernel. There is a kernel maintained by a guy named Robert Nelson, and now TI has finally jumped in and started providing kernels you can apt-get install. You have to read forum posts and wikis to figure out what the gently caress is going on with kernel releases, what is broken in each one, how to deal with the device tree stuff, etc.
2 - cape manager - this is a silly idea to begin with (IMHO), it is supported and available in some kernel versions, and not available in others. Kind of defeats the whole point.
3 - device tree garbage - there are two different versions of the device tree compiler, and (for example) Robert Nelson has made tools to manipulate the device tree overlays in one way, while others have done it differently, etc.

Basically just pick a 3.8.x kernel from Robert Nelson, install the Adafruit library, and it will make the SPI, I2C and GPIOs available to you. It's mind blowing that something so simple has become so convoluted, but hey, here we are.

Edit: Adafruit also has quite a bit of good info, there is a Device Tree 101 in there somewhere.

My Rhythmic Crotch fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Jan 3, 2015

# ? Jan 3, 2015 08:01

fliptophead: Oct 2, 2006

Anyone had any luck installing ffmpeg on raspbian with support for converting .avi to .m4v? I have a heap of .avi on a mount on a rpi (which I can't disconnect as it's also my stereo receiver...) which took forever to transfer. I don't want to disconnect the drive as I have a feeling it will muck iTunes' super sensitive filing up and my wife will kill me if that happens. Are there any alternatives??

Edit: I'm doing this all through the cli but if there's a gui option I'm all ears! I can make that happen.

# ? Jan 3, 2015 10:35

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

fliptophead posted:

Anyone had any luck installing ffmpeg on raspbian with support for converting .avi to .m4v? I have a heap of .avi on a mount on a rpi (which I can't disconnect as it's also my stereo receiver...) which took forever to transfer. I don't want to disconnect the drive as I have a feeling it will muck iTunes' super sensitive filing up and my wife will kill me if that happens. Are there any alternatives??

Edit: I'm doing this all through the cli but if there's a gui option I'm all ears! I can make that happen.

I'd try the basic ffmpeg in the apt-get repositories first - you may need to add the "contrib" or "non-free" package trees to your sources file. There's a guide to compiling from source, but this guy had it crash during the cross-compile and suggests you build it directly on the pi. ffmpeg is pretty big and the Rpi is pretty anemic so that'll take a while (hours).

I think the Pi will be drastically underpowered at encoding - I'm guessing you'll be lucky to do a frame per second. Can you kill iTunes, plug the disk/card/etc into a better pc, copy them off, then put it back together before you restart iTunes? In that case it should never notice the mount was gone...

# ? Jan 3, 2015 20:24

Qwertycoatl: Dec 31, 2008

Paul MaudDib posted:

I think the Pi will be drastically underpowered at encoding - I'm guessing you'll be lucky to do a frame per second.

The Pi will be pretty terrible at transcoding using ffmpeg, but it has a hardware accelerated encoder which can transcode mpeg4 at decent speed. This thing claims to do it, but I've not actually tried.

Qwertycoatl fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Jan 3, 2015

# ? Jan 3, 2015 20:36

fliptophead: Oct 2, 2006

Thanks for the replies. You confirmed a suspicion I had there, that the thing wouldn't be capable of transcoding anyway! I'll just transfer a file st a time back to my laptop and do it there. It'll be a lot quicker on that.

FYI what I've done with the pi is add the Wolfson audio card to it for better sound quality, passed the tv out straight to it then installed shairport and minidlna so pretty much any device connected to the network can stream music through it to the stereo. Haven't had any issues with it since I put it in. If anybody uses the Wolfson audio card be aware that apt-get upgrade doesn't contain the Wolfson package and will cause it to stop working. Guess how I found out! I've also mounted a 2tb hard disk to it to work as the media server.

My next project is a dedicated internet radio player with a piface control and display. It's almost ready to go I just need to install the network streaming software so it doesn't need the cables.

I've learned a whole bunch about Linux too!

# ? Jan 3, 2015 21:21

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
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fliptophead posted:

Thanks for the replies. You confirmed a suspicion I had there, that the thing wouldn't be capable of transcoding anyway! I'll just transfer a file st a time back to my laptop and do it there. It'll be a lot quicker on that.

For the record I didn't realize there was a hardware encoder on the Pi. Assuming that you get it working, it will be capable of doing encodings at a pretty good clip. HOWEVER bear in mind that hardware encoders often sacrifice quality compared to software encoders - if you are going to archive these somewhere and you care about video quality, you may be better off using a software encoder.

Another thing to look at - AVI is a container (file format), not a video codec. If the video stream inside the AVI uses an MPEG4-standard codec - i.e. DIVX, XVID, H264 - then you might also be able to stick the stream into the MP4 container without re-encoding. This will be much faster and you won't get quality loss from transcoding. First thing I happened on with a quick Google search, says it has a Linux version: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MP4Box

nmfree posted:

OK, that is pretty neat.

Of course the only real-world application that will probably see is buttcoins sooooo

GPU processing will definitely get used for some "hard" tasks like machine vision (OpenCV), FFTs, maybe audio processing. It'll offer pretty major power savings for anything that can be offloaded, since you won't be blasting the CPU full tilt/overclocking/etc. It'd be even cooler if this led to OpenCL support, since that's one of the common frameworks for implementing GPU offload.

It won't be anywhere near as powerful or useful as something like an NVIDIA Jetson TK1 board, but it's not $200 either. Of course at that point you also get a bunch more features, like SATA, USB3.0, mini-PCIe, etc...

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Jan 3, 2015

# ? Jan 3, 2015 23:02

fliptophead: Oct 2, 2006

Paul MaudDib posted:

Another thing to look at - AVI is a container (file format), not a video codec. If the video stream inside the AVI uses an MPEG4-standard codec - i.e. DIVX, XVID, H264 - then you might also be able to stick the stream into the MP4 container without re-encoding. This will be much faster and you won't get quality loss from transcoding. First thing I happened on with a quick Google search, says it has a Linux version: http://www.videohelp.com/tools/MP4Box

Rather than going down the conversion route I think I'll try this first. Want aware of this!

# ? Jan 4, 2015 05:22

Literally Lewis Hamilton: Feb 22, 2005

Got my Flirc case in. No screws or thermal pad. Great.

On the plus side Amazon is refunding me the money so I can reorder it, and I don't have to send it back since the shipping exceeds the cost.

# ? Jan 4, 2015 08:01

catpowerd: Jan 9, 2008; swinging your guitar around
Cause they wanted to hear that meow

I have a old xbox 360 wifi adapter laying around. Does anyone know if I can use that as a wifi adapter for the Pi?

# ? Jan 4, 2015 09:01

John Capslocke: Jun 5, 2007

catpowerd posted:

I have a old xbox 360 wifi adapter laying around. Does anyone know if I can use that as a wifi adapter for the Pi?

Looks like you probably can't

I personally have one of these guys on my Pi, works great.

# ? Jan 4, 2015 09:31

Vavrek: Mar 2, 2013; I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

I use a tiny Edimax adapter. They've even added "Ideal for Raspberry Pi" to the item name on Amazon. (They are pretty great WiFi adapters, if you don't need 5GHz or a big antenna.)

# ? Jan 4, 2015 09:55

TVarmy: Sep 11, 2011; like food and water, my posting has no intrinsic value

I get the feeling it'll take a while for the Raspberry Pi to become irrelevant, even if they do take years to do a proper refresh. Arduino has been using simple ATmel chips for years even as more elaborate development boards came out at around the same price. If price and capabilities were the only factor, the TI Launchpad would own the market. Community is a big factor in getting started with these things.

Then again, if you're not doing GPIO stuff and just want a tiny low power Linux computer with a couple USB ports and a HDMI port, that's pretty replaceable. And if you're into GPIO, the Raspberry Pi is pretty limited and you might be better off just talking to an Arduino over serial.

# ? Jan 4, 2015 17:20

Hadlock: Nov 9, 2004

Vavrek posted:

I use a tiny Edimax adapter. They've even added "Ideal for Raspberry Pi" to the item name on Amazon. (They are pretty great WiFi adapters, if you don't need 5GHz or a big antenna.)

In the latest Debian releases for the BBB the Edimax adapter is supported at boot as well. Sometime in the last 18 months it became a gold-rated supported device for Debian in general. Chiming in to say I use the Edimax on my A+ and it works great.

# ? Jan 4, 2015 19:26

Dohaeris: Mar 24, 2012; Often known as SniperGuy

I've made a rather nice little twitter kiosk out of my pi. It's plugged into a TV in a classroom and uses Twitterfall to display tweets on a list I've created of appropriate stuff. However, one downside, Twitterfall doesn't show pictures which would make the whole thing about a thousand times more visually interesting. I can't find an alternative to Twitterfall that allows me to do what it does while also displaying pictures. Do I need to write my own widget or is there a better alternative? Because I don't know how to do that and it's driving me nuts to see cool pictures scroll by but not being able to see what they are.

# ? Jan 5, 2015 19:08

thegasman2000: Feb 12, 2005; Update my TFLC log? BOLLOCKS!
/

So I am currently studying cs at the open university and they provide a sense board. It's restrictive and crap but I love the idea of using something similar. I have a specific project to control my reef tank and have a web interface so I can adjust parameters. It will need several sensors and I presumed the pi was the best option. Now he posts above make me think something else might be better!

Ideally I want about 5 sensors and a power strip controlled by relays. I can't find a strip so making one seems likely the best solution. Will the b+ suit my needs? I program in Python and swift lol! But have a Java module coming up next year. This cud potentially be my 3rd year project with iOS apps and stuff. Oh and I am in the UK if that makes a difference!

# ? Jan 6, 2015 14:27

mod sassinator: Dec 13, 2006; I came here to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum,
and I'm All out of Ass

What sensors in particular are you looking at interfacing with the Pi? Things that use I2C or SPI will be easiest, and some like 1-wire can be a little tricky because they depend on specific timing requirements (which is tough for the Linux kernel to do, sometimes you have to get a special module). In general a Pi should be great at reading sensors and controlling stuff + adding a web interface. If there are particularly hard sensors to read from the Pi you could always connect them to a small Arduino and let it deal with all the real time issues reading the sensor & report back to the Pi its data using a serial link.

For controlling powered devices I would look for something like this that is a premade AC power switch you can control. Dealing with AC line voltages isn't fun and can be dangerous & deadly if done wrong.

# ? Jan 6, 2015 21:18

thegasman2000: Feb 12, 2005; Update my TFLC log? BOLLOCKS!
/

The main sensors are water temp sensor, ph sensor, water lever sensor, light sensor and a flow sensor.

That powerswitch is it one relay for one device? I am looking for something to control at least 6! Heaters, pumps, lights as well as filters. I have seen plenty of tutorials for adding relays to individually switched powerstrips like this one http://www.instructables.com/id/Web-Controlled-8-Channel-Powerstrip/ but wondered if there was a commercially available one someplace.

I don't really like the idea of adding an arduino as it another level of complexity for me to get my head around but if its the only way...

# ? Jan 6, 2015 22:12

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# ? Apr 18, 2024 08:02

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

http://www.ubnt.com/mfi/mpower/

Not sure if you can talk to that over a Pi or whatever.

If you want to do stuff with relays then these will happily switch mains - http://cpc.farnell.com/finder/22-23-9-012-4000/relay-modular-1no-1nc-12vdc/dp/SW03919 but they need to be driven with 12v which you won't get from a Pi's GPIOs so you're adding complication. Also it's loving with 240v AC so usual caveats apply. I think you might be best off getting a managed PDU and getting your Pi / Arduino / whatever to talk SNMP to it.

Something like http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251779287043

Thanks Ants fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jan 6, 2015

# ? Jan 6, 2015 22:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Raspberry Pi: yeah we're pretty much all on desktops again

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