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TheFluff
Dec 13, 2006

FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE
Is there such a thing as a Pi-like device with an actually good CPU on it? Like, something with at least a few Cortex A76 cores or something, like on the flagship smartphones. Looking for something to use as a dev environment for NEON-optimized DSP code, and I don't want to optimize for an older 32-bit low-power CPU. At the moment it's looking like an ARM-based Surface is one of the few options to get something like this, but it's $1000.

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Fantastic Foreskin
Jan 6, 2013

A golden helix streaked skyward from the Helvault. A thunderous explosion shattered the silver monolith and Avacyn emerged, free from her prison at last.

You can get an SBC with just about anything you want on it, they just stop being cheap when you want one with not-cheap parts. It's not an area I have much firsthand experience with but this looks as good a place as any to start looking.

TheFluff
Dec 13, 2006

FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE

ItBreathes posted:

You can get an SBC with just about anything you want on it, they just stop being cheap when you want one with not-cheap parts. It's not an area I have much firsthand experience with but this looks as good a place as any to start looking.

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place or something but I can't find anything interesting at all on that site. The vast majority of boards feature some variant of the Cortex A9, a 32-bit design from 2007. There are a few boards that do have 64-bit CPU's but the most recent core I can find is a Cortex A72 and that's from 2015. A76 would be nice and A75 could be acceptable, but anything older than that isn't really interesting at all, and neither is anything 32-bit (ARMv7). Basically I'm looking for a high end Snapdragon SoC or something in SBC form (except I don't need the GPU at all), and I can't find that.

TheFluff fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Feb 23, 2020

Fantastic Foreskin
Jan 6, 2013

A golden helix streaked skyward from the Helvault. A thunderous explosion shattered the silver monolith and Avacyn emerged, free from her prison at last.

Alright, that's looking tricky. I'll have to leave this for someone more knowledgeable about arm development. Sorry.

mewse
May 2, 2006

TheFluff posted:

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place or something but I can't find anything interesting at all on that site. The vast majority of boards feature some variant of the Cortex A9, a 32-bit design from 2007. There are a few boards that do have 64-bit CPU's but the most recent core I can find is a Cortex A72 and that's from 2015. A76 would be nice and A75 could be acceptable, but anything older than that isn't really interesting at all, and neither is anything 32-bit (ARMv7). Basically I'm looking for a high end Snapdragon SoC or something in SBC form (except I don't need the GPU at all), and I can't find that.

This is what I see plugged as a beefier pi, I don't know how it relates to your desired specs:

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-xu4-special-price/

TheFluff
Dec 13, 2006

FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE

ItBreathes posted:

Alright, that's looking tricky. I'll have to leave this for someone more knowledgeable about arm development. Sorry.

No need to apologize for sincere attempts to help :unsmith:

mewse posted:

This is what I see plugged as a beefier pi, I don't know how it relates to your desired specs:

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-xu4-special-price/

I've looked at those but as far as I can tell it's all ARMv7, and so 32-bit only. I don't really need a super high clockspeed or a ton of cores, but I do want the newer microarchitecture so I can actually benchmark performance on a real CPU. I could cross-compile for Android on an x86 machine and run it on an actual phone for benchmarking, but that seems like a really clunky workflow and I don't have a high end Android phone anyway.

Lockback
Sep 3, 2006

All days are nights to see till I see thee; and nights bright days when dreams do show me thee.

TheFluff posted:

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place or something but I can't find anything interesting at all on that site. The vast majority of boards feature some variant of the Cortex A9, a 32-bit design from 2007. There are a few boards that do have 64-bit CPU's but the most recent core I can find is a Cortex A72 and that's from 2015. A76 would be nice and A75 could be acceptable, but anything older than that isn't really interesting at all, and neither is anything 32-bit (ARMv7). Basically I'm looking for a high end Snapdragon SoC or something in SBC form (except I don't need the GPU at all), and I can't find that.

A76's are only going to be Devkit's that would be $1,000+ anyway, like this:
https://shop.intrinsyc.com/products/snapdragon-855-hdk

No one is making mass production enthusiast boards for CPUs that are still going into flagship phones. It's stopping a mainstream production line for a niche, enthusiast market. So you're stuck with the expensive dev kits.

Your Surface solution is probably the closest to realistic, unless you want to shell out for the devkit above.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week
The Orange Pi 4 has a Cortex-A72 RK3399

But all the reports about orange pis are their OS versions are buggy trash so getting your android environment working there might be just as much hassle as your other options.

TheFluff
Dec 13, 2006

FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE

Lockback posted:

A76's are only going to be Devkit's that would be $1,000+ anyway, like this:
https://shop.intrinsyc.com/products/snapdragon-855-hdk

No one is making mass production enthusiast boards for CPUs that are still going into flagship phones. It's stopping a mainstream production line for a niche, enthusiast market. So you're stuck with the expensive dev kits.

Your Surface solution is probably the closest to realistic, unless you want to shell out for the devkit above.

Yeah I just saw that devkit and I'm coming to the same conclusion. I guess I might need a plan B since this is just a hobby thing and I can't really justify spending a grand on a toy like that. Thanks for the help though!

e:

Klyith posted:

The Orange Pi 4 has a Cortex-A72 RK3399

But all the reports about orange pis are their OS versions are buggy trash so getting your android environment working there might be just as much hassle as your other options.

There are some other A72 options as well, like the ROCKPro64, but it's still a fairly old microarch. It's at least not that expensive though and it's more appealing than an ARMv7 option.

e2: actually the regular raspberry pi 4 model b has A72 cores on it as well, duh :doh:

TheFluff fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Feb 23, 2020

Fantastic Foreskin
Jan 6, 2013

A golden helix streaked skyward from the Helvault. A thunderous explosion shattered the silver monolith and Avacyn emerged, free from her prison at last.

As a non-dev, what's stopping you from using a phone as a testing platform, besides cost?

TheFluff
Dec 13, 2006

FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE

ItBreathes posted:

As a non-dev, what's stopping you from using a phone as a testing platform, besides cost?

Nothing, it's just a clunkier workflow. On a Pi-like device running Linux I could build the software, run it in a debugger, profile it (that is, measure exactly where CPU time is being spent so I can tell which functions to focus on optimizing) and quickly try out small changes all in the same environment. If used a phone as a testbed while developing on a computer, things get spread out over two different systems and iterations get slower as a result. I also suspect that debugging and profiling would become harder and slower, but I don't have a great deal of experience with Android development. The software can already be compiled for ARM and it works, but a lot of the time-critical code could benefit a lot from handwritten vectorized code (effectively code that processes multiple pixels with one instruction) that the x86 version already has.

If I already had a high end Android phone I'd probably just go with that and live with the inconvenience, but I don't.

TheFluff fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Feb 23, 2020

Progressive JPEG
Feb 19, 2003

Could you use a pine phone or similar? IIRC they run plain Linux.

Catch is that they’re getting hit by the ongoing economic collapse as much as all the other electronics manufacturers so it may be back ordered for a while.

e: Nevermind looks like it’s a quad A53, I thought it was more recent than that. Maybe I’m thinking of something else entirely

Progressive JPEG fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Feb 23, 2020

MikusR
Jan 5, 2008

TheFluff posted:

There are some other A72 options as well, like the ROCKPro64, but it's still a fairly old microarch. It's at least not that expensive though and it's more appealing than an ARMv7 option.

e2: actually the regular raspberry pi 4 model b has A72 cores on it as well, duh :doh:


Odroid N2 has A73.
ROCKPro64 has A72 with Crypto extensions. Rapsberry pi 4 doesn't have those.

VictualSquid
Feb 29, 2012

Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

TheFluff posted:

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place or something but I can't find anything interesting at all on that site. The vast majority of boards feature some variant of the Cortex A9, a 32-bit design from 2007. There are a few boards that do have 64-bit CPU's but the most recent core I can find is a Cortex A72 and that's from 2015. A76 would be nice and A75 could be acceptable, but anything older than that isn't really interesting at all, and neither is anything 32-bit (ARMv7). Basically I'm looking for a high end Snapdragon SoC or something in SBC form (except I don't need the GPU at all), and I can't find that.

There are SBCs with laptop style x86/64 CPUs. They probably closed the niche that a hypothetical high end arm SBC could fill.
https://www.aaeon.com/en/p/pico-itx-boards-pico-kbu4

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

VictualSquid posted:

There are SBCs with laptop style x86/64 CPUs. They probably closed the niche that a hypothetical high end arm SBC could fill.
https://www.aaeon.com/en/p/pico-itx-boards-pico-kbu4

You can get them with quad core atom processors as well. However, in my experience, they don't exactly act normal, and you have to add lots of parts that make them as expensive as a NUC and not as useful.

mod sassinator
Dec 13, 2006
I came here to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum,
and I'm All out of Ass
You can rent time on an Amazon graviton 1 or 2 instance, it's their homebrew ARM socs. Or you can buy a super duper expensive Ampere server (4 figure cost just for the mobo and cpu I've heard).

Realistically your best bet is to find an ARM powered Chromebook. Ideally you can reflash its bios so it's just a plain old Linux machine, or worst case you learn to live with its container system on the stock os. There are a couple windows laptops that run ARM CPUs (even one with a Snapdragon 855) but it's super janky with software support.

TheFluff
Dec 13, 2006

FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE

mod sassinator posted:

You can rent time on an Amazon graviton 1 or 2 instance, it's their homebrew ARM socs. Or you can buy a super duper expensive Ampere server (4 figure cost just for the mobo and cpu I've heard).

Realistically your best bet is to find an ARM powered Chromebook. Ideally you can reflash its bios so it's just a plain old Linux machine, or worst case you learn to live with its container system on the stock os. There are a couple windows laptops that run ARM CPUs (even one with a Snapdragon 855) but it's super janky with software support.

First gen Graviton is just another Cortex A72, but I was not aware of the second gen. It's not a Cortex design at all but it is ARMv8.2 and should be quite interesting, judging by the servethehome coverage.

mod sassinator
Dec 13, 2006
I came here to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum,
and I'm All out of Ass
Yeah one other thing I've toyed with but haven't done yet is try LineageOS or a similar custom Android build on a rooted Android phone. If you can rebuild the Android kernel you can flip on all kinds of awesome things like cgroups support and in theory have docker and all the fun container tools running right on Android. Once you have docker containers running then your development gets a ton easier and more interesting. But it's a real pain to get there--Lineage and custom Android roms generally just support the more recent (and expensive) Android phones and rooting them is not for the feint of heart. And rooted phones with a custom kernel are going to be really bad with battery life and day to day usage so you wouldn't want this for your actual phone.

bolind
Jun 19, 2005



Pillbug

TheFluff posted:

Is there such a thing as a Pi-like device with an actually good CPU on it? Like, something with at least a few Cortex A76 cores or something, like on the flagship smartphones. Looking for something to use as a dev environment for NEON-optimized DSP code, and I don't want to optimize for an older 32-bit low-power CPU. At the moment it's looking like an ARM-based Surface is one of the few options to get something like this, but it's $1000.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is quad core 64 bit (with Ubuntu on it) but only A72 cores.

Maybe take a look at the DragonBoard series of SBCs? At least double the price of a Pi, but doable. I've used the 420c and it was fine.

https://www.96boards.org/product/dragonboard820c/

TheFluff
Dec 13, 2006

FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME
I AM A SEAGULL
OF WEALTH AND TASTE

bolind posted:

The Raspberry Pi 4 is quad core 64 bit (with Ubuntu on it) but only A72 cores.

Maybe take a look at the DragonBoard series of SBCs? At least double the price of a Pi, but doable. I've used the 420c and it was fine.

https://www.96boards.org/product/dragonboard820c/

I've poked around on 96boards but didn't see anything particularly interesting. The one you linked has a Snapdragon 820 which uses a custom ARMv8 uarch (not a Cortex design, in other words), but it's a fairly old one, circa 2015, so it's not all that interesting unfortunately.

At this point I think I'll just wait for EC2's second gen Gravitons to become available and test those first before I try something else. Thanks for the input anyway, everyone!

MJP
Jun 17, 2007

Are you looking at me Senpai?

Grimey Drawer
Anyone know PiCorePlayer that can help me out?

I'm running a brand new burned image of PicorePlayer 5.0, standard build, on a Pi 3B+. It boots just fine. I'm not connected to Ethernet since I have no wired network connectivity by my stereo.

When I run setup and enter the correct wifi setup info - including all correct case letters - and set the authentication as WPA, it doesn't connect after I exit setup. If I ping 8.8.8.8, it gives no route to the host. If I reboot, it searches for the network and finds nothing. When I run setup, none of the information has been saved - wifi is on but no info is populated for the SSID, password, or authentication type. If I repeat setting up wifi and back up the config, the situation persists.

I created a guest network that uses only WPA (the normal network is WPA2-personal) and the issue persisted. I backed up the config from the setup menu and rebooted, issue persists. I backed up the config, exited setup, and ran pcp br - the issue persists.

I only have Windows boxes and a Chromebook so I'm not sure if there's a way for me to burn the image and create wpa_supplicant.conf on the boot partition as specified here: https://www.picoreplayer.org/how_to_setup_wifi_on_pcp_without_ethernet.shtml

What am I doing wrong here?

bolind
Jun 19, 2005



Pillbug

TheFluff posted:

I've poked around on 96boards but didn't see anything particularly interesting. The one you linked has a Snapdragon 820 which uses a custom ARMv8 uarch (not a Cortex design, in other words), but it's a fairly old one, circa 2015, so it's not all that interesting unfortunately.

At this point I think I'll just wait for EC2's second gen Gravitons to become available and test those first before I try something else. Thanks for the input anyway, everyone!

Its probably a long shot, but can you simulate it with QEMU?

VictualSquid
Feb 29, 2012

Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

MJP posted:

Anyone know PiCorePlayer that can help me out?

I'm running a brand new burned image of PicorePlayer 5.0, standard build, on a Pi 3B+. It boots just fine. I'm not connected to Ethernet since I have no wired network connectivity by my stereo.

When I run setup and enter the correct wifi setup info - including all correct case letters - and set the authentication as WPA, it doesn't connect after I exit setup. If I ping 8.8.8.8, it gives no route to the host. If I reboot, it searches for the network and finds nothing. When I run setup, none of the information has been saved - wifi is on but no info is populated for the SSID, password, or authentication type. If I repeat setting up wifi and back up the config, the situation persists.

I created a guest network that uses only WPA (the normal network is WPA2-personal) and the issue persisted. I backed up the config from the setup menu and rebooted, issue persists. I backed up the config, exited setup, and ran pcp br - the issue persists.

I only have Windows boxes and a Chromebook so I'm not sure if there's a way for me to burn the image and create wpa_supplicant.conf on the boot partition as specified here: https://www.picoreplayer.org/how_to_setup_wifi_on_pcp_without_ethernet.shtml

What am I doing wrong here?

The boot partition should be FAT so that you can mount it on a windows box and copy the wpa_supplicant over.

It might also be be a wifi channel issue. I don't know if it affects the 3B+, but some wifi cards don't like all the possible channels. You can switch to 2.4GHz or to one of the lower 5Ghz channel numbers on your router.

MJP
Jun 17, 2007

Are you looking at me Senpai?

Grimey Drawer

VictualSquid posted:

The boot partition should be FAT so that you can mount it on a windows box and copy the wpa_supplicant over.

It might also be be a wifi channel issue. I don't know if it affects the 3B+, but some wifi cards don't like all the possible channels. You can switch to 2.4GHz or to one of the lower 5Ghz channel numbers on your router.

Turns out it just hates the setup config part of wifi. I redid the burn, went ahead and created wpa_supplicant, and bada bing, it works.

Gaz2k21
Sep 1, 2006

MEGALA---WHO??!!??
I found my old original Raspberry Pi, one of the fest ones that was released, is there anything interesting I can do with it that isn’t emulation????

ante
Apr 9, 2005

SUNSHINE AND RAINBOWS
Put a little serial screen on there and make it display the weather



Hook it up to an RC car and make it smart


Host an mqtt server and take temperature readings from various sensors all over your house

Give it to someone you hate, after slightly compromising the SD card slot

mewse
May 2, 2006

Gaz2k21 posted:

I found my old original Raspberry Pi, one of the fest ones that was released, is there anything interesting I can do with it that isn’t emulation????

Pi hole works fine on my original B+

RoboFrance_29
Jul 15, 2010

GET EQUIPPED
Anyone have any experience with setting one up as a synthesizer?

From what I've researched on the Pi 3, there's plenty of I/O ports I can use, but what I'm ultimately trying to do is have the I/Os configured as input and read a voltage level coming from an ADC to determine an individual effect/filter intensity to be applied to the signal coming from a MIDI controller.

So in short, I'd like to run a MIDI controller through USB and do the bulk of the signal conditioning in software while also relying on external inputs from knobs.

I just started researching this today so feel free to tell me why this is a dumb method :v:

Schadenboner
Aug 15, 2011

by Shine

Gaz2k21 posted:

I found my old original Raspberry Pi, one of the fest ones that was released, is there anything interesting I can do with it that isn’t emulation????

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvELThGnCPs/?

:shrug:

brand engager
Mar 23, 2011

Are there any arm SBCs that can be used as an android device? Like something beefy enough to run games and poo poo on instead of using my phone. Having GPIO would be good too so I have an alternate use if the android thing doesn't work out :v:

Gaz2k21
Sep 1, 2006

MEGALA---WHO??!!??
So I’ve ended up installing OSMC on my old pi, tugged it up to the 4:3 CRT I use for retro consoles and have added a flash drive with a bunch of old Disney/looney tunes cartoons.

It makes excellent background viewing for when I’m working on the computer.

wolrah
May 8, 2006
what?

brand engager posted:

Are there any arm SBCs that can be used as an android device? Like something beefy enough to run games and poo poo on instead of using my phone. Having GPIO would be good too so I have an alternate use if the android thing doesn't work out :v:
The majority of the "alternative Pi" type options have some form of Android BSP, but more often than not it's some ancient version that's been half-assed together and they almost certainly will not have Play Store without loving around.

I've been looking for a few years for a cheap-ish SBC that has actual proper Android support that I could use to be able to run Waze on a custom in-dash install and I've pretty much given up and resigned myself to just running Linux with OpenAuto to act as an Android Auto endpoint.

It's absolutely insane how many of these vendors see nothing wrong with releasing a device with "Android Support" that turns out to be Android 6 with software graphics rendering on a device that shipped after Android 10's release.

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

brand engager posted:

Are there any arm SBCs that can be used as an android device? Like something beefy enough to run games and poo poo on instead of using my phone. Having GPIO would be good too so I have an alternate use if the android thing doesn't work out :v:

LOLOL - if you thought phone companies were bad about updating, the Android images for ARM SBCs are terrible. Save yourself the pain and suffering and buy a used phone for a second device.

GeneralZod
May 28, 2003

Kneel before Zod!
Grimey Drawer
Is there a list anywhere of external 2.5 inch USB hard drives that can definitely be used, unpowered, with later-model Raspberry Pis (e.g. 3B+; 4)? It's weirdly hard to find a definite answer to whether a given model will work - all I ever see is guesswork and speculation.

To start off, I've been using the 2Tb version of this for ages with my 3B+ with no difficulties.

This guy claims that the WD My Passport Ultra 4 TB Portable Hard Drive is similarly tested-working.

I'm wondering specifically about the WD 5TB My Passport Portable Hard Drive - has anyone tried it with a recent Pi? I won't be using any other USB devices with it.

MikusR
Jan 5, 2008

GeneralZod posted:

Is there a list anywhere of external 2.5 inch USB hard drives that can definitely be used, unpowered, with later-model Raspberry Pis (e.g. 3B+; 4)? It's weirdly hard to find a definite answer to whether a given model will work - all I ever see is guesswork and speculation.

At least on pi4 (if you are using the official or comparable powerbrick) all of them.

Kassad
Nov 12, 2005

It's about time.
Here's something nice: Introducing Raspberry Pi Imager, our new imaging utility

quote:

From today, Raspberry Pi users will be able to download and use the new Raspberry Pi Imager, available for Windows, macOS and Ubuntu.

The utility is simple to use and super speedy, thanks to some shortcuts we’ve introduced into the mechanics.

Firstly, Raspberry Pi Imager downloads a .JSON file from our website with a list of all current download options, ensuring you are always installing the most up-to-date version.

Once you’ve selected an operating system from the available options, the utility reads the relevant file directly from our website and writes it straight to the SD card. This speeds up the process quite considerably compared to the standard process of reading it from the website, writing it to a file on your hard drive, and then, as a separate step, reading it back from the hard drive and writing it to the SD card.

During this process, Raspberry Pi Imager also caches the downloaded operating system image – that is to say, it saves a local copy on your computer, so you can program additional SD cards without having to download the file again.

Warbird
May 23, 2012

America's Favorite Dumbass

That’s pretty neat. I’ll try it out once they flesh it out a bit more with the Pibakery stuff like setting up WPAconf files and other bits and bops.

Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius
Is this really an issue? You already just download noobs, copy it to an SD card, and turn on the Pi to start setting it up. When I first started reading through, I was expecting something that would let you choose things you want installed on the Pi so you could just pick things and then it would set them up when installing so you don't have mess with figuring out weird settings and linux config files. This just seems like they took one step out of an already easy process.

ante
Apr 9, 2005

SUNSHINE AND RAINBOWS
I really really want something that just gets plugged into the network and automatically provisions itself and then tells me its IP

The closest I've got is DietPi and a handful of bash scripts, which, I guess isn't the worst.

Yeah, that tool literally already exists for other stuff - the PINE64 Etcher is Balena Etcher with that automatic download built in. That looks exactly like what they just did.

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Raygereio
Nov 12, 2012
Yeah, this seems to me like a solution for a problem that didn't exist.
I never felt that going to https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ and downloading the image was such a complex task that I needed that to be automated. It's neat that it exist and all, but I'm wondering who the intended audience is. :shrug:

Raygereio fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Mar 5, 2020

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