Pi in the face
Oct. 7th, 2019 02:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psipsyGetting into the whole Rasberry Pi thing again. I already have a few of them, plus a TinkerBoard from Asus. Since they're inexpensive and the local MicroCenter carries them, they're easy to get.
What does a Pi have to offer? The base computer (board with CPU, RAM, connections, networking, video) sells for less than a tank of gas, they boot off a microSD card, they're powered by phone chargers, they fit in the palm of a hand, and the feature that put them on the map, the GPIO header. Performance? They're up to quad-core CPUs with 4GB of RAM. However, it's not going to replace more conventional computers anytime soon.
For one thing, the ability to boot off a microSD card is both a strength and a weakness. The flash memory used in those cards is relatively slow; as in about that of older IDE hard drives, and they're designed for cameras, where it might see a few dozen write cycles at most. They're not suitable for long-term use for a desktop OS, as opposed to something like an SSD or even a mechanical hard drive. Oh, and they don't come with an RTC (real time clock), so when the thing is powered off and back on, the clock will need adjusted each time, at least until an RTC is installed. That was intentionally left out, in order to keep the price down and the form factor small.
For the sake of doing basic desktop tasks, they can work. For anything processor-intensive, I wouldn't push them. But that's not why I'm poking at them. Remember what I said about the GPIO header? That's their selling point. The ability to connect home-brew circuits to them, to drive something or sense something or both. That's where they get interesting.
The TinkerBoard is similar to the Pi. The options for operating systems are either whatever version of Debian that Asus tweaked to run on their hardware, or whatever version of Android that Asus tweaked to run on their hardware. Their version of Debian needs a bit of work.
Meanwhile! I got an RPi 3 B+ running Kodi, and it has Airplay functionality. The audio output is weak; I had to turn up the external speakers all the way. Then again there's circuitry available for the purpose of amplifying that. Which means if I need to or want to, I can build my own Airplay devices. The things could have their own built-in speakers, and a small display for status or what's currrently playing.
I've also started to look at microcontrollers. They're miniature and limited-function CPUs, which can be programmed to do a handful of tasks. It can replace a more complex array of discrete logic gates, resulting in a much smaller circuit. Good for when even an Arduino would be overkill.
More ideas are brewing.
What does a Pi have to offer? The base computer (board with CPU, RAM, connections, networking, video) sells for less than a tank of gas, they boot off a microSD card, they're powered by phone chargers, they fit in the palm of a hand, and the feature that put them on the map, the GPIO header. Performance? They're up to quad-core CPUs with 4GB of RAM. However, it's not going to replace more conventional computers anytime soon.
For one thing, the ability to boot off a microSD card is both a strength and a weakness. The flash memory used in those cards is relatively slow; as in about that of older IDE hard drives, and they're designed for cameras, where it might see a few dozen write cycles at most. They're not suitable for long-term use for a desktop OS, as opposed to something like an SSD or even a mechanical hard drive. Oh, and they don't come with an RTC (real time clock), so when the thing is powered off and back on, the clock will need adjusted each time, at least until an RTC is installed. That was intentionally left out, in order to keep the price down and the form factor small.
For the sake of doing basic desktop tasks, they can work. For anything processor-intensive, I wouldn't push them. But that's not why I'm poking at them. Remember what I said about the GPIO header? That's their selling point. The ability to connect home-brew circuits to them, to drive something or sense something or both. That's where they get interesting.
The TinkerBoard is similar to the Pi. The options for operating systems are either whatever version of Debian that Asus tweaked to run on their hardware, or whatever version of Android that Asus tweaked to run on their hardware. Their version of Debian needs a bit of work.
Meanwhile! I got an RPi 3 B+ running Kodi, and it has Airplay functionality. The audio output is weak; I had to turn up the external speakers all the way. Then again there's circuitry available for the purpose of amplifying that. Which means if I need to or want to, I can build my own Airplay devices. The things could have their own built-in speakers, and a small display for status or what's currrently playing.
I've also started to look at microcontrollers. They're miniature and limited-function CPUs, which can be programmed to do a handful of tasks. It can replace a more complex array of discrete logic gates, resulting in a much smaller circuit. Good for when even an Arduino would be overkill.
More ideas are brewing.
