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$9 Computer includes OS

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  • KeithEKeithE Posts: 957
    edited 2017-03-05 02:28
    MikeDYur wrote: »
    I have searched around for one place for information, all I can find is review sites with basically the same info. Does it have it's own organization, developer sight?

    Have you tried here: https://www.raspberrypi.org
    And make sure to checkout the magazine: https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/

    It's definitely worth picking up a Pi3 to have as a tool. A spare basically disposable linux box is nice to have. Start with Raspbian because that's the most commonly used if you need help, and then go from there. Noobs makes it really easy to set it up.
  • KeithE, Thank you.

    That is what I was lookink for, you saved me lots of time.

    Mike
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2017-03-05 15:51
    MikeDYur,
    Does it have it's own organization, developer sight?
    Wow, Mike, where have you been?

    The Pi is huge, 11 or 12 million sold in five years. All over the news all the time. The biggest thing in the "maker"/hobbyist area for years. Even picked up my major companies like NEC, WD, and Microsoft.

    The "community" is huge. Anything you need to know can probably be fathomed by a post to raspberrypi.org.

    Have fun.


  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-03-05 17:21
    Heater. wrote: »

    Wow, Mike, where have you been?

    Have fun.


    I have been a devout Propeller user, and not spent a minute learning Arduino, Rasberry Pi or any other.
    Now that I'm convinced that this is more than an MC, it did open a new world. I maybe late for the boat, but I waited for the Pi Zero to buy my ticket.
    All it will be to me is a novelty, like when I bought a Timex-Sinclair 1000 at Sear's. Couldn't believe the small package, couldn't wait to get home and play with it. And it will be just an evolution in my computer history.

    BTW: I don't know how you guy's can jump from one platform to another. Coding one language is enough to confuse me.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Ah, there is the thing. I would not class a Pi and an MCU. It's a totally different thing. Each has it's place. And I think they can work well together in some applications.
  • Mike - just snoop around those foundation pages. Look through a couple of the magazines, and notice that they also have some freely available books e.g. "Conquer The Command Line" and "Learn to Code with C". If you've never used a Linux box then it might be confusing, but there is a ton of educational material to help you out and very active forums. And it's likely that the skills you develop can apply to much larger platforms.
  • K2K2 Posts: 691
    The bare Pi Zero W is in stock again at Pimoroni:
    Thanks Leon, Bought one...that's all they will let you buy.
    Until I can buy multiple units in one shipment, there is no Zero.
    This is tomfoolery at its most irksome. How many more months
    or years will this perpetual 'shortage' continue? It's pure marketing
    gimmickry.

    Fortunately there are real RPi boards, Next Thing boards, etc.

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    It's not "tomfoolery" or "gimmickery". It's a charitable (non-profit) foundation making and selling an ultra cheap little computer for next to no profit. Which is quite inline with their charter and I would say jolly nice of them.

    For professionals and commercial use there is the Raspberry Pi Compute Module. Or you can get custom Pi made by at least one of the major distributors. Or you can use a regular Pi.

    For them to ramp up production, thus displacing income generating models from the production capacity, just to provide the world with cheap computers for no net revenue would be silly.

    There is of course an ocean of other SBC manufacturers in the world who would love to have volume orders from you.
  • > How many more months or years will this perpetual 'shortage' continue? It's pure marketing gimmickry.



    Supposedly the production of the Zero W has been ramped up to 25K per week for the Zero W. If that stays constant that's about 1.3 million/year.

    Is that enough? Who knows, but if you compare to the 12M in 5 years that Heater quoted earlier, then it's not enough volume to match that demand. But I have no idea what the demand is for this configuration. Some people are probably curious about the latest and their demand might drop off.
  • Heater. wrote: »
    KeithE,
    My question would be when do you want something like a Pi, and when do you want something simpler? For example an Espruino or ESP8266 running micropython or javascript.
    That is what engineering is all about. Everything is a trade off, there is no perfect solution. There are optimal solutions. One has to way up cost, size, power consumption, reliability, ease of development, etc. If you are lucky the optimal solution you find has value. Else you have a dead product.

    A Pi might be great if you need to run huge programs at speed. Need networking or HDMI display, or a camera. Need lots of data storage space. Need a full up operating system with GUI and all.

    An Espruino or ESP might be great if you need small size, low power, not so big application code, not so fast.

    A Propeller might be great if you have need speed input/output with tight timing deadlines.

    Horses for courses as they say. You decide what your project needs.

    Of course your solution may end up using a combination of devices. For example a Pi for the heavy operating system and user interface, a Propeller for that speed sensitive I/O.

    Remote update of a Pi is a bit problematic. Yes you can SSH into it's Raspbian operating system and do and "apt-get upgrade" but that has been known to fail. If you want more robustness you might want to run OpenWRT on the Pi instead of Raspbian.



    Thank you for this small comparison/usage. Should be stickied somewhere.

    i was starting to be lost between µC and µP. and i was wondering why should i learn to code for propeller if i can get everything from a Pi0wifi.
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-03-06 16:01
    At nearly a 2Amp requirement for the Pi Zero W, it isn't a good choice for a battery only project. Any examples I have seen so far do a good job of hiding the power cable. This is not a good choice for a robot controller, as it is better equipped for another job. Running all the aspects of computer system.
    For a good robot controller you need low power consumption, and a minimal hardware overhead. Only employing systems as needed, things like HDMI isn't a huge requirement for Someones servo driven robot.
    On the other hand you can put I/O on your desktop computer, but leaving that running 24/7 may not be desirable. So there is the difference between the MCU and MPU.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    There is no way a Pi Zero is sucking 2 Amps. That would be 10 watts. That is as two thirds the power of my soldering iron. The thing would melt itself!

    I'm very sure the supply is over spec'ed to cater for USB devices plugged in and transient loads. I would expect a Zero on it's own to consume substantially less. I have not measured it myself but this guy reckons on 120mA (with WIFI). Only 0.7 watts. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/raspberry-pi-zero-power

    While not a very low power device it may be fine for a robot, especially if most of your battery power is used in driving motors.
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-03-06 16:21
    Thanks for that. The information I was referring to was the for the official wall wart for the Raspberry Pi. And that was taking in account of USB power @.5A. Still something you wouldn't power by battery only, for extended periods.

    If you don't need WiFi or some other network adapter, disable the ACT/PWR LED,follow these other Pi energy-saving tips, and use a 2,000+ mAh battery pack (like one of the cheap ones you can get for phone charging), you can probably eke out a day's worth of Pi Zero usage, or more.


    Somewhere I read that general I/O pins can sink a 100mA.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    MikeDYur,
    Somewhere I read that general I/O pins can sink a 100mA.
    No idea. Sounds a bit high to be safe though. But if you are attaching devices that suck 100ma, directly or indirectly, that is hardly the Zero's fault now is it?
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-03-06 16:49
    Heater. wrote: »
    No idea. Sounds a bit high to be safe though. But if you are attaching devices that suck 100ma, directly or indirectly, that is hardly the Zero's fault now is it?

    No, neither is the half Amp on USB, but that is why it's power requirements are that high. Was it meant to have all this battery powered baggage. People are wired down who use this with their HDMI TV monitor. Yes it's small, but overkill for a mobile robot. Then again is the camera port, and how this is ready to go for that. Facial, voice recognition and synthesis require a lot of processing. So were talking a whole different breed of robot. I can see possibility's, especially with the Propeller carrying it's load.
  • If you search, then you can find power measurements for the Pi.

    Foundation link:

    https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#powerReqs

    Unofficial, but perhaps interesting to stimulate thought:

    http://raspi.tv/2017/how-much-power-does-pi-zero-w-use
    (Pi3B vs Pi2B measurements don't seem right? I asked.)

    This last one discusses some settings to reduce power consumption - e.g. disable HDMI, LEDS,...

    https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-consumption

  • This has other possibilities, a display would be better than that little breadboard.

    https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/propeller-hat
    1024 x 1024 - 212K
  • K2K2 Posts: 691
    Heater. wrote: »
    For them to ramp up production, thus displacing income generating models from the production capacity, just to provide the world with cheap computers for no net revenue would be silly.
    Seems silly to provide them at all. How to you base meaningful decisions on the moment-by-moment status of a favor?
    There is of course an ocean of other SBC manufacturers in the world who would love to have volume orders from you.
    Yup. I may even have alluded to that in my post.

  • K2K2 Posts: 691
    KeithE wrote: »
    Supposedly the production of the Zero W has been ramped up to 25K per week for the Zero W. If that stays constant that's about 1.3 million/year.

    Is that enough? Who knows, but if you compare to the 12M in 5 years that Heater quoted earlier, then it's not enough volume to match that demand. But I have no idea what the demand is for this configuration. Some people are probably curious about the latest and their demand might drop off.

    Excellent information. Thanks!!

  • REALY? A "Computer" that requires another system in order to do an update?

    Kool idea though, even if they chose a closedwinner (AllWinner) SoC, that is kind of useless to any ARM user that does not want Linux on there ARM.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    K2,
    Seems silly to provide them at all.
    How so? Hundreds of thousands of people are having fun with the Pi Zero.
    How to you base meaningful decisions on the moment-by-moment status of a favor?
    Perhaps you don't. No more than you base meaningful decisions on those special offers at the supermarket.

    Take it for what it is. Or find something more meaningful if you need that.


  • Bill HenningBill Henning Posts: 6,445
    edited 2017-03-08 21:41
    Not even close.

    ALL the Pi's 3v3 I/O pins in total can sink/source 16mA, so be careful how much power you draw from GPIO.

    I saw your other message re/ servo's etc - you may wish to check out RoboPi at http://RoboPi.com (my Propeller based robot controller for the Pi (commercial product))
    MikeDYur wrote: »
    Somewhere I read that general I/O pins can sink a 100mA.

  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-03-08 22:33
    Not even close.

    ALL the Pi's 3v3 I/O pins in total can sink/source 16mA, so be careful how much power you draw from GPIO.

    I saw your other message re/ servo's etc - you may wish to check out RoboPi at http://RoboPi.com (my Propeller based robot controller for the Pi (commercial product))
    MikeDYur wrote: »
    Somewhere I read that general I/O pins can sink a 100mA.



    I must be thinking about an add-on board for the Pi zero. 16mA is not very much. Where is the rest of the power requirements going. If USB gets .5A power out, do the radio's consume a lot?


    EDIT: RoboPi is a very handy looking board, well I just remembered seeing that before, I definitely would rather have something like that, definitely a capable board, a lot of connection points at your disposal. Well I'm still waiting to see what this Pi thing is all about, I have NOOBS ready and waiting.
  • I was talking about OTA earlier in the thread, and then stumbled across this for {Espressif Systems ESP8266 & ESP32, TI CC3200, ST Microelectronics STM32 Nucleo F746ZG & Discovery F746G}

    https://mongoose-os.com

    Over-the-air (OTA) updates with rollbacks on failure, healthcheck, delayed commit
    Remote device management
    Code in C or JavaScript
    Secure boot & full flash encryption on ESP32
    etcetera

    Seems interesting. Free to use if you license under GPLv2.

    Does anyone know the history of this development? Looks like Cesanta is in Dublin Ireland.
  • Basically, on a Pi3, with WiFi on, keeping GPU+CPU 100% you can easily use 1.5A-2A

    Add a USB powered laptop drive, keyboard dongle etc, and you could reach 2.5A+

    Pi 0 (the older one without WiFi) really only needs 150-250mA + whatever peripherals connected to it need.

    I have reviews of a buch of Pi (and other SBC's) and I generally provide power consumption figures in them:

    http://www.mikronauts.com/all-single-board-computer-reviews/

    The 100mA limit was most likely from some driver board, UNL2803 or similar, not the bare GPIO pins.

    Thank you for your kind words :) (re: RoboPi)
    MikeDYur wrote: »
    I must be thinking about an add-on board for the Pi zero. 16mA is not very much. Where is the rest of the power requirements going. If USB gets .5A power out, do the radio's consume a lot?


    EDIT: RoboPi is a very handy looking board, well I just remembered seeing that before, I definitely would rather have something like that, definitely a capable board, a lot of connection points at your disposal. Well I'm still waiting to see what this Pi thing is all about, I have NOOBS ready and waiting.
    [/quote]

  • xanaduxanadu Posts: 3,347
    edited 2017-03-09 18:21
    If you want to see air traffic, this is good fun for your Pi. The USB radios use a lot of juice, the entire thing will cost ya ~2 amp.

    http://stratux.me
  • Thanks for the info guys.

    Got my Pi Zero WiFi today. The board is smaller than I imagined, nice quality including connectors. Ten bucks well spent on a computer, now to see if it works. Going to power it from this 12V lighter adapter, it's rated at 2.1A from a single port. And hopefully build my OS on a 4Gb micro SD. I will have to get an 8Gb next time I get to the store. The wireless antenna doesn't hardly take up any space at all, and it doesn’t look like it has to have any special requirements for placement. It's sitting right next to the processor. I have to hunt up a HDMI cable and copy NOOBS on the SD, and see what the(my) excitement is all about.
    2048 x 1152 - 806K
    2048 x 1152 - 647K
  • Mike - I'm not sure that you'll be able to install Raspbian (via NOOBS) on a 4 GB card. Typically 8 GB or more is recommended. Just wanted to mention this in case it blows up in a confusing way.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Forget NOOBS.

    What you want is Raspbian.

    I'm horrified if Rapbian needs 8GB. To be honest I have not checked.

    But really, back in the day I installed Linux, with X Windows, KDE, Mozilla and all on a 1GB hard drive and still had half the space free.

  • KeithE wrote: »
    Mike - I'm not sure that you'll be able to install Raspbian (via NOOBS) on a 4 GB card. Typically 8 GB or more is recommended. Just wanted to mention this in case it blows up in a confusing way.

    Don't say blow up! Bad bad word's.

    I may have to wait to go to the store anyway. I think I sold all my HDMI cables at the flea market. I had at least a half dozen of different lengths. Went a little overboard on selling some stuff, now I'm going to have to buy one. Buy high, sell low, buy high, it's not supposed to work that way.


    Heater. wrote: »
    Forget NOOBS.

    What you want is Raspbian.


    I picked up NOOBS on McDs wifi wile I was in town the other day, and was going to get Rasbian to, but I had finished my lunch and drank a cup of coffee during the first download, it took forever there.

    I'll install Raspbian, I read somewhere NOOBS was for someone who has no experience with an OS.
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