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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doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

LRADIKAL posted:

https://ownyourbits.com/2019/02/02/whats-wrong-with-the-raspberry-pi/
Good bit about the bootloader and how the GPU works.

Pi-hole is also good because it adblocks your phones and poo poo on wifi, too.

I usually load some podcasts on my phone with Stitcher at home and play them in my car, and never see ads (it doesn't block the audio ads you get before shows, but at least those are skippable). Yesterday I fired up Stitcher at work and the wifi was connected, and the app just blanked out for several seconds as it very eagerly started retrieving those ads its been deprived of. It took too long so I killed the app, disabled wireless, and it started working right away again. I get that ads are the engine behind the internet, but every smallest about them just subtracts from user experience. Ads bad.

# ? Feb 2, 2019 19:51

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 08:22

mewse: May 2, 2006

Klyith posted:

Put together my pi, got volumio working (which is good and easy, props for that recommendation)

At first I thought the SD card I got was bad or something, because both etcher and W32DiskImage were having write failures, or finishing a write but failing verify. Tried booting the pi with it anyways and no go. Then I was just trying to format the whole thing in exfat and that also failed out. I though I'd gotten a counterfeit card! Turns out my cheapo craptop has a lovely card reader, either it's broken or can't do SDXC. On my housemate's much older laptop it worked fine, first try.

After that everything was slick as spit. Digital audio out hat works perfectly.
Up next: make my own tiny case to hold the pi and cut the LED light pollution.

What audio hat did you end up buying? Amazon link you previously posted is broken

# ? Feb 2, 2019 20:04

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

mewse posted:

What audio hat did you end up buying? Amazon link you previously posted is broken

Oh, fixed.

It's a clone of the hifiberry digi, and though the product page on amazon says it doesn't support volumio system that's wrong. Probably that was volumio v1 or something. (I did check on the volumio forums before buying and found that other people were using these PiFi clones just fine.)

Klyith fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Feb 2, 2019

# ? Feb 2, 2019 20:56

Hadlock: Nov 9, 2004

Dead Goon posted:

What are the options for monitoring a Pi?

I just have one at the moment, running Pihole and Unbound, and I ssh in from another machine and htop and all that but I was wondering if there is a more elegant, prettier way to do this?

You can run something like node_exporter on it and then run an internal prometheus/grafana server somewhere on your network (like maybe say the raspberry pi)... prometheus/grafana is sort of the 21st century nagios

node_exporter just runs as a single binary without any config, prometheus is a single binary that'll boot with just one config file.... grafana might require two configs with the one binary... of course there's 11 thousand tutorials on running prom/graf on localhost using docker too

# ? Feb 2, 2019 20:57

Mr.Radar: Nov 5, 2005; You guys aren't going to believe this, but that guy is our games teacher.

PINE64 announced some of their upcoming products. The first three are particularly notable. First is the $199 "pro" version of their laptop, with a hex-core CPU (Cortex A72/A53 cores), 4 GB RAM, a 14" 1080p screen, a 10,000 mAh battery, M.2 PCIe slot, and a USB-C port that supports charging and 4k 60Hz video out. Second is some more specs of the phone they announced last year: $149 "target" price, Allwinner A64 CPU, 2 GB RAM, 720x1440 display, USB-C port, 4G LTE, 802.11n. Finally a tablet with roughly the same specs as their current laptop for $79 or $99 with a detachable keyboard and trackpad. The post is worth reading, especially for the other announcements I haven't mentioned.

Mr.Radar fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Feb 2, 2019

# ? Feb 2, 2019 21:56

Varkk: Apr 17, 2004

I have a pinebook, I am quite impressed with the build quality and overall look. The screen is very nice. Only issues is the factory OS is stuck on an old kernel due to the Mali GPU support. Audio is mono only. Also it is a bit underpowered due to the CPU. Although I got it for connecting to and writing code to deploy on Raspberry Pis so it has enough grunt for that.

# ? Feb 2, 2019 22:34

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

Klyith posted:

Oh, fixed.

It's a clone of the hifiberry digi, and though the product page on amazon says it doesn't support volumio system that's wrong. Probably that was volumio v1 or something. (I did check on the volumio forums before buying and found that other people were using these PiFi clones just fine.)

So one thing to know about these cheap digital-out cards is that they don't have hardware volume control. At least it doesn't in volumio -- I'm having a hard time understanding if the card can't do it at all, or if the function just isn't implemented. So if the thing you're feeding doesn't have its own independent volume, you will have to go with the software volume mixer which at the moment is one of the more buggy parts of volumio.

In the course of testing this stuff my volumio install stopped working, becoming unable to play music or see the local library. Had to do the "factory reset" option in volumio's settings to un-wedge it. Linux audio: still hosed up in 2019. But it works now, and I did briefly try the analog out on the Pi itself which is just as bad as everyone said. Zero interference protection.

For me the lack of volume control isn't a big deal, my receiver has volume and a remote. I will generally play whole albums so don't need frequent fiddling with volume. But for other people this could be a pretty annoying problem.

# ? Feb 3, 2019 00:07

underage at the vape shop: May 11, 2011; by Cyrano4747

I'm trying to get my raspberry pi to run a django development server on startup using systemd but the service can't access django for some reason

heres the service:

Heres the syslog of it failing

If i copy paste the command in ExecStart it runs fine. How do I fix this?

# ? Feb 7, 2019 00:19

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

You're doing something weird with Python.

First Python 3.7 isn't in Raspbian yet (yeah it's a pain, Debian repos blow) so you've obviously installed some kind of third party python. The /usr/local/... path is a hint too that you're in nonstandard territory. Python is a poo poo show with handling multiple independent versions--it was never designed for it and was built to assume there's only ever one Python and it's installed in the system. This doesn't jive well with how people develop software in 2019 and is a big pain point.

Ultimately what's happening here is that your non-standard Python install is probably reading a python environment variable (like PYTHONPATH) that's set for your user. It's finding libraries and other junk from that path and everything works great. However when systemd runs your service as root it isn't using any of that environment context and Python can't find the django module. Probably you have two versions of Python installed--the system one and your non-standard 3.7 version in /usr/local--and only have Django installed in the system one but not the custom one. If this sounds dumb and annoying... welcome to Python (I say this after a salty 15 years of fighting Python warts like this).

Here's my suggestion, if you really need Python 3.7 get everything going in a docker container. There are nice alpine Linux-based containers with all the major versions of Python available (https://hub.docker.com/_/python/). Python doesn't like to play nicely with other versions of itself so just skip those problems entirely by giving it a nice self contained environment in a container. Install django and all the other tools you need there, then just run the docker container on boot (which docker can do automatically with the -d option, no systemd service needed).

If you're not ready to go down the docker route yet but still need Python 3.7, look for a PPA or backport that lets you replace system python with that version. As a last resort look at something like Anaconda that tries (and mostly succeeds... sometimes) to let you manage and use multiple independent Python installs (even if Python doesn't want you to do that).

# ? Feb 7, 2019 00:34

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Klyith posted:

So one thing to know about these cheap digital-out cards is that they don't have hardware volume control. At least it doesn't in volumio -- I'm having a hard time understanding if the card can't do it at all, or if the function just isn't implemented.

Digital out isn't supposed to have volume control, it's just supposed to be a raw representation of the signal similar to a line out. If you do software volume control before a digital out you're basically just throwing away resolution on the signal. It's very common for even full PCs to disable software volume control when using S/PDIF output. You're supposed to do the volume control at the amplifier stage, not before.

# ? Feb 7, 2019 17:49

underage at the vape shop: May 11, 2011; by Cyrano4747

mod sassinator posted:

You're doing something weird with Python.

First Python 3.7 isn't in Raspbian yet (yeah it's a pain, Debian repos blow) so you've obviously installed some kind of third party python. The /usr/local/... path is a hint too that you're in nonstandard territory. Python is a poo poo show with handling multiple independent versions--it was never designed for it and was built to assume there's only ever one Python and it's installed in the system. This doesn't jive well with how people develop software in 2019 and is a big pain point.

Ultimately what's happening here is that your non-standard Python install is probably reading a python environment variable (like PYTHONPATH) that's set for your user. It's finding libraries and other junk from that path and everything works great. However when systemd runs your service as root it isn't using any of that environment context and Python can't find the django module. Probably you have two versions of Python installed--the system one and your non-standard 3.7 version in /usr/local--and only have Django installed in the system one but not the custom one. If this sounds dumb and annoying... welcome to Python (I say this after a salty 15 years of fighting Python warts like this).

Here's my suggestion, if you really need Python 3.7 get everything going in a docker container. There are nice alpine Linux-based containers with all the major versions of Python available (https://hub.docker.com/_/python/). Python doesn't like to play nicely with other versions of itself so just skip those problems entirely by giving it a nice self contained environment in a container. Install django and all the other tools you need there, then just run the docker container on boot (which docker can do automatically with the -d option, no systemd service needed).

If you're not ready to go down the docker route yet but still need Python 3.7, look for a PPA or backport that lets you replace system python with that version. As a last resort look at something like Anaconda that tries (and mostly succeeds... sometimes) to let you manage and use multiple independent Python installs (even if Python doesn't want you to do that).

It actually has 3 versions of python installed lol, that raspbian version comes with 2.7 and 3.5. I'm using this to teach myself a little bit of web development in preperation for a uni couse this semster. I can probably make it all work on 3.5, but I coded it in 3.6 and there are some syntax differences when using requests and it was easier to install a newer python than go back and change everything.

I'll look into the docker stuff, it sounds good. Thanks for giving such a detailed reply, that was really helpful.

underage at the vape shop fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Feb 8, 2019

# ? Feb 8, 2019 00:06

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

Yeah it's a pain the Debian and Raspbian repos are so behind with software versions. If the docker route gets too complex or unweildly, try using a PPA to replace your system Python 3.5 with 3.6 or higher: https://launchpad.net/~jonathonf/+archive/ubuntu/python-3.7 These are proper Debian packages that someone creates and publishes outside the standard apt repos--generally you'll find more recent versions of software through PPA like this. The nice thing is that doing it this way will make your system Python more up to date and all kinds of guides, tutorials, etc. that expect you to use system Python should just work. And in general I've almost never had a problem of having too recent of a Python version, but definitely have had trouble with too old of a version like you're running into too. (and yeah Python 3.6 f-strings for the major win.. such a pain 3.5 and Debian/Raspbian stretch don't have those)

# ? Feb 8, 2019 00:36

Inept: Jul 8, 2003

I've been wondering, does the Pi foundation have an upgrade path now for the Pi 4 and beyond? I seem to remember people saying they're mated at the hip to Broadcom's poo poo, and Broadcom doesn't seem to care to make anything better any time soon. Is the Pi just going to languish on Videocore 4 and USB 2 forever, or will they actually change vendors?

# ? Feb 9, 2019 04:46

Klyith: Aug 3, 2007; GBS Pledge Week

Inept posted:

I've been wondering, does the Pi foundation have an upgrade path now for the Pi 4 and beyond? I seem to remember people saying they're mated at the hip to Broadcom's poo poo, and Broadcom doesn't seem to care to make anything better any time soon. Is the Pi just going to languish on Videocore 4 and USB 2 forever, or will they actually change vendors?

They just recently talked about the pi 4. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-4-everything-we-know,38539.html

It'll probably still be made by broadcom, but it's not like broadcom doesn't make better chips. The bad news is not until 2020.

OTOH it's not gonna have a new mobile-phone quality video GPU, since broadcom is out of that market and that isn't in line with the pi foundation education goal anyways. They're not there to make hardware for cheap game emulators. (And for people that do want an emulator or media device, there are now much better products available. Particularly with the Pi 4 being more than a year away.)

# ? Feb 9, 2019 05:42

Rutibex: Sep 9, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Klyith posted:

They're not there to make hardware for cheap game emulators. (And for people that do want an emulator or media device, there are now much better products available. Particularly with the Pi 4 being more than a year away.)

For emulators or media just get a cheap Android box. I got one of these Leelbox, and it's basically the same as a raspberry pi but more ram, better video, usb3, and built in memory. Same price range as a raspberry pi 3b+ and the android box plays up to Dreamcast games flawlessly.

I think you can reflash it with Linux or whatever, but I kept android on there it works for what I need:
https://www.amazon.com/Android-Leelbox-Smart-Support-2-4GHz/dp/B07FNZJYYY/

# ? Feb 9, 2019 05:56

other people: Jun 27, 2004; Associate Christ

gently caress pulseaudio.

This command works; I hear audio:

code:

[root@localhost ~]# aplay -D plughw:0,0 -fcd /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav 
Playing WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono

But when I setup pulseaudio to loop a playing source to the above "sink", I hear nothing. Honestly, I can't tell which sink is which but I've tried both without any success:

code:

[root@localhost ~]# pactl list sinks
Sink #0
	State: RUNNING
	Name: alsa_output.0.stereo-fallback
	Description: Built-in Audio Stereo
	Driver: module-alsa-card.c
	Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
	Channel Map: front-left,front-right
	Owner Module: 3
	Mute: no
	Volume: front-left: 32845 /  50% / -18.00 dB,   front-right: 32845 /  50% / -18.00 dB
	        balance 0.00
	Base Volume: 56210 /  86% / -4.00 dB
	Monitor Source: alsa_output.0.stereo-fallback.monitor
	Latency: 90402 usec, configured 99954 usec
	Flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL HW_VOLUME_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY 
	Properties:
		alsa.resolution_bits = "16"
		device.api = "alsa"
		device.class = "sound"
		alsa.class = "generic"
		alsa.subclass = "generic-mix"
		alsa.name = "bcm2835 ALSA"
		alsa.id = "bcm2835 ALSA"
		alsa.subdevice = "0"
		alsa.subdevice_name = "subdevice #0"
		alsa.device = "0"
		alsa.card = "0"
		alsa.card_name = "bcm2835 ALSA"
		alsa.long_card_name = "bcm2835 ALSA"
		device.bus_path = "platform-soc:audio"
		sysfs.path = "/devices/platform/soc/soc:audio/bcm2835_alsa/sound/card0"
		device.form_factor = "internal"
		device.string = "hw:0"
		device.buffering.buffer_size = "17632"
		device.buffering.fragment_size = "4416"
		device.access_mode = "mmap"
		device.profile.name = "stereo-fallback"
		device.profile.description = "Stereo"
		device.description = "Built-in Audio Stereo"
		alsa.mixer_name = "Broadcom Mixer"
		device.icon_name = "audio-card"
	Ports:
		analog-output: Analog Output (priority: 9900)
	Active Port: analog-output
	Formats:
		pcm

Sink #1
	State: SUSPENDED
	Name: alsa_output.platform-soc_audio.stereo-fallback
	Description: Built-in Audio Stereo
	Driver: module-alsa-card.c
	Sample Specification: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
	Channel Map: front-left,front-right
	Owner Module: 14
	Mute: no
	Volume: front-left: 32845 /  50% / -18.00 dB,   front-right: 32845 /  50% / -18.00 dB
	        balance 0.00
	Base Volume: 56210 /  86% / -4.00 dB
	Monitor Source: alsa_output.platform-soc_audio.stereo-fallback.monitor
	Latency: 0 usec, configured 0 usec
	Flags: HARDWARE HW_MUTE_CTRL HW_VOLUME_CTRL DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY 
	Properties:
		alsa.resolution_bits = "16"
		device.api = "alsa"
		device.class = "sound"
		alsa.class = "generic"
		alsa.subclass = "generic-mix"
		alsa.name = "bcm2835 ALSA"
		alsa.id = "bcm2835 ALSA"
		alsa.subdevice = "0"
		alsa.subdevice_name = "subdevice #0"
		alsa.device = "0"
		alsa.card = "0"
		alsa.card_name = "bcm2835 ALSA"
		alsa.long_card_name = "bcm2835 ALSA"
		device.bus_path = "platform-soc:audio"
		sysfs.path = "/devices/platform/soc/soc:audio/bcm2835_alsa/sound/card0"
		device.form_factor = "internal"
		device.string = "hw:0"
		device.buffering.buffer_size = "17632"
		device.buffering.fragment_size = "4416"
		device.access_mode = "mmap"
		device.profile.name = "stereo-fallback"
		device.profile.description = "Stereo"
		device.description = "Built-in Audio Stereo"
		alsa.mixer_name = "Broadcom Mixer"
		module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
		device.icon_name = "audio-card"
	Ports:
		analog-output: Analog Output (priority: 9900)
	Active Port: analog-output
	Formats:
		pcm

[root@localhost ~]# pactl list sources short
0	alsa_output.0.stereo-fallback.monitor	module-alsa-card.c	s16le 2ch 44100Hz	SUSPENDED
1	alsa_output.platform-soc_audio.stereo-fallback.monitor	module-alsa-card.c	s16le 2ch 44100Hz	IDLE
3	bluez_source.3C_28_6D_E6_5E_D3.a2dp_source	module-bluez5-device.c	s16le 2ch 44100Hz	RUNNING

[root@localhost ~]# pactl load-module module-loopback source=bluez_source.3C_28_6D_E6_5E_D3.a2dp_source sink=alsa_output.0.stereo-fallback

[root@localhost ~]# pulsemixer --list-sources
Source output:	 ID: 5, Name: Loopback to Built-in Audio Stereo, Mute: 0, Channels: 2, Volumes: ['100%', '100%']
Source:		 ID: 0, Name: Monitor of Built-in Audio Stereo, Mute: 0, Channels: 2, Volumes: ['100%', '100%']
Source:		 ID: 1, Name: Monitor of Built-in Audio Stereo, Mute: 0, Channels: 2, Volumes: ['100%', '100%']
Source:		 ID: 3, Name: Pixel 3, Mute: 0, Channels: 2, Volumes: ['100%', '100%']

[root@localhost ~]# pulsemixer --list-sinks
Sink input:	 ID: 4, Name: Loopback from Pixel 3, Mute: 0, Channels: 2, Volumes: ['50%', '50%']
Sink:		 ID: 0, Name: Built-in Audio Stereo, Mute: 0, Channels: 2, Volumes: ['50%', '50%']
Sink:		 ID: 1, Name: Built-in Audio Stereo, Mute: 0, Channels: 2, Volumes: ['50%', '50%']

As you can see, everything that needs to be is RUNNING and not muted. pulseaudio has not logged any error during any of this.

# ? Feb 26, 2019 17:28

Fuzz1111: Mar 17, 2001; Sorry. I couldn't find anyone to make you a cool cipher-themed avatar, and the look on this guy's face cracks me the fuck up.

Well I just had quite an interesting time setting up my raspberry pi with arch linux - somehow when setting up the partitions and filesystems (which you do manually as there's no img file for arch linux) I managed to set permission flags on the root folder to 700 - meaning only root could access the filesystem at all.

I didn't know root itself even had permissions (it makes sense though I guess) and it was a real prick because you don't really get to see the permission flags on it (not when it's mounted to / anyway, unless you use something like stat). It sure made for some interesting problems too because you could still login as root but anything that ran things as non-root users was broken (mostly networking stuff - which I actually mostly worked around before finding the problem because I wanted to remove all network-managers anyway, as they'd get in the way of what I'm using it for).

What finally made me realise something was wrong was when I got to the point that I wanted to run as a normal user, and couldn't login because the user had no access to /bin/bash - still took ages to figure it out after that point (and google was no help because there's a lot of other ways to get that error).

# ? Feb 27, 2019 09:06

Coxswain Balls: Jun 4, 2001

Snagged a used 3B+ and I love this cute lil thing. I mainly got it to be a low-powered headless server for Pi-Hole and Unbound, but I might start playing around with stuff like OwnCloud and Transmission again rather than just using the jailed plugins on my FreeNAS box that I'm scared of messing around with. Now I'm getting ideas like putting an anemometer on my balcony to put a number on the crazy wind gusts I hear sometimes, or maybe even running a personal private email server.

# ? Mar 2, 2019 08:01

Magnetic North: Dec 15, 2008; Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

I got a Raspberry Pi 3B+ as a gift. I was planning to hook it to my TV to make it a Youtube / Twitch and occasional desktop device (which is why I haven't tried a media center distro or something). The issue was that Twitch doesn't really run very well on it. I know this thing is a lot less powerful than my laptop, but I was hoping this was within its reach. Has anyone tried something like this before? I am very new to this type of thing: I've really only ever used Ubuntu before.

For the sake of completeness, I found this article which suggested booting from USB. The instructions haven't worked for me. Based on some of the comments, I think it is because I have NOOBS instead of a normal Raspbian install. I wasn't able make the changes to the booting text files they suggest (section "Prepare for Rebooting From USB!") because NOOBS won't open them and my Windows PC refuses to see them.

# ? Mar 3, 2019 15:11

fishmech: Jul 16, 2006; by VideoGames; Salad Prong

Magnetic North posted:

I got a Raspberry Pi 3B+ as a gift. I was planning to hook it to my TV to make it a Youtube / Twitch and occasional desktop device (which is why I haven't tried a media center distro or something). The issue was that Twitch doesn't really run very well on it. I know this thing is a lot less powerful than my laptop, but I was hoping this was within its reach. Has anyone tried something like this before? I am very new to this type of thing: I've really only ever used Ubuntu before.

For the sake of completeness, I found this article which suggested booting from USB. The instructions haven't worked for me. Based on some of the comments, I think it is because I have NOOBS instead of a normal Raspbian install. I wasn't able make the changes to the booting text files they suggest (section "Prepare for Rebooting From USB!") because NOOBS won't open them and my Windows PC refuses to see them.

Yep current Twitch streaming just doesn't work well with it. It is recommended that if you're trying to watch 1080p or 720p streams, you set it to only do the 30 FPS versions, or cut your stream resolution below 720p if you want to still have high framerate streams. Similar issues can crop up with Youtube playback, in which case you just want to knock back the resolution a bit.

The problem here is that the old video codec acceleration chip in the Pis was not intended for handling high frame rate high resolution videos and will frequently have issues when trying to handle them.

fishmech fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Mar 3, 2019

# ? Mar 3, 2019 17:50

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

Magnetic North posted:

I got a Raspberry Pi 3B+ as a gift. I was planning to hook it to my TV to make it a Youtube / Twitch and occasional desktop device (which is why I haven't tried a media center distro or something). The issue was that Twitch doesn't really run very well on it. I know this thing is a lot less powerful than my laptop, but I was hoping this was within its reach. Has anyone tried something like this before? I am very new to this type of thing: I've really only ever used Ubuntu before.

For the sake of completeness, I found this article which suggested booting from USB. The instructions haven't worked for me. Based on some of the comments, I think it is because I have NOOBS instead of a normal Raspbian install. I wasn't able make the changes to the booting text files they suggest (section "Prepare for Rebooting From USB!") because NOOBS won't open them and my Windows PC refuses to see them.

If you're new to the pi and Linux in general, I'd stick with following the standard directions and use a SD card to boot. USB booting is possible but fiddly and doesn't buy you much for just messing around with the pi. Personally I just use a 32gb card and have never had space issues (even with using docker and tons of huge images, etc.). If you use a 4gb or 8gb card then it can be a bit constraining if you start installing lots of software.

# ? Mar 3, 2019 18:06

eames: May 9, 2009

Magnetic North posted:

I got a Raspberry Pi 3B+ as a gift. I was planning to hook it to my TV to make it a Youtube / Twitch and occasional desktop device (which is why I haven't tried a media center distro or something). The issue was that Twitch doesn't really run very well on it. I know this thing is a lot less powerful than my laptop, but I was hoping this was within its reach.

Be aware that the Raspberry Pi is nice for learning linux and a lot of simple use cases but very slow compared to a modern phone or chromebook.
You may be able to coax it into doing what you want and pick up some linux knowledge in the process or you could just buy a device that's made for the job. In your case that'd be a Amazon FireTV stick for ~$25.
I'm just warning you in advance before you pour dozens of hours into this before realizing that it just won't work. We've all been there...

# ? Mar 3, 2019 18:49

Hadlock: Nov 9, 2004

What are the chances that the Pi 4 comes out this summer

Looking at their release schedule it looks an awful lot like they are due for a new product soon

# ? Mar 3, 2019 20:12

Magnetic North: Dec 15, 2008; Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

fishmech posted:

The problem here is that the old video codec acceleration chip in the Pis was not intended for handling high frame rate high resolution videos and will frequently have issues when trying to handle them.

eames posted:

I'm just warning you in advance before you pour dozens of hours into this before realizing that it just won't work. We've all been there...

This was basically what I was afraid of. No biggie. I'll find something else to do with it.

# ? Mar 3, 2019 20:17

Coxswain Balls: Jun 4, 2001

Hadlock posted:

What are the chances that the Pi 4 comes out this summer

Looking at their release schedule it looks an awful lot like they are due for a new product soon

Doesn't sound like anything's coming out this year.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-4-everything-we-know,38539.html

# ? Mar 3, 2019 20:27

eames: May 9, 2009

Hadlock posted:

What are the chances that the Pi 4 comes out this summer

Looking at their release schedule it looks an awful lot like they are due for a new product soon

zero to none as stated in the link posted earlier.

The market is getting flooded with far better hardware at a similar price point but I find that it's all kind of pointless without the support/community.

Here's a really interesting article about the Pi's flaws; I had no idea about the realtime OS running in the background on the GPU: https://ownyourbits.com/2019/02/02/whats-wrong-with-the-raspberry-pi/

# ? Mar 3, 2019 20:31

Inept: Jul 8, 2003

fishmech posted:

The problem here is that the old video codec acceleration chip in the Pis was not intended for handling high frame rate high resolution videos and will frequently have issues when trying to handle them.

I thought it was more that hardware accelerated video decoding isn't possible in the browser right now. Steam Link works fine on my Pi 3, and it's streaming h264 1080p60 at 30mbps.

# ? Mar 3, 2019 22:25

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

It might be a matter of extra scripting and things other than the stream that come along with opening a browser page in Twitch. If there's a way to isolate the Twitch stream and just play it through VLC or the browser, it might work better.

# ? Mar 3, 2019 22:43

Fuzz1111: Mar 17, 2001; Sorry. I couldn't find anyone to make you a cool cipher-themed avatar, and the look on this guy's face cracks me the fuck up.

Inept posted:

I thought it was more that hardware accelerated video decoding isn't possible in the browser right now. Steam Link works fine on my Pi 3, and it's streaming h264 1080p60 at 30mbps.

I was going to post same thing as I remember playing 60fps h264 on an original rpiB without problems (overclocking the GPU helped a bunch though, and it was still dropping a few frames here and there but did so very gracefully).

doctorfrog posted:

It might be a matter of extra scripting and things other than the stream that come along with opening a browser page in Twitch. If there's a way to isolate the Twitch stream and just play it through VLC or the browser, it might work better.

I'm pretty sure that there's a twitch plugin for xbmc that you can use with openelec on raspberry pi (openelec is very easy to set up so it worth a shot).

Fuzz1111 fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Mar 3, 2019

# ? Mar 3, 2019 23:00

Hadlock: Nov 9, 2004

eames posted:

zero to none as stated in the link posted earlier.

The market is getting flooded with far better hardware at a similar price point but I find that it's all kind of pointless without the support/community.

I hear you on that, but at the same time, the last time there head of raspberry pi swore up and down that they definitely weren't releasing the pi 3 and that the pi 2 b+ was great for now... Less than 60 days later they announced the pi 3 anyways

They don't have any incentive to dry up demand for the 3 b+ any earlier than absolutely required, golden goose etc

# ? Mar 4, 2019 00:05

eames: May 9, 2009

Hadlock posted:

I hear you on that, but at the same time, the last time there head of raspberry pi swore up and down that they definitely weren't releasing the pi 3 and that the pi 2 b+ was great for now... Less than 60 days later they announced the pi 3 anyways

They don't have any incentive to dry up demand for the 3 b+ any earlier than absolutely required, golden goose etc

Yeah, you are right. I think I even remember them posting news shortly before the release of the 3 back then.

Getting rid of the USB 2.0 bottleneck would be a huge step forward for the rPi, though I kind of wish they'd spin off a "Raspberry Pi Pro" at a higher price point (~$60-70). I've seen some extremely impressive SBCs in that price range lately (i.e. Nanopi M4 which has just about everything you could want plus PCIe x2) but these devices live and die by their following and (vendor-, mainline- and community-) support.

# ? Mar 4, 2019 15:36

Hadlock: Nov 9, 2004

Yeah I've seen a bunch of orange pi and banana pi live and die, even bought a few, but the raspberry pi was the only one that I could trust enough to actually build a project with

Motherboards cost $45-90, wouldn't surprise me if they were able to build a Chromebook type board for $65. Actually if raspberry pi officially supported Chromebook os that would be killer. Especially with project crostini allowing users to install .deb packages natively.

# ? Mar 4, 2019 22:03

Magnetic North: Dec 15, 2008; Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

eames posted:

I've seen some extremely impressive SBCs in that price range lately (i.e. Nanopi M4 which has just about everything you could want plus PCIe x2) but these devices live and die by their following and (vendor-, mainline- and community-) support.

I didn't realize that super pis were a thing. For normal desktop type use (such as what I was looking for, forums and Twitch/Youtube), would this be a reasonable choice? It says it can run Ubuntu, so I think it would be fine, but I don't know what underlies that support. Is that something that would go awry if the user support dries up?

# ? Mar 4, 2019 22:47

fishmech: Jul 16, 2006; by VideoGames; Salad Prong

Hadlock posted:

Yeah I've seen a bunch of orange pi and banana pi live and die, even bought a few, but the raspberry pi was the only one that I could trust enough to actually build a project with

Motherboards cost $45-90, wouldn't surprise me if they were able to build a Chromebook type board for $65. Actually if raspberry pi officially supported Chromebook os that would be killer. Especially with project crostini allowing users to install .deb packages natively.

What are you looking for that just running Chrome doesn't already get you?

# ? Mar 4, 2019 22:53

eames: May 9, 2009

Magnetic North posted:

For normal desktop type use (such as what I was looking for, forums and Twitch/Youtube), would this be a reasonable choice? It says it can run Ubuntu, so I think it would be fine, but I don't know what underlies that support. Is that something that would go awry if the user support dries up?

Those, sans the desktop use case, are the exact questions I'm asking myself. I was going to order one just to find out but ended up going the "safe route" with a 3B+ instead. My main concern are the custom kernels/OS images which are required to get this running. Clearly there's a lot of innovation happening in the SBC industry, so the vendor might abandon software support when a newer/better product arrives next year... then what. :raise:

There are quite a few Rockchip RK3399 boards coming out by different vendors and I read good things about the SoC so maybe it is different this time around.

# ? Mar 4, 2019 23:03

Internet Savant: Feb 14, 2008; 20% Off Coupon for 15 dollars per month - sign me up!

Magnetic North posted:

I didn't realize that super pis were a thing. For normal desktop type use (such as what I was looking for, forums and Twitch/Youtube), would this be a reasonable choice? It says it can run Ubuntu, so I think it would be fine, but I don't know what underlies that support. Is that something that would go awry if the user support dries up?

I have an odroid C2, for something that I originally purchased to run Kodi and then later a purpose built Plex thing, it worked fine. It "runs" Ubuntu, but software selection is limited to the basics, and it runs them just ok.

It's way more hassle that it's worth. If you want to run Ubuntu, find something with an x86 cpu so that you don't have to fight weird compatibility issues - or just get a chromebook or something.

# ? Mar 4, 2019 23:28

Hadlock: Nov 9, 2004

fishmech posted:

What are you looking for that just running Chrome doesn't already get you?

Nothing, it's just that chrome is a really clean end user experience and self updates in a way that doesn't piss me off

# ? Mar 5, 2019 08:17

22 Eargesplitten: Oct 10, 2010

I just realized that I'm blocking ads on this forum through pihole even though I disabled my browser adblocker on here ages ago. Is there a way to whitelist the ads on this site?

# ? Mar 13, 2019 18:36

pzy: Feb 20, 2004; Da Boom!

Pretty sure you just have to whitelist fi.somethingawful.com

# ? Mar 13, 2019 19:34

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 08:22

DIEGETIC SPACEMAN: Feb 25, 2007; fuck a car
i'll do a mothafuckin' walk-by

I have a friend who owns a bar, and right now his idea of streaming live events onto the 3 TVs scattered across the place is to have a Roku, Apple TV and Chromecast grabbing the same stream off the same Internet connection. Which, obviously, is dumb as hell and leads to all the TVs being out of sync with each other. Can anyone recommend a good way to stream audio and video from a stream on a laptop to 3 different Raspberry Pi�s while keeping all the Pi�s as close to synced up as possible?

# ? Mar 13, 2019 21:47

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

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