In it they say "Back in March, we explained that the 3+ platform is the final iteration of the “classic” Raspberry Pi", I've tried finding the corresponding blog post but didn't have any luck. Does anyone know where I can read more about this ? I'm interested in hearing more about their need for "new core silicon, on a new process node, with new memory technology".
I gave up on using raspberry pi after it destroyed several expensive micro SD cards. The device is amazing, but the dependence on brittle micro SD is a deal breaker for me. I just want to boot over USB with no micro SD. Have they solved this issue?
First: Your SD cards are most probably not destroyed, but have corrupt file system due to the unsafe shutdown.
Second: You can boot from USB with no micro SD with latest firmware. RPI will look first for SD card and then try to boot from USB if no SD card is found. You can even set a one-time-programmable (OTP) bit to skip SD card lookup.
About 5 years ago, I was running a startup that had Raspberry Pis (we really need a better plural) deployed to numerous customers, and SD card corruption was a big problem. If I remember correctly the problem generally happened when there was a power loss during writes to the SD card.
I ended up creating a RAM disk and only writing to that. Once every 5 minutes or so I would flush anything that needed to be permanent to a partition on the SD card. And once every hour I'd save anything really important to an s3 bucket. SQLite also performed much better running in memory than it did directly from on the SD card.
That mostly solved the problem, but I still shipped every unit with an extra SD card and instructions on swapping it out just in case.
SD-card corruption is a real problem on RPi (see OpenHAB forums). Supposedly the SD-card driver is not the greatest which together with the system's design makes writes fail silently. This cost is half a day once, since we did not understand what was going on with a config not being persisted over reboots.
Mounting root read only and only writing explicitly through the "ro/re" scripts helps a lot and should be the default IMO.
The biggest issue some people have with RPis though, is their hackish software, e.g. the kernel. This has become better apparently, but it always was a shame that you couldn't just run a generic kernel/distro.
I had good experiences with the BeagleBoneBlack, they come with eMMC and quite a few smart additions (e.g. a power button). Twice as expensive though.
Folks have associated corrupt SD cards to overclocking, all the way to stating outright that overclocking will corrupt your SD card 100% of the time, if used long enough.
So, if you're overclocking, don't do that if you're using SD cards.
With Pi firmware newer than late 2016 (if I recall) you can write a file to an SD card that sets a bit in NVRAM somewhere telling it to boot to USB from that point onwards, and then you can operate without that SD card or any other going forward. Thumb drives are usually faster and more durable than SD cards.
May not be related to your particular issue, but many instances I have seen where people report SD corruption were due to running the Pi off of USB hub/port power only (essentially underpowered) instead of from a wall plug -> USB power adapter.
Been running daily for a couple of years now as a Pi-hole with no SD corruption (3B+ model). Still using the same card as I had in the beginning as well (Samsung Evo)
Where I work we have many PI 1 and PI 3 in our facility. They have been running for almost 3 years, 24/7, 365 days a year. We got a few instances of corrupted cards so, about 6 months ago, in order to reduce writes on the cards, we decided to reduce logging done by our software running on them, and they have been working perfectly since then.
Urgh we have a fleet of Pi units and this is a common issue for us, particularly in buildings with dodgy power supplies. I've got a Beaglebone Black to test out as a gradual replacement, as that has enough built-in storage for us to use.
I had many problems with my RPi2 not booting after reboot. I had to unplug it, get SD card out, fsck and clean dirty bit and hope that it would boot. Got to making backup image every week.
I had some unstable power (not affecting any other home electronics) and was looking in some UPS hat but opted to go security DVR way. Bought 7Ah battery and 70W buffer PSU[1] and DC-DC 12V to 5V supply[2].
Could not be more happy. Random problems with SD cards are gone. Only thing to add is some battery voltage sensing to gracefully shutdown RPi in case of longer power outage.
Thus, I can tell that many problems with RPi may come from inadequate PSU.
You still need an SD card in there but all it needs is a bootloader and a config file that allows booting from USB. You can make the /boot partition read only so there's no chance of it being screwed up. SD cards do suck but at least they are cheap enough now that you can keep some low capacity ones with bootloaders installed on hand.
I believe the Alpine Linux install for the RPi runs in memory with ability to call `lbu_commit` to update the SD card. I haven't tried it yet but hopefully will have it going by tomorrow.
I built a pi into an arcade cabinet and switch it off via a power switch only bevause I felt it would be easier to just replace cards now and then than to make some soft-shutdown signal from the switch or similar. After thousands of cycles I still have no issues with it. Could it be that when only running emulators the system just doesn’t write much and without writing the there isn’t much corruption?
Somehow I've been super lucky. I've got a Pi B+ that has been running nonstop in my garage for years as a security camera. It doesn't have any kind of battery backup, though power outages here are pretty rare. I've also got a rev 1 model B set up with an RTLSDR dongle to log readings from my gas meter. Same situation.
This board has been extremely versatile and super affordable for a long time now. I'm really happy they made this new version. I think it's sleek nature will absolutely come in handy in some of the projects that I am going to be working on in the future. Great job!
> Plus, like its sibling, the whole board is certified as a radio module under FCC rules, which will significantly reduce the cost of conformance testing Raspberry Pi–based products.
The problem I encountered was not FCC testing of the device, but that I could not mass-manufacture my pi-based prototype because the chips required huge bulk quantity purchasing to be feasible. We had to develop a brand new device based off beaglebone that was more available for a run of 10-50k. (I'll never do that again, either..)
I occasionally have a fantasy about Apple putting their latest
A-X chip on a SBC form factor for $50 and open sourcing the drivers and letting people go nuts with it.
It's one of those things that will never ever happen because we don't live in a perfect universe.
Closest one I know of is the RockPro64 (https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=61454), iirc it starts at $59 (2GB RAM) but you need to add the cost for a PSU, eMMC, an eMMC flasher, a heatspreader, etc to that.
I have a Dragonboard 410c, which was based on what was a good smartphone SoC at the time. A downside was certain features like GPS and Bluetooth only worked on Android, not Linux. I realized one of the biggest advantages of the Raspberry Pi over similar and even more powerful <$100 single board computers is its huge community.
i think such a thing would simply be impractical from a line of business perspective: if I'm going to spend the time/money developing a great soc I'm not going to give it away at cost (which would lead to never recovering dev costs)
I think a "Thunderberry Pi" version with 2 thunderbolt ports instead of power, usb-a and rj45 would be really sweet for hobby purposes and provide a neat way to learn more about that tech
Pretty sure the 4 usb ports and ethernet were all being fed from one root usb controller port via a hub and usb ethernet bridge. You can easily add what they removed if you need it, or pay the $10 extra for the bigger board.
[+] [-] Ixio|7 years ago|reply
In it they say "Back in March, we explained that the 3+ platform is the final iteration of the “classic” Raspberry Pi", I've tried finding the corresponding blog post but didn't have any luck. Does anyone know where I can read more about this ? I'm interested in hearing more about their need for "new core silicon, on a new process node, with new memory technology".
[+] [-] tantalor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pulse7|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] learc83|7 years ago|reply
I ended up creating a RAM disk and only writing to that. Once every 5 minutes or so I would flush anything that needed to be permanent to a partition on the SD card. And once every hour I'd save anything really important to an s3 bucket. SQLite also performed much better running in memory than it did directly from on the SD card.
That mostly solved the problem, but I still shipped every unit with an extra SD card and instructions on swapping it out just in case.
[+] [-] bipson|7 years ago|reply
Mounting root read only and only writing explicitly through the "ro/re" scripts helps a lot and should be the default IMO.
The biggest issue some people have with RPis though, is their hackish software, e.g. the kernel. This has become better apparently, but it always was a shame that you couldn't just run a generic kernel/distro.
I had good experiences with the BeagleBoneBlack, they come with eMMC and quite a few smart additions (e.g. a power button). Twice as expensive though.
[+] [-] FredFS456|7 years ago|reply
You can also PXE boot without an SD card, which may be best for file system durability.
[+] [-] naikrovek|7 years ago|reply
So, if you're overclocking, don't do that if you're using SD cards.
With Pi firmware newer than late 2016 (if I recall) you can write a file to an SD card that sets a bit in NVRAM somewhere telling it to boot to USB from that point onwards, and then you can operate without that SD card or any other going forward. Thumb drives are usually faster and more durable than SD cards.
[+] [-] kup0|7 years ago|reply
Been running daily for a couple of years now as a Pi-hole with no SD corruption (3B+ model). Still using the same card as I had in the beginning as well (Samsung Evo)
[+] [-] zemnl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KindOne|7 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16776344
[+] [-] robotmay|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tau255|7 years ago|reply
I had some unstable power (not affecting any other home electronics) and was looking in some UPS hat but opted to go security DVR way. Bought 7Ah battery and 70W buffer PSU[1] and DC-DC 12V to 5V supply[2].
Could not be more happy. Random problems with SD cards are gone. Only thing to add is some battery voltage sensing to gracefully shutdown RPi in case of longer power outage.
Thus, I can tell that many problems with RPi may come from inadequate PSU.
1. I have similar https://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=SCP... 2. https://www.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=SD-...
[+] [-] moftz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abawany|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alkonaut|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forty|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forinti|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Theizestooke|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heywire|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alinspired|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monochromatic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akoster|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melling|7 years ago|reply
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/intel-to-make-thunde...
Smaller devices could use a smaller and faster port.
[+] [-] kristofferR|7 years ago|reply
It's beginning to look like an outright lie at this point.
[+] [-] nerdponx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emilfihlman|7 years ago|reply
EMMC, wireless and some way to connect a camera (usb or CSI) would be perfect.
[+] [-] binomialxenon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FactolSarin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garysahota93|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cabaalis|7 years ago|reply
The problem I encountered was not FCC testing of the device, but that I could not mass-manufacture my pi-based prototype because the chips required huge bulk quantity purchasing to be feasible. We had to develop a brand new device based off beaglebone that was more available for a run of 10-50k. (I'll never do that again, either..)
[+] [-] coob|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jandrese|7 years ago|reply
It's one of those things that will never ever happen because we don't live in a perfect universe.
[+] [-] nordsieck|7 years ago|reply
This might be your best bet.
https://www.96boards.org/product/hikey970/
You're going to have to work harder if you want to use IO pins, but it claims it comes with some.
> One 40-pin Low Speed (LS) expansion connector UART, SPI, I2S, I2C x2, GPIO x12
[+] [-] lorenzhs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ac29|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rebelgecko|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ridiculous_fish|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Unklejoe|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlevental|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb808|7 years ago|reply
Is there a mini RJ45 connector yet? That would benefit from shrinking too.
[+] [-] ben174|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brod|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kumarvvr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epynonymous|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 51lver|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjoff|7 years ago|reply
But I will always miss wired ethernet.
[+] [-] rbirkby|7 years ago|reply