The Raspberry Pi Thread

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Endgame124

Senior member
Feb 11, 2008
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The Raspberry Pi Foundation has just released the Pi 4 Compute module - its a Pi 4 that is cut down for more industrial use (ex, no integrated ports) and due to this is more power efficient than the Pi 4 B.


I'm checking on the official forums to see if there is an easy way to do Power of Ethernet on these new compute modules. If so, I'll probably pickup a PoE switch and play with it a little bit, as more power efficiency and a buy in starting at $25 per compute module is very, very appealing.
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
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Arm on Linux / Raspberry Pi Supported Projects
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php
-Amicable numbers
-Asteroids
-Einstein
-LHC
-Radioactive
-Rosetta
-Universe
-World Community Grid
-Yoyo
-iThena
-MLC@Home
-RakeSearch (currently without work for its ARM application)
-TN-Grid (not listed at boinc.berkeley.edu)

For widest project support, a 64bit Linux with 32bit binary compatibility support is needed.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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Okay guys, I want to setup a pi hole on my network.
I’m going to go with a pi 4/4GB because microcenter....
Flic case
Pi 4 “official” charger
The hdmi mini to normal converter cord thingy
I know I’ll need at least a 32GB memory card, do I need one that has noobs pre-loaded? I am sort of confused about this part
What else will I need?
Could someone be kind enough to explain loading the OS part to me.

I’ll probably wire it to my network, I have cat 4 or5 cable lying around somewhere. Even if I do not the WiFi range will be a less than 10 feet from the router.
 

Endgame124

Senior member
Feb 11, 2008
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Okay guys, I want to setup a pi hole on my network.
I’m going to go with a pi 4/4GB because microcenter....
Flic case
Pi 4 “official” charger
The hdmi mini to normal converter cord thingy
I know I’ll need at least a 32GB memory card, do I need one that has noobs pre-loaded? I am sort of confused about this part
What else will I need?
Could someone be kind enough to explain loading the OS part to me.

I’ll probably wire it to my network, I have cat 4 or5 cable lying around somewhere. Even if I do not the WiFi range will be a less than 10 feet from the router.
You do not need noobs pre loaded - noobs is a full desktop OS and completely unnecessary for an appliance like pi hole.

i would use raspbian lite. Follow this guide - you’ll need SD card writer too:https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/

given my personal experience with how verbose pi hole logs, you may want to consider a 64gb card. They aren’t that expensive, and it will last longer.

after pi-hole is setup, you’ll need to point your router / hosts to the pi-hole for dns resolution.

since you’re in the distributed computing forum, you should also configure it to run WCG open pandemics :)
 
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Feb 4, 2009
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You do not need noobs pre loaded - noobs is a full desktop OS and completely unnecessary for an appliance like pi hole.

i would use raspbian lite. Follow this guide - you’ll need SD card writer too:https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/

given my personal experience with how verbose pi hole logs, you may want to consider a 64gb card. They aren’t that expensive, and it will last longer.

after pi-hole is setup, you’ll need to point your router / hosts to the pi-hole for dns resolution.

since you’re in the distributed computing forum, you should also configure it to run WCG open pandemics :)

I suspected the extra storage was worth a few dollars. I plan on this card but do you think a Samsung high endurance (I believe it rewrites for a longer duty cycle before failure) is a better option, it’s like $5 more for same storage but I think the read/write speed is slower.

 

Endgame124

Senior member
Feb 11, 2008
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Looks like the Samsung endurance is $10 cheaper than the Sandisk during the current sale. I would go with the samsung and save the money.

The endurance drive would likely be ideal. You don't need high speed for pihole.
 

Fardringle

Diamond Member
Oct 23, 2000
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If anyone is still interested in using low power devices for distributed computing, this Odroid N2+ might be an interesting option. It has a quad core Cortex A73 processor (Raspberry PI 4 is A72) and a dual core Cortex A53 and allows overclocking of the A73 up to 2.4Ghz. Has a pretty big heat sink built in as well.

4GB RAM so it might not work for projects that need a lot of RAM, but most ARM applications don't.

Reviews I've seen claim that it's about twice as fast as the Raspberry Pi 4 at stock speeds..

 
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LightningZ71

Golden Member
Mar 10, 2017
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If you are really interested in maximum ARM sbc performance, you can peruse the old thread over in the CPU section for a thorough covering of the situation. For the low cost stuff, the N2+ is currently about as good as it gets. If you are still out to keep things small and "lower" energy used, but have a more generous financial budget, the Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX, at $399 for the dev kit, is the next rung up the ladder. While the N2+ has four A73 cores at between 2.2-2.4 Ghz plus a paid of A53s, the Xavier NX has three clusters with pairs of Carmel cores, which deliver similar to A75 level performance. The thermal envelope is generous, so they can sustain that performance. The memory subsystem is very good and compares favorably against all other SBCs. The integrated video is a massive Volta implementation. On top of all that, there is professional level development going on for it's Linux implementation, which is robust.

Its main drawback, as can be seen from the AT review, is that it's multi core benchmarks suffer a bit when both cores in each paired cluster are taxes by tasks that thrash the L2 cache. It's still not down to A73 levels, but it does take a hit. Still, that's six very good cores with a heap of memory bandwidth.

If money is not an issue, the Xavier AGX dev kit is $699, has eight total cores, twice the memory width and bandwidth, active cooling, and an NVME slot. The Volta section is even larger. Both Xavier's feature ML acceleration and tensor cores.

Until we start to see ex phone SOCs demoted to SBC work, I think that's as good as it gets.
 
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Endgame124

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Feb 11, 2008
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The N2+ looks interesting, but might need to investigate software ecosystem.

if money was no object, I would be trying to track down one of those 80cpu altra Servers - that should cover some serious work.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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Going to try to set up my pi hole today.
Any tips?

Also should I bother to change my pi’s password. I’ll likely use it headless.
Related: any simple guide on how to set up a headless pi? I’ve found a couple but they’re sort of complex looking.
 

pauldun170

Diamond Member
Sep 26, 2011
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Going to try to set up my pi hole today.
Any tips?

Also should I bother to change my pi’s password. I’ll likely use it headless.
Related: any simple guide on how to set up a headless pi? I’ve found a couple but they’re sort of complex looking.

Best practice is to always change default passwords (Avoids making eye contact with libreelec based raspberry pi running kodi)

Raspberry pi lite
Use the imager utility to create the SD card - https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/
(or if you want to go old school just grab it your self)

Create the SD card.
Then browse the SD card on your computer
1. Create blank file called ssh (no extension) in the boot partition

Toss it in the Raspberry pi.
Log into your router or favorite ip scanner or whatever and look for the IP address of your new friend on the network.
Using putty\winscp\ whatever....SSH into it using default id and password

-> sudo raspi-config and configure how you want it configured. Change the the hostname at least

Don't worry about static ip just yet.
You can take care of that during Pihole setup.
Run this to install pihole
curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

Take note of the address because you'll want to add them to the config on your router to both exclude it from the address pool and to register it as a dns server.

reference

That will get you up and running.
You do have options on what sort of setup you want to run.
If you do it the annoying way and manually set each device to use the pihole....I don't have words. Why would you do that?
IF you set it as the default dns on your ISP router...then it will handle all devices. Tradeoff is that you may not see device level detail in the logs.
If you also set pihole to be the DHCP server for your network, you'll get a lot more control and detail on who's on watching pron and who is about to buy land in Bolivia.


 
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Endgame124

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Feb 11, 2008
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By law I have to say it.
When setting up your pihole, always start with just the tip. Slowly work your way into getting all in.

My apologies. I have a contract.
back to adulting
Rough contract, but you gotta do what you gotta do!
 
Feb 4, 2009
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By law I have to say it.
When setting up your pihole, always start with just the tip. Slowly work your way into getting all in.

My apologies. I have a contract.
back to adulting

I’m balls deep with 85k on my block list. Overall I am satisfied with the PiHole. Few random issues like seeing an ad for something you want and link not working but it is easy enough to work around.
 
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Skillz

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Feb 14, 2014
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I’m balls deep with 85k on my block list. Overall I am satisfied with the PiHole. Few random issues like seeing an ad for something you want and link not working but it is easy enough to work around.

I hate when that happens.
 

cellarnoise

Senior member
Mar 22, 2017
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Well, just because new more powerful stuff might be out soon... And I need something low heat to play with I purchased a used Odroid N2+.

I'll try to post my future frustrations and BOINC output or whatever else I can get to run on it soon!

Please help with setup and such as I am very rusty with Unix and its derivatives!

More bitching soon!
 

Endgame124

Senior member
Feb 11, 2008
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Well, just because new more powerful stuff might be out soon... And I need something low heat to play with I purchased a used Odroid N2+.

I'll try to post my future frustrations and BOINC output or whatever else I can get to run on it soon!

Please help with setup and such as I am very rusty with Unix and its derivatives!

More bitching soon!
Odroid doesn’t benefit from any of the raspberry pi software eco system, so I’m not sure how to help on this one other than Google. Please do share once you’ve got it running though!
 

cellarnoise

Senior member
Mar 22, 2017
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Odroid doesn’t benefit from any of the raspberry pi software eco system, so I’m not sure how to help on this one other than Google. Please do share once you’ve got it running though!
Thanks! It is going to be an experience and experiment! I am reading up on the Odroid forums. Some efficiency can be gained but we shall see..

Probably lots and mostly inefficient experimentation soon......................
 

cellarnoise

Senior member
Mar 22, 2017
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So I have not been able to get Boinc running under any Linuxish O.S. yet. Such as this - https://lineageos.org/ O.s.

Let me know if I should start a new Odroid N2+ thread. I likely should.

So I bought this during this past super hot summer. To play with. From this low heat / watts perspective...
It idles at about 2.6 watts running a monitor, keyboard and mouse at idle. I noticed at cpu idle it takes almost 2 watts to run a full size LED keyboard! So I bought for it an LED single light keyboard and back to 2.6 watts.

So the Odroid N2+ overclocked at 2.4 for the 4 big cores and 2.0ish/ hurts on the 2 small cores without anything else I can find running any Boinc threads on World Community Grid that it can run as an ARM CPU and Not GPU tasks, turns out about 1,900 points at a range of 6.7 to 7.7 watts on my Killa watt/ ez. Likely averages at around 7.3 watts with a monitor, mouse, and non LED keyboard or other LEDs plugged in! I get spikes and some run time at up to 8.1 watts but it typically runs under 7.5.

I have not been able to get a linux derivatives to run Boinc yet. Only Android 11. Someone got Boinc running under a Linux container, and I need to explore that more.

The software support is fairly good so far... On the Odroid forums.

I really want this to run Boinc in the background and run NAS and other streaming software in the background. We shall see.

Already had feedback. This is about the same watts per boinc performance as a first Gen 1 Ryzen 1700. Give or take... Though this is 16nm.

I would really like to see a close to cutting edge SOC as a SBC running under 10 watts.... The N2+ is like 3 generations at least back. Most phones from past 3 to 4 years are more powerful. But I will say that this thing runs a modern desktop and browser experience just fine. Though we all know that.

I bought this case / fan combo for it. The fan kicks on in over 80 F here running full Boinc tasks about every 2 minutes for about 10 seconds and is barely audible. The case seems to help distribute heat.


This thing looks to have at least 10 times as my old NAS but is only 1 gb network, which is all I am asking at this time. I don't think this is a long term Boinc efficiency device as a Farm.
 
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cellarnoise

Senior member
Mar 22, 2017
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What Linux distro(s) have you tried? The manufacturer site says it's fully compatible with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Ubuntu 20.04 Gnome..

There's a thread at AMDUsers talking about running BOINC on ODROID products, with discussion of the ODROID-N2+ starting here: http://www.amdusers.com/forum/showt...e1af8612baf190af79df801468e&p=84449#post84449
I should have kept a log book. May o.s. installs, and many more to come I assume!

I'll keep a dedicated log book going forward. Now want to finally get Android and a Linux dual boot install on the same emmc. I have a 128 gb emmc and maybe can install 3 or 4 o.s. eventually?