[HN Gopher] Raspberry Pi 5 has no hardware video encoding and on...
___________________________________________________________________
Raspberry Pi 5 has no hardware video encoding and only HEVC
decoding
Author : InsomniacL
Score : 297 points
Date : 2023-10-30 12:47 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.raspberrypi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.raspberrypi.com)
| giantrobot wrote:
| The title doesn't seem to match the content. The comments are
| talking about hardware accelerated _encode_ but I didn 't see
| anything about accelerated _decode_ being dropped.
| devl547 wrote:
| Official specs only state 4Kp60 HEVC decoder
|
| So no encoders and no h.264 decoder.
| orra wrote:
| Interesting. Thankfully, LibreElec think the Raspberry Pi 5
| is strictly better, despite shifting to software decoding:
|
| > BCM2712 supports HEVC 4K60 hardware decoding. It no longer
| supports H264 in hardware. This might sound odd but it
| removes the RPi4's 1080p restriction on H264 decoding and the
| 4K H264 test media we have has played. The big increase in
| performance from the Quad-Core A76 chip means RPi5 can
| software decode AV1, H264, VC1, VP9, and more at 1080p with
| ease
|
| https://libreelec.tv/2023/09/28/rpi5-support/
| MikusR wrote:
| https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?p=2138929#p2138...
|
| "JPEG and H264 encode and decode is now in software"
| michaelt wrote:
| _> "Actually only 4kp60 H265 (HEVC) decode is available
|
| > But it only uses 50% of the processors to do 1080p60 on
| YouTube"_
|
| https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/...
| InsomniacL wrote:
| The information is spread over multiple comments, I could only
| link to one comment and thought just linking to the main
| article would be confusing as the article itself doesn't
| mention it.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's somewhat understandable, but still a bit disappointing.
| Not all playback devices support HEVC, and additionally HEVC will
| likely remain patent-encumbered much longer than e.g. H.264.
|
| I really wish there was at least one other and open hardware-
| accelerated format. It's probably a bit too early for AV1, but
| VP9 would work with modern iOS and Android devices, for example.
|
| I also wonder how much licensing costs were a concern here,
| although past RPis had software-unlockable codecs for that exact
| reason.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| They say elsewhere that the quality and usability of them did
| not meet what they considered reasonable for the mm^2 of die
| space required.
| lxgr wrote:
| Ah, yes, I do agree on the quality - it certainly can't
| compete in any way with high-quality software or dedicated
| encoders.
|
| But arguably it doesn't have to; many real-time applications
| (e.g. surveillance cameras) have local bandwidth to spare
| and/or don't care too highly about quality, and compatibility
| with older viewing devices without re-encoding is a priority.
| franga2000 wrote:
| If compatibility is a priority and bandwidth isn't an
| issue, MJPEG is still the way to go and is by far the most
| common encoding I see in security cameras.
| _flux wrote:
| On the other hand you could get cool stuff from the video
| encoding hardware, such as access to motion vectors on
| the cheap: https://github.com/osmaa/pinymotion
|
| I wonder though if the OpenGL ES3.1 compute could be used
| for this purpose on it.
| franga2000 wrote:
| Oh wow, this is such a great hack!
| garaetjjte wrote:
| I think nobody used MJPEG in last 15 years.
| lxgr wrote:
| Well, GP just shared that it's still widely used within
| security cameras?
|
| It's also the only compressed format supported by many
| popular webcams, e.g. Logitech's C900 series ever since
| they removed H.264.
|
| Digital cinema projectors apparently also use it (well,
| the JPEG2000 variant) exclusively since MPEG-2 was
| deprecated:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Package
| its-summertime wrote:
| If bandwidth ain't much of an issue, can just dump frames
| to a separate device for encoding, aside, Can't imagine
| someone using a pi 5 just for camera usage (aside from
| projects needing cameras)
| InsomniacL wrote:
| I was hoping to use RPI5 as an NVR with image detection
| for Home Automation.
|
| The Frigate add-on with Home Assistant can publish events
| based on image detection for automations and supports
| RPI3 / RPI4 hardware acceleration.
|
| https://docs.frigate.video/configuration/hardware_acceler
| ati...
| folmar wrote:
| ESP32CAM might be good enough.
| graphe wrote:
| https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com honestly I'd get a home
| server and run HA through docker, it's gotten me into
| home servers.
| lxgr wrote:
| Maybe not only for cameras, but also for cameras. And
| when doing other things simultaneously, a video encoder
| not hogging all processing power becomes even more
| important.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| If it is a vanilla Broadcom Soc then die space is not really
| their consideration or decision. But maybe it is customised
| for RPi?
|
| Can't find the datasheet for the BCM2712 right now.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Well, to quote Gordon Hollingworth on the original post:
|
| "In future we'll have to do something, but for Pi 5 we feel
| the hardware encode is a mm^2 too far."
|
| Also, Raspberry Pi Foundation and Broadcom have been really
| working together on successors since the... BCM2787 in the
| Raspberry Pi 3, if I remember correctly? Broadcom still
| reserves the right to sell to anyone, but the Pi is still
| the primary customer for those specific chips now.
| fundatus wrote:
| Last time I tried to encode a video from H.264 to HEVC (hw-
| accelerated) on Linux it was such a pain to get to work that
| I eventually gave up and simply accepted the performance hit.
| I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna recompile ffmpeg so that it
| works on my machine. Considering that most RPi-users probably
| use a Linux-based OS this is IMHO a sensible decision.
| Levitating wrote:
| Well it's not that uncommon to use a version of ffmpeg with
| more features enabled for a specific purpose. For instance
| my jellyfin server uses jellyfin-ffmpeg[0] to do hardware
| acceleration, even on my Pi.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-ffmpeg
| Y_Y wrote:
| For hardware acceleration it's probably easier to use
| gstreamer, depending on what device you are using to
| decode. But then you have a whole new problem.
| lxgr wrote:
| The default ffmpeg I got from Raspberry Pi OS supports
| hardware acceleration out of the box these days, as far as
| I remember.
| danogentili wrote:
| The rk3588 and rk3588s (i.e. orange pi 5) both support hardware
| H264/HEVC encoding @ 8k30fps, as well as hardware HEVC/VP9
| decoding @ 8k60fps, H264 decoding @ 8k30fps, AV1 decoding @
| 4k60fps.
| smachiz wrote:
| Aren't they like 4x the price too?
| folmar wrote:
| The boards are the same price, i. OrangePI 5 8GB costs same
| as Raspberry 5 8GB. At least in EU.
| francisduvivier wrote:
| Yes, and there are more advantages to the Orange Pi 5
| SBCs:
|
| - They have full size HDMI - They have an m.2 connector -
| They still have an audio jack - They have more powerful
| performance cores - They have low performance cores -
| They have a 6 TOPS NPU
|
| On the other hand, that cheap base model has no built-in
| wifi, but so you can add it in the m.2 slot.
|
| For me, the Raspberry Pi 5 is quite disappointing. But
| hey, the good thing is that maybe this will push more of
| the community to the RK3588(S) based boards.
| hajile wrote:
| Orange Pi also has a bunch of extra features too
| including some standout ones like
|
| * don't need to spend extra $$ for M.1 SSD support
|
| * full-size HDMI so no need for $10 dongle
|
| * 6 TOPS NPU
|
| * better Mali G610 MP4 GPU
|
| * 8k60 output
|
| * USB 3.1 port (10gb/s instead of just 5gb/s)
|
| * 4x A55 cores
|
| * Audio jack
| imtringued wrote:
| Nobody needs that GPU. Alyssa Rosenzweig stopped working
| on the driver and got poached by Valve.
|
| Also, real time encoding with VP8 (yes, that is the
| standard for WebRTC) barely works. It has barely enough
| CPU power to produce a working demo, but too little to
| actually do anything with it.
| speed_spread wrote:
| > Nobody needs that GPU [..]
|
| Can you expand on this? Is the hardware too slow, too
| power hungry, or just badly supported? At least coming
| from ARM there must be some hardware documentation on how
| they work. I mean, it can't be worse than Broadcom's all-
| proprietary GPUs.
| Bud wrote:
| Mini-HDMI doesn't require a dongle. Just get the right
| cable. They're just as cheap as a normal HDMI cable.
| slaw wrote:
| Are any of Orange Pi boards mainlined?
| megous wrote:
| Yes.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| opi5 16gb is about 130 usd, rpi5 is about 80 usd I think?
| You get twice the cores and RAM so I think they're
| comparable value. But it's sort of academic for me because
| rpi5 8GB is not in stock in Australia.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Surprisingly, AV1 is easier to implement a decoder for than VP9
| (by design). Some of the VP9 transforms were axed with AV1
| purely to make the stream easier to decode.
|
| Why AV1 hardware decoding has taken so long seems to be an
| issue with hardware manufactures not wanting to support it.
| HEVC and VVC seem to have more hardware support.
| philistine wrote:
| HEVC was built from the ground up to be implemented in
| hardware to stem the tide of the open-source codecs and thus
| keep the license money train running.
| lxgr wrote:
| Well, at least the newest iPhone Pro models finally support
| it! Apple seems to finally be coming around to the idea of
| non-MPEG codecs.
|
| > HEVC and VVC seem to have more hardware support.
|
| Yes to HEVC, but which common SoC already supports VVC? AV1
| hardware support seems to be much more widespread.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I initially posted that the title did not match the content. The
| title is true but here's another link to read:
|
| https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/...
| theragra wrote:
| What about software encode, is it real time?
| traverseda wrote:
| It's really not a long post, if you wanted to read it.
| tecleandor wrote:
| They say it can encode 1080p60 (for the context, I guess it's
| real time) using just one processor (again, I'm guessing he
| means "one core"), and with a better quality than the RPi4
| hardware encoder. They think it could be possible to encode 4K
| at 24fps with some work, but they're not right now going for
| that optimizations.
| megous wrote:
| Depends on the encoder settings. With high enough settings, it
| will not be able to cope. So you're always trading compression
| ratio for speed.
| eurekin wrote:
| Are there any external hardware encoders/decoders?
| ehutch79 wrote:
| From what I can tell, they mostly live in video cards at this
| point.
|
| There used to be an elgator capture card with some encoding, i
| _think_/
| ohthatsnotright wrote:
| El Gato has one, it's really nice:
| https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/game-capture-4k60-pro
| mbilker wrote:
| That is a capture card and not an encoder card. It does not
| feature any accelerated encoding and relies on the host
| system to provide the video encoding, usually via a dedicated
| or integrated GPU.
| LoganDark wrote:
| It also costs like five times the price of the Pi itself.
| harlanji wrote:
| I got a metal box with HDMI and an ethernet ports which encodes
| the HDMI video + audio and serves/publishes H.264 RTMP/TS
| segments. My intended use case was actually working with Pi's
| on live streams, installing fresh systems and the like where
| encoding might not be available anyway.
|
| I couldn't find the one online but it looks like there are a
| few out there. Side note/tangent, the Pi3 was powerful enough
| to transcode 720p down to lower resolutions in real time.
| lxgr wrote:
| The quite popular Logitech C920 webcam used to natively support
| H.264, but they dropped it in a model revision a while ago,
| because "nearly every computer offered in the market features a
| chipset that can efficiently encode high definition video at
| 1080p" [1].
|
| I've used that very camera (without the accelerator) on an RPi
| 4 myself, and the only way to get acceptable quality was by
| using the Pi's H.264 hardware encoder.
|
| [1] https://www.logitech.com/en-us/video-
| collaboration/resources...
| londons_explore wrote:
| Or... Does the SoC have support for such things, but there is no
| software API yet, either because nobody has had time to write it,
| or someone chose not to pay for the licenses?
| olabyne wrote:
| they are talking about "ditching a few mm2, so I guess it is a
| lack of hardware
| InsomniacL wrote:
| From the linked comment, it appears it's not on the chip.
|
| > "In future we'll have to do something, but for Pi 5 we feel
| the hardware encode is a mm^2 too far."
|
| My interpretation of this is they felt the benefit did not
| outweigh the cons of the die space.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| I wonder how much the GPU and AI blocks can be used to acclerate
| encoding; I'd assume quite a bit.
| barbegal wrote:
| Hardly at all, video decoding isn't parallelisable. It's often
| lumped in with the GPU but it is significantly different.
| ajb wrote:
| The question is about encoding. It is significantly
| parallelizable because you are doing a search for the best
| encoding you can find. Also at a micro level there are things
| like motion search for which vector ops are useful. So I
| would say that it's likely they will look into that.
| bhouston wrote:
| Is the direct competition, like the Orange Pi 5 based on the
| Rockchip RK3588S, differ at all in this regards?
|
| I think that lack of choice in HW accelerated video
| encoding/decoding may just be standard on low-end devices in part
| to reduce costs.
| danogentili wrote:
| The rk3588 and rk3588s both support hardware H264/HEVC encoding
| @ 8k30fps, as well as hardware HEVC/VP9 decoding @ 8k60fps,
| H264 decoding @ 8k30fps, AV1 decoding @ 4k60fps.
| MikusR wrote:
| The other even cheaper boards even had AES acceleration for
| years
| synergy20 wrote:
| Jetson Orin Nano, the new devkit from Nvidia, surprisingly does
| not have a hardware video encoder either, you'll need use CPU to
| encode video instead, which is extremely odd considering video-
| encoding is a common use case on lots of video applications.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Wow, I was shocked to see that. They don't even bother using
| CUDA cores to encode (less of an issue if you have unified
| memory like in Jetsons). Anyway it seems you can get four 1080p
| streams at 30fps encoded to h264 in CPU if you set it up right:
| https://www.ridgerun.com/post/jetson-orin-nano-how-to-achiev...
| synergy20 wrote:
| yes but typically cpu is bad for video encoding, at least the
| power consumption will be much worse than hw encoder.
| Shorel wrote:
| So no more Nvidia NVENC?
|
| What will OBS do then?
|
| https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/guides/broadcasting-gui...
| paulmd wrote:
| Only removed from the tegras, not the gaming cards.
|
| But yeah if you were doing OBS streaming on your jetson, then
| the newer hardware won't have NVENC. Normally I'd say "but
| nobody is doing that" but someone (was) indeed doing exactly
| that, lol.
|
| https://blog.fosketts.net/2020/09/10/introducing-rabbit-i-
| bo...
|
| As mentioned it's probably a ton more relevant to embedded
| and robotics/computer-vision use-cases, which NVIDIA is
| really trying to push for (automotive etc). So it's still a
| surprising change and will be a pain for some people.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Nvidia removed the hardware encoding so you'd buy the more
| expensive model.
| Thaxll wrote:
| It's kind of crazy to not have h264 decoded by hardware in 2023,
| even if it's low on CPU usage nowdays, it's still by far the most
| used codec.
| judge2020 wrote:
| h264 is the most available but probably not the most used.
| Every streaming service today either seeds AV1, VP9, or HEVC
| content first since it saves bandwidth[0] and every client from
| the past 5 years supports one of these newer formats (phones,
| GPUs, smart TVs, streaming boxes, etc).
|
| 0: https://www.etcentric.org/netflix-switching-from-
| vp9-codec-t...
| lxgr wrote:
| H.264 is effectively the MP3 of video today: It provides
| neither the best quality, nor is it patent free (yet), but if
| an SoC supports any hardware accleration at all, H.264 is
| usually on the list.
|
| Applications/services that can afford the overhead of
| multiple format encoding will do so, but it's not always an
| option.
| Avamander wrote:
| Most devices can indeed most likely handle software decode of
| more common resolutions, codecs and bitrates. But I'd really
| hope they'd pick the one that won't suck up all the battery,
| so H264. This line of thought is supported by the fact that
| YouTube still provides an H264 option with most if not all
| videos.
|
| With higher bitrate things, HEVC seems to grow in popularity
| but even software decode support is not everywhere. Netflix
| for example requires the installation of HEVC support on
| Windows to play 4K content.
|
| Actually hardware-accelerated video decode is even spottier
| and more unreliable across most platforms. The JS API for
| codec support (canPlayType) literally returns "maybe" and
| "probably". It's quite bad.
|
| So far the best compatibility I've seen has been Edge with
| flags on Windows (MPEG-2, H264, HEVC, AV1, VP8, VP9 with most
| also supporting accelerated encode). It still fails with some
| content (Dolby Vision P5 colors are incorrect, HEVC Rext
| doesn't play - more info about HEVC is available here
| https://github.com/StaZhu/enable-chromium-hevc-hardware-
| deco...). Chrome on macOS is a close second in terms of codec
| support.
|
| The worst in terms of HW acceleration being all the browsers
| on desktop Linux-s, few and fragile combinations that offer
| limited and janky support. But it's slowly improving. This
| combined with the not-the-latest hardware many use, means
| things like VP9 or AV1 tend to stutter.
|
| I'd love to see some more generic stats, but considering the
| APIs aren't sufficient to determine actual support, these
| might be difficult to gather.
|
| But all things considered, I heavily doubt dropping H264 HW
| decode support was a good idea considering how often its
| still used.
| Thaxll wrote:
| It is the most used by far.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| The largest VOD services stopped using H.264 in any
| meaningful way or only as a last resort, bandwidth is just
| too expensive to justify using it. Even phones in third
| world countries include VP9 and HEVC hw decode, it's rare
| to run into someone who can only play H.264 unless you are
| walking in sub-Saharan Africa.
| adamomada wrote:
| If you look at the scene (aka piracy) every rip from
| every service is in AVC for FHD or HEVC for UHD. I know
| you mentioned last resort but the only legit streaming
| service I have at the moment is Apple TV+ and on fire
| tv's at least they are sending h264
|
| I'm also in iptvland and every rip from every live
| service is in h264 as well, with rare UHD feeds using
| h265 with HLG for HDR
|
| (For clarification, rip means the exact bits sent from
| the service with no reencoding, just stripping drm)
| supertrope wrote:
| It's to save the license fee. A76 cores are fast enough to
| brute force H.264.
| wargames wrote:
| True, but hardware support does wonders for power
| consumption. I'm blown away that I can watch 3 hours of h264
| content on my flights and only 5% of my iPad battery is used.
| i.e. more factors to consider than simply whether it
| can/can't with brute force.
| rdsubhas wrote:
| > I'm blown away that I can watch 3 hours of h264 content
| on my flights and only 5% of my iPad battery is used.
|
| That sounds wild. Apple says iPad is rated for up to 10
| hours of video playback [1]. The display alone should
| consume more than that.
|
| 1: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/
| megous wrote:
| That depends on resolution and other factors.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Gordon Hollingworth:
|
| _" In future we'll have to do something, but for Pi 5 we feel
| the hardware encode is a mm^2 too far."_
|
| Sounds reasonable, given a fast cpu & less-than optimal hw-
| accelerated encoding options. As for that "something", maybe:
|
| 1) Drop hw-accelerated encoding _and decoding_ entirely, and use
| the freed up silicon for much beefier cpus (like ones including
| -bigger- vector units, more cores etc. Cortex X?). That would be
| useful for _any_ cpu heavy applications.
|
| 2) Include hw encoder for a common (1), relatively 'heavy' codec.
| And hw decoder for same + maybe others.
|
| 3) Only include decoder(s?), like they seem to have done for
| RPi5.
|
| 4) Include some kind of flexible compute fabric that can be
| _configured_ to do the heavy lifting for popular video codecs.
|
| Combined with:
|
| 5) Move to newer silicon node to obtain higher efficiency or
| transistor budget.
|
| Whatever route a future RPi would go, imho hw-accelerated
| decoding is much more useful than _en_ coding.
| ksec wrote:
| HW-Decoding uses less mm2 than encoding, provides biggest power
| saving and benefits to user, all while being cheaper on
| patents.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| ... only if the user is decoding video.
| belthesar wrote:
| It's fair to say that not all Pi users are decoding video,
| but with the number of projects doing some sort of video-
| related workloads, with Pi's processing camera footage and
| doing CV work and people using Pi's as low power
| workstations as just two examples, it's reasonable that
| folks that had historically used Raspberry Pi compute units
| for video are disappointed to hear that they're now pushing
| a lot of CPU power to perform video decode and encode.
| smarx007 wrote:
| Which is... everyone who has ever opened a YouTube link?
| Though might make sense to not include it in the Zero
| series.
| swayvil wrote:
| Will it do as a desktop system? What do you think?
| lannisterstark wrote:
| Why not just get an HP Prodesk or dell optiplex or hp elite
| desk or whatever Lenovo? 6th/7th gen Intel CPU models are all
| cheaper than this.
| aag01 wrote:
| "In future we'll have to do something, but for Pi 5 we feel the
| hardware encode is a mm^2 too far."
|
| is corporate speech for "broadcom decided not to let us use their
| video IP cores for low cost/no cost any longer"
| jandrese wrote:
| It is a bit frustrating how married the Raspberry Pi foundation
| is to a company that couldn't care less if they live or die.
| Broadcom has always been at best indifferent and at worst
| hostile to the open source community.
| cogman10 wrote:
| There's not really an alternative.
|
| Broadcom is one of the few options out there for ARM SoC. Rpi
| could dump a bunch of money into making their own SoC, but
| that would really ballon the costs.
| aag01 wrote:
| They should partner with qualcomm, not broadcom.
|
| Too bad it's because of the former broadcom employees
| within the foundation.
| NewJazz wrote:
| They should produce boards from multiple vendors' SoCs.
| cogman10 wrote:
| You generally get bulk discounts. The more vendors you
| have, the more expensive each is.
| NewJazz wrote:
| For different SoCs? You would just choose one vendor per
| device generation (but always evaluating multiple). It is
| a new order anyways.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Also think of the added development expenses, which might
| even overshadow forgone bulk discounts
| foobiekr wrote:
| This doesn't work in practice since your costs scale with
| vendor count and theirs don't.
|
| In reality being a single big customer for one vendor is
| far more influential than being a small one with other
| options.
| NewJazz wrote:
| _In reality being a single big customer for one vendor is
| far more influential than being a small one with other
| options._
|
| In what world? the one where firms don't compete?
|
| If other firms are explicitly on the table for the
| currently negotiated and next generation RPi, Broadcom
| will have more incentive to meet the RPi Foundation's
| specific needs. If Broadcom knows that RPi is not talking
| to other vendors, then their negotiating position is
| stronger.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Qualcomm is the single worst company to work with. They
| try to negotiate % of revenue deals instead of cost-per-
| unit deals and they make Broadcom look like Stallman-
| level open source fanatics.
| bananapub wrote:
| > They should partner with qualcomm, not broadcom.
|
| lol, are you unaware of how qualcomm treats all of it's
| customers, including megacorps?
| jandrese wrote:
| They couldn't use Rockchip or Allwinner or Texas
| Instruments chips? Sure there is some work they would have
| to do all over again getting the drivers working and
| reliable, but in the long run the partnership could be far
| better for the company.
| burnte wrote:
| It's highly likely they have a sweetheart deal with Broadcom
| in exchange for loyalty.
| pavon wrote:
| Yes, for context the Pi 1-4 all had H264 hardware
| encoder/decoder support, which could comfortable encode at
| least 720p @ 30Hz in realtime. The die space argument makes
| sense for why they don't have AV1/HEVC encoding, but it does
| not explain why H264 was dropped. The fact that the CPU is now
| powerful enough to encode H264 at better quality and frame
| rates than the old hardware encoder is a better argument, but
| still a step backwards for folks who need lower power
| consumption or need the CPU for other things, and doesn't
| explain why the hardware support needed to be dropped. It
| really does sound like something else (like licensing) drove
| the decision, and this is a post-facto attempt to sell/justify
| that decision.
| philistine wrote:
| Encode is always a bit messier; perhaps you need a tool which
| is not GPU aware, maybe your needs go beyond what the encoder
| can do.
|
| But dropping the hardware h.264 _decoder_ is a horrible thing
| to do. H.264 might as well be the lingua franca of online
| videos. Think of all the kids in classrooms loading videos on
| Youtube now constantly hammering the CPU for decode. It 's
| such a weird decision that it can only be caused by business
| issues.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Youtube today is mostly vp9 anyway, if you don't use the
| h246ify extension which limits you on resolution/framerate
| anyway on many videos
| Cyberdog wrote:
| Even on mobile? I sincerely hope when I play a YouTube
| video on my iPhone it's using the built-in decoder
| hardware rather than churning through what may as well be
| Google's proprietary codec on the CPU but I guess I have
| no way of knowing.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well presumably h264/AVC is still there? The lack of HEVC
| just means it doesn't have an h265 encoder.
| deltasepsilon wrote:
| Are you saying the hardware actually has encode on die but was
| "fused" off?
|
| If so, Raspberry Pi has an organizational culture of outright
| lying, as opposed to simply speaking plainly. I know this is
| not Eben Upton speaking, but I've found him many times in the
| past being either evasive with the truth, or simply lying. It's
| one thing to not step of the toes of partners, or to not
| Osborne a product by suggesting a successor is nearing, but to
| be outright dishonest. Yuck.
|
| This is very, very disappointing.
| mastax wrote:
| > Are you saying the hardware actually has encode on die but
| was "fused" off?
|
| I don't think that is what they are saying, and I haven't
| seen any evidence of that. It makes the most sense to me that
| either (as GP said) they got rid of the H264 hardware to save
| on paying Broadcom for the rights to include that hardware
| block in the chip, or to save on the die area they take up
| (as RPi said), or both.
| firebat45 wrote:
| I really wish they would stop making newer, faster, more
| expensive Pi's and just focus on making the existing Pi's cheaper
| and more available. Out of the dozen or so RPi's I have, not a
| single one is even connected to a monitor. I don't need dual 4k
| HDMI ports. I'd love a widely available and in-stock $20 Pi. It's
| like they've forgotten what the RPi is all about.
| starik36 wrote:
| That's what the RPi Zero 2 is all about. They are $15 and work
| great.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Can't speak for GP but I want a $20 device with a wired
| Ethernet port. I'm using pis where they need to reliably
| communicate in real time.
| carlos_rpn wrote:
| Check the Banana Pis if you haven't already. Most of them
| have it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pi
| Blackthorn wrote:
| This is accidentally a fantastic example of the issues with
| the original commenter's train of thought. Not everyone
| needs every single feature, but every single feature is
| needed individually by someone.
| paulmd wrote:
| yeah, with how many "maker" things have emerged around
| RPi, it's a bit of a dickpunch to be removing features
| that a nontrivial portion of the user base are building
| projects/products around.
|
| Hopefully we have gotten past the "RPi is for education,
| not makers!" thing, there is really zero traction on big
| computer labs full of raspberry pis. even insofar as it's
| used in education it's still used for _maker_ tasks,
| people building robots with computer vision or whatever,
| and some of those use-cases need the encoder too.
|
| RPi has always been a somewhat incoherent product that
| survived _because_ it was a below-average solution to any
| problem, the jack-of-all-trades for $45 (plus another
| $100 of accessories). If it doesn 't have video encode,
| why would I want this for plex instead of a NUC clone?
| why would I buy this instead of a big AVR32/STM32
| microcontroller for building a robot? Why would I want
| this instead of a Bus Pirate for GPIO? Why would I want
| to use this as a mini-desktop if I can't even do a Teams
| call on it? Etc etc. It's barely an adequate product even
| with all the legacy feature set there, if you start
| pulling pieces off then competing products become even
| more compelling for many use-cases.
|
| Reality is they will probably be fine because of the name
| recognition and brand but it's not good management
| either.
|
| I'd love to see real numbers but just like with the RX
| 6500XT I just can't imagine the encoder is _that_ big. We
| are talking about pennies more per die, and likely this
| will cost them more in total sales than the pennies
| represent in the total product cost - you are saving 0.1%
| of the MSRP and losing 5-10% of potential addressable
| market. Literally would just be better for them to eat
| the cost, almost certainly.
|
| And you are correct that while nobody uses all the
| features, everybody uses some of them.
|
| I frankly do not understand the decision to depart from
| mainstream SOC configurations here - which obviously
| would have an encoder.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| > RPi has always been a somewhat incoherent product that
| survived because it was a below-average solution to any
| problem, the jack-of-all-trades for $45 (plus another
| $100 of accessories).
|
| In addition to what you wrote: it also has a really good
| software story. Everybody's got a build for raspberry pi.
| Something like an odroid or banana pi or whatever has a
| much more "gotta handle all the builds yourself" path.
| The power of being the standard, I suppose.
| justin66 wrote:
| > Why would I want to use this as a mini-desktop if I
| can't even do a Teams call on it?
|
| You can do a Teams call on it (with prerelease software).
| See two Pis conferencing that way here (call was slightly
| glitchy until one guy on the call figured out he needed
| to switch from his crappy wifi to a wired connection):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35_5wRKi_TI&t=415s
|
| I don't get why anyone who wants to use it as a mini-
| desktop views the encoder situation as a deal breaker
| (from the linked comments):
|
| _it only takes around 1 processor to encode 1080p60 with
| our default settings (which is still better quality than
| the PI 4 hardware encoder)_
| wkat4242 wrote:
| You can add it over USB (even with hub) for a few $$. Which
| is exactly how it's wired on the pi anyway until the 4.
| starik36 wrote:
| I am using a Micro USB to Ethernet adapter on the original
| Zero that didn't have wireless. It's been working for years
| with no issues at all. That's "almost" wired.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| here is a 6 dollar expansion w/ ethernet for the pi zero2
| alpaca128 wrote:
| It's more than $20 for everything but you can buy extension
| PCBs that more or less turn the Pi Zero 2W into a full-size
| Raspberry Pi with USB-A and Ethernet ports, also making it
| compatible with some full-size Pi cases.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| There's the Raspberry Pi 3A+ that's 25$. One of my
| favorites that's less popular
| Kikawala wrote:
| Look at the Radxa Zero 3E, it may fit your needs.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I have found that a good chunk of random opensource projects
| won't run on the zero 2. The ARM core is ARM7 and doesn't
| support modern instructions, so plenty of software just
| immediately dies with 'Illefal Instruction'.
|
| Also, it's 32 bit, and a lot of software is starting to
| depend on the massive address spaces offered by 64 bit.
|
| And there is no high ram model. Some stuff just gobbles so
| much ram that 512M isn't practical.
| ripley12 wrote:
| The Zero 2 W has a 64-bit Cortex-A53 (ARM8).
| repiret wrote:
| Armv7. Arm7 is a much older core.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| My Pi Zero 2W is running 64 bit Raspbian and reports
| aarch64 (Armv8).
| bmicraft wrote:
| The Zero 2W has literally the same cpu as the Pi 3
| weberer wrote:
| Here you go. Its $10 at Microcenter
|
| https://www.microcenter.com/product/486575/Zero_W
| lannisterstark wrote:
| Not everyone lives near a microcenter though. The pi zero
| W/2W comes out to like , $15+ ship + taxes and is more like
| $24.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| I've been trying to get two Zero W 2s for almost two years
| now without getting ripped off by somebody on the second
| hand market. They are still nearly impossible to find for
| the advertised price. :(
| nmjohn wrote:
| While that certainly has been true for the majority of
| the last two years - rpi's in pretty much all skus have
| been back in stock for a few months now - to the point
| that even digikey has many of the skus in bulk stock
|
| See: https://rpilocator.com/
|
| As for Zero W 2s: In stock right now:
| https://chicagodist.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| Oh, thanks! I've been watching that religiously and while
| you are correct the other Pi's have been available for a
| couple months now, the 2Ws have been absent. I haven't
| checked in a couple weeks now, I'm happy to see they are
| finally in stock!
|
| Edit: it's a bit premature. _Only_ Chicago Distributors
| have them in stock at the moment and they are limiting
| the orders to 1, which is frustrating because I only need
| 2.
| dheera wrote:
| Let's all keep reporting them for price gouging until
| they get put out of business. Things that could be put to
| use should not be sitting in a warehouse.
| older wrote:
| You can follow this account on Mastodon to get stock
| alerts: https://mastodon.social/@rpilocator
| gambiting wrote:
| Eh? Most UK retailers have it at RRP:
|
| https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Having grown up in a world where 8 bit computers with 4-16k
| ram (and no storage) cost the equivalent of $1000,
| inflation adjusted, this seems like an almost insane
| complaint. Hardware is so cheap now compared to software
| which is still very expensive to produce. A person could
| spend less than a $100 on a computer and make that money
| back very quickly doing various digital tasks on fiverr.
| lannisterstark wrote:
| >make that money back very quickly doing various digital
| tasks on fiverr.
|
| >an almost insane complaint
|
| That's not the complaint. Not everything is a "I can make
| x money back" preposition. The complaint is "A $10 item
| is costing me $25." It's costing me 2.5x the price it
| should be. Maybe you should see it from that POV.
|
| You can also keep going on about kids starving right this
| instant while I complain about 2.5x price difference, it
| doesn't change a thing. a $10 pi zero 2 w still costs
| $25, if not more given it's almost never in stock and
| runs out so quickly.
|
| >Having grown up in a world where 8 bit computers with
| 4-16k ram (and no storage) cost the equivalent of $1000
|
| That doesn't mean much though, does it? I'm not comparing
| today's costs to back when you grew up. Nor am I saying
| today's costs costs are worse than when you grew up. If I
| was, you'd be right. I am not. I am just complaining
| about the price I have to pay due to
| scalping/availability vs price something is advertised at
| usually.
|
| ----
|
| That being said, I understand why shipping exists, but $5
| overcharge for sake of it plus $7 to ship something this
| tiny is a bit iffy. They literally just pack it in a soft
| wrap and throw it in an envelope.
| ska wrote:
| I think GP's point was that it's incredibly cheap at $25
| or at $10, enough so that for hobby uses it shouldn't
| really matter unless you are the type of person who just
| can't get past "I'm getting ripped off $10".
|
| They are basically right, although I guess you should add
| "in much of the world".
| cornstalks wrote:
| > _11+ at $999.99 each_
|
| Wow...
| nkozyra wrote:
| To discourage the hoarding that happened (although less-so
| with the Zero) in the last two years.
|
| At least they're willing to take your money, a lot of shops
| had hard caps.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > > 11+ at $999.99 each
|
| > Wow...
|
| Prices should better be sub-additive, since otherwise
| market arbitrage opportunities appear (in this case: to get
| more than 10: buy 10, and find some friends who also buy
| 10).
|
| If such an irrational pricing appears, it is a sign of
| market failure; in this case: if the demand is higher than
| the demand, prices have to increase until for the given
| pricing level supply=demand. This is how markets self-
| calibrate.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| I wish they took performance more seriously. I migrated a bunch
| of my stuff off of a Pi 4 to an Intel N100 NUC because the Pi 4
| just didn't cut it. I have a bunch of other use cases as well
| that have struggled with the Pi 4s and competing RK3588 based
| systems look compelling.
|
| Point is, your use case doesn't match my use case. I hope they
| continue to make things more performant AND cost effective.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| An intel N100 NUC is just a really good low power server
| platform and it will always be better for that than a pi.
|
| The pi was never meant to be a server.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| Of course, but if you are trying to do something which
| requires GPIO or want to build on top of Rapsberry Pi's
| other functionality (i.e. the cameras) your options are
| more limited.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I never understand why people compare the Pi with NUCs. The
| latter is an order of magnitude more expansive (new, it's
| hard to consider used stuff for serious work), has no GPIO
| built in, consumes way more power...
|
| It's in a whole other category.
| michaelt wrote:
| Some people want to make a DIY equivalent of a Synology
| NAS - something to make backups to, and maybe some other
| light serving tasks. They don't need the GPIO, and
| they're not attentive enough to their power bill to
| appreciate the difference between a device drawing $3 a
| month and a device drawing $0.30 per month. They know
| many of Synology's products use Arm CPUs.
|
| Later they find themselves saying hmm, it sure would be
| nice to have real SATA ports. Maybe a shared power supply
| for the drives and the CPU. It'd be nice to have enough
| IO and CPU to be able to saturate a gigabit link with
| encryption turned on. Oh, and a nice case with an active
| cooling solution built in.
|
| Suddenly, a retired compact PC starts to look like strong
| competition.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| If you use the Pi as a server it's not an order of
| magnitude cheaper than a cheap NUC. An N100 "NUC" like a
| Beelink S12 costs $150 _including_ 16GB of RAM and 256GB
| NVMe storage! They are really ridiculously cheap. And
| really low powered.
|
| If you want to use a pi as a server you won't get away
| with a slow microSD that kills itself every year, you'll
| need to add a real SSD (USB or now finally PCIe with the
| 5), decent cooling and power and a case. You will be at
| that $150 easily and you won't even have 16GB RAM.
|
| I used to mess with little pi servers all over the place
| too yes. But this was in the days that PCs were power
| hogs. There's better options now.
| bmicraft wrote:
| > If you want to use a pi as a server you won't get away
| with a slow microSD that kills itself every year
|
| That's not true at all. Pick one rated for the workload,
| eg A2 ("application" rating, optimized for random io)
| which can be had for < 15usd and you're not gonna run
| into issues.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > If you use the Pi as a server it's not an order of
| magnitude cheaper than a cheap NUC
|
| I use my $15 RPi Zero as a git server[1], and it is
| literally an order of a magnitude cheaper at _current_
| prices. I bought the one I have for $5 (it was a promo,
| but still. That 's how cheap Raspberry Pi's can get).
|
| > If you want to use a pi as a server you won't get away
| with a slow microSD that kills itself every year, you'll
| need to add a real SSD
|
| You'll need a good power supply if your Pi is destroying
| your SD cards. I lost a few before I wised up, and it's
| been _years_ aince I replaced the SD card
|
| 1. Also hosts wireguard, has a bunch of webcrawlers and
| coordinates secondary backups between NAS and the cloud.
| It may not host docker containers, but the Pi is solidly
| in the "server" category for me, while consuming less
| than 1 Watt.
| nirav72 wrote:
| the NUC is a bad example. Plenty of used mini-PCs in
| secondary markets that can be had for sub-$100-150 price
| range with 7th-8th gen i5 or i7 CPUs. More I/O options
| than a raspberry Pi and beats a Raspberry Pi many many
| times over in performance. Including onboard media
| transcoding via QuickSync. By the time you add a power
| supply, SD card or add-on board for a nvme m.2 drive the
| price of the Raspberry Pi is going to be same as what a
| mini-PC with more hardware options and performance is
| going to cost.
|
| Regarding lack of GPIO - if you're going to use it for a
| server, then not sure why GPIO is even needed. But if you
| need GPIO for hardware interfacing, then plenty of much
| cheaper boards out there than the raspberry Pi. Such as
| the dozens of different types of ESP32 boards.
|
| As for power draw - yes, a mini-pc will definitely draw
| more power. I guess it depends on electricity cost at
| your specific location. I'm currently running about 25
| containers on a HP elitedesk G2 with a Intel i5. On
| average it draws about 15-20 watts. It can go high as 40
| watts when I'm streaming something from Jellyfin that
| requires real-time transcoding.
| devit wrote:
| If you need GPIO you can just get an USB GPIO interface
| like the one at https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah I didn't mean a NUC from Intel (who have just
| stopped making them anyway). I meant the Beelink kind of
| mini-PC or indeed some used systems which is exactly what
| I use, and generalised them under the term NUC. That was
| not very clear.
| brnt wrote:
| I can see Nuc (like?) devices for around 100EUR, while a
| Pi costs me roughly the same.
| 015a wrote:
| Their mass production of the Pi keyboard should clue you into
| at least one direction that _they_ believe "the Pi is all
| about"; education, and increasing access to modern computing
| hardware. Enhancing the performance envelope and connecting to
| a monitor do, to me, seem like worthy steps toward that end.
|
| Everyone uses general purpose computers differently. I feel
| your statement "they've forgotten what the RPi is all about"
| isn't just ignorant; its hurtful. Maybe their direction isn't
| parallel with what you want out of the products they make, but
| you should at least have the empathy to recognize that you
| aren't the main character in this play.
| Teever wrote:
| While I admit that I am a bit envious of the large 4k
| monitors that my coworkers use, I have managed to make it
| through life without buying anything larger than a 1440p
| monitor.
|
| What exactly is the educational advantage (for the
| demographic that the raspberry pi is supposed to be
| educating) of the inclusion of 2x 4k ports and does that
| advantage override the opportunity cost of including the
| ports?
|
| In other words '1080p ought to be enough for anybody learning
| how computers work from an SBC.
| dual_dingo wrote:
| Raspberry Pi is many things today. The foundation is indeed
| focused on education, but the company behind it has a much
| broader focus and sells many (most?) of their devices to
| commercial customers, where 2x4k outputs might be
| beneficial, e.g. in digital signage applications.
| philistine wrote:
| Honestly, I'm just spitballing here, but it's not like the
| Raspberry foundation is making its own silicon. They're
| using what exists. It's probably a simple case of the
| chipset they chose supporting it, so might as well include
| it.
| stefan_ wrote:
| They are making their own silicon (see the RP1 at [1])
| and obviously have very significant input as to what
| Broadcom puts into the main SoC, a chip that is primarily
| now made for RPi needs.
|
| 1: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-5/
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Rp1 doesn't deal with video, and having two displays is
| very reasonable for all kinds of things, including
| display kiosks, points of sale, etc Even for a robot.
| They don't need to be 4k, it I guess that's just normal
| these days
| Xelynega wrote:
| I could be wrong, but iirc the HDMI they use and full
| size HDMI are pin compatible. It's likely they just chose
| the smaller connector so they can break both out and have
| a smaller board footprint(as opposed to having a larger
| board or only providing a connector for one HDMI port)
| narrator wrote:
| You can get $60 android tablets brand new on Amazon that
| don't need a monitor, keyboard and mouse and can use the vast
| amount of education apps in the play store.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| The education part is tinkering with hardware and linux.
| Xelynega wrote:
| IMO arch or similar is going to do more towards teaching
| Linux than raspian will. Just install that on a cheap
| laptop/phone and play around with different apps/configs.
|
| For hardware learning pis arent even that great, an
| stm32, Arduino , or esp32 is a fraction of the cost(so
| you don't have to worry about burning the io pins out as
| much) and the toolchain is basically the same(simpler I'd
| argue even)
| passivegains wrote:
| Yeah, but devices aren't very useful for education if the
| students can't type on them.
| borisgolovnev wrote:
| I got a pretty decent chromebook on eBay for 70 euros. With
| pretty good display, keyboard, touchpad, touchscreen, 8Gb
| of RAM and a battery. Runs linux great. Apparently
| chromebooks dominate education market nowadays, very
| inexpensive and arguably more useful than a Raspberry pi.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Their little 'breadbox' pi4* certainly points in that
| direction very heavily.
|
| Their cheaper 'embedded' version (the zero series, and the
| pico) is doing what this guy wants.
|
| * https://vilros.com/products/raspberry-
| pi-400-vilros?variant=...
| ornornor wrote:
| If you can get one, which was (still is?) impossible pretty
| much ever since it came out.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| How are two niche ports requiring adapters more accessible
| than one full-size HDMI port? Are two ports on such
| constrained hardware really worth it? If my adapter cable
| breaks (which already happened) I have to order a new one and
| can't use the device while sitting on a pile of unused but
| unsupported HDMI cables. Meanwhile iirc it took until after
| the launch of the Pi 4 to get USB boot support without first
| flashing and booting a microSD card, another piece of
| hardware not known for its longevity.
|
| The RPi project is amazing and I'm glad it exists, but some
| decisions are just weird considering their goals. Though to
| be fair the RPi 4 & 5 improved the situation significantly.
| hadlock wrote:
| The weird niche port for video is the #1 reason I stopped
| using raspberry pi. I have one adapter, somewhere, but I'll
| be damned if I can find it in less than an hour. It's at
| the bottom of some bag or drawer of infrequently used
| adapters
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Amen. Micro-HDMI is trash and should NEVER be used, because
| it will break promptly... especially on a dinky device that
| moves and shifts a lot.
|
| If a full-sized HDMI port is somehow too big (which it
| isn't on the regular-sized Pi, and definitely not on the
| 400), they should just use USB-C ports with DisplayPort
| capability. I'd rather use a DP-to-HDMI adapter (which is
| cheap and effective) than a shitty micro-HDMI port.
| stonogo wrote:
| Famously the devices have been difficult to acquire because
| RPi was putting all their manufacturing output into
| fulfilling commercial market needs (1,2,3). Filling a market
| need -- well-specced hardware with long support horizons --
| is perfectly fine, but Upton et al. have made it very clear
| that this is the priority and pretending otherwise is weird.
| Mass producing generic USB keyboards in corporate livery does
| not meaningfully communicate corporate ethics here.
|
| Meanwhile, most of the competition focuses on beating the Pi
| on specs, availability, or price -- and none of them seem to
| have noticed that long support life as being the
| differentiator which leads to business adoption of the Pi
| hardware. So I suspect the status quo will persist for the
| foreseeable future.
|
| 1 - https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/you-cant-buy-
| raspberr... 2 - https://www.elecrow.com/blog/why-is-it-so-
| hard-to-buy-raspbe... 3 -
| https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-ceo-eben-
| upto...
| walterbell wrote:
| _> direction that they believe_
|
| Fortunately we don't need belief, since the foundation has
| years of volume-based sales data on market segments, e.g. for
| the last two years they have prioritized industrial business
| users over education, during supply chain shortages.
|
| Is there a published market segment breakdown for each
| generation of RPi?
| Xelynega wrote:
| Their existing contracts and focus should clue you more into
| their desired direction than an accessory that they can
| produce for consumers that is tangentially related to
| raspberry pis.
|
| The pi foundations focus(be it intentional or just out of a
| desire to stay open) has been to have prototypes created with
| raspberry pis that go into production without replacing the
| raspberry Pi so that device manufacturers are locked into
| large long-term contracts.
|
| The inability for consumers to find devices available and the
| odd io choices(IoT video devices like kiosks would benefit
| from the double ports rather than a single full size HDMI)
| are IMO the intention of the pi foundation. Their focus is on
| generating contracts and fulfilling them, consumer devices
| are secondary.
|
| That's to say they've "forgotten what the pi is about"
| insofar as they've made choices to grow the business/contract
| side of the pi foundation more than the education and
| consumer availability
| ghostly_s wrote:
| It's odd then that a single alternative hasn't risen to
| prominence to serve their original hobbyist market. There
| are millions of clones out there of course but any with a
| trusted brand name and support behind them?
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| I don't know about you, but if one of those clone
| manufacturers made it as simple to install Linux on their
| machine and have it not be an utter pain in the ass, that
| would go a long way toward me wanting to trust them.
|
| The problem with the clones, and with clones in general,
| is that they're never _quite_ 100% compatible. There 's
| always some sharp edge there to cut yourself on. Fix
| that, and I'll definitely try a non-Raspberry Pi SoC.
| spamizbad wrote:
| The biggest problem all the Pi-like devices seem to
| suffer from is poor software and driver support. The only
| exception seems to be the ones Intel made.
| bsder wrote:
| People are both complaining about cost and then
| complaining that the RPi foundation subsidized the cost
| of the RPis in order to prevent a viable competitor from
| emerging.
|
| Beaglebone Blacks have existed and been _in stock_
| through the entire RPi fiasco. They are almost completely
| documented unlike the RPis. The boards have _full
| schematics_ unlike the RPis. You can _buy the main SoC_
| unlike the RPis. The boards have lots more IO and some
| really nice real-time units. You can get the
| documentation from TI without an NDA. And the BBB even
| has eMMC so that it isn 't dependent upon horrifically
| crappy uSD cards. And it runs straight up Debian instead
| of some weird build. I can go on and on.
|
| RPi has kicked the end users in the teeth over and over
| and over and people still won't change. People at my
| hackerspace are willing to spend a bunch of money on RPi
| to do Octoprint rather than buying a _full blown x86
| computer_ for half the total cost.
|
| What the hell do the Beaglebone people have to do to get
| people to pay attention?
|
| Beaglebone Black link:
| https://www.beagleboard.org/boards/beaglebone-black
| trothamel wrote:
| Some modernization would be nice. I like the am335x, and
| have a product that's been made with it for the past
| decade - but the am335x is a 32-bit single core processor
| (with some additions) from 2011, and that's getting a bit
| long in the tooth.
| bsder wrote:
| The Beaglebone people put out new ones, but the volumes
| were so dismal that they simply weren't worth it.
|
| One _engineering_ problem is that the power envelope is
| kind of tight. While the RPi simply will not work with
| 5V@500mA, the BBB does. If you bump the frequency, your
| power supply needs shoot up and you start needing heat
| sinks.
|
| It really feels like the Beaglebone Black got the
| engineering aspects correct. Shame that even hackers are
| suceptible to marketing.
|
| At this point, being able to use the Beaglbone Black is
| practically a superpower for me as an engineer. I can buy
| it. My end customers can buy it. It's real Linux so my
| end customer can bang on it as required. It's documented,
| so I can generate the embedded drivers I need and
| document them.
|
| I suspect that with the industrial etherenet built in,
| the BeaglePlay is about to take on some of that
| character.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Interesting points about the BeagleBone; I will check it
| out.
|
| But this is not credible: "People at my hackerspace are
| willing to spend a bunch of money on RPi to do Octoprint
| rather than buying a full blown x86 computer for half the
| total cost."
|
| I run Octoprint on a 4GB Pi 4. Total cost was probably
| $75. What kinds of setup are you talking about?
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Parent should know that the hurtfulness of having a different
| opinion about the best use of a computer cannot be
| overstated. Imagine if my great grandfather who survived the
| holocaust read this comment--it would kill him even worse
| than hitler tried to.
| snvzz wrote:
| Fortunately, there is choice in RISC-V.
| bilalq wrote:
| Different people have different needs though. I have a smart
| mirror that runs a 4K display driven by a Pi 4. I'm sure there
| a lot of other kiosk-like use-cases for Pis.
| opan wrote:
| Totally fair desire, though some people definitely do want
| these to be desktop or HTPC replacements.
|
| I'm usually more impressed with RockChip stuff anyway, though,
| so if the Raspberry Pi folks wanted to focus their efforts on
| affordable dev boards, I think there'd still be plenty of
| options for those who do want to play back 4k video on a
| monitor. They've done an excellent job with the Pi Pico,
| keeping it in stock and dirt cheap. I've gotten a dozen or more
| of those at like $4 each. So they're still catering to the
| "maker" types with those.
|
| I'm excited to get a better version of something like the
| Pinebook Pro someday, based on a newer SoC with more RAM and a
| bit more GPU power for video playback and some simpler games
| like Minetest and Xonotic.
| ahepp wrote:
| I haven't bought any in a while, but looks like the Pi Zero W
| is in stock and available for $10 at Microcenter. Other sellers
| seem to have them in stock for $15. So isn't there already a
| widely available Pi in stock for under $20?
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| There are other flavors of Pi, like the Orange Pi or Banana Pi.
| Have you looked into those? The newest Orange Pi is really
| expensive but maybe there's others that are cheaper
| KaiserPro wrote:
| the zero/zero2 should have you covered, I have a zero2 and its
| rather good. not bad for the price either.
| EwanToo wrote:
| The Pi Zero 2 W is $20 and reasonably consistently in stock
| now.
|
| https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2
| m463 wrote:
| it looks like the pi 4 is becoming available and (more)
| reasonably priced.
|
| not $35, but not what seemed to be $185 either
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Can someone explain the hubbub here? My read of the specs seems
| to match the specs of the Pi 4, HEVC decoding but no encoding.
| InsomniacL wrote:
| RPI3 / RPI4 have hardware accelerated encoding/decoding for
| H.264, this has not been included for RPI5.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Thanks. I suppose that will prolong the shelf life of the 4.
| lannisterstark wrote:
| Remember you can get an HP Prodesk G3 400 or some such for $60
| refurbed with far more hardware capabilities if you don't need
| the portable form factor, gpio, or power consumption.
|
| It's actually a better deal for home servers.
| jrockway wrote:
| Electricity is something you have to pay for for always-on
| computers:
|
| Prodesk G3: 24 hours * 365 days * 35W * 1000W/kW * $0.30/kWh =
| $91
|
| Raspberry Pi 5: 24 hours * 365 days * 12W * 1000W/kW *
| $0.30/kWh = $31
|
| It's likely that 12W over-counts for the Raspberry Pi 5 and 35W
| under-counts for the Intel chip, so it might be even worse than
| this.
| lannisterstark wrote:
| Right, I agree, but electricity prices are variable and
| location dependent, for example, it doesn't cost me 30c/kwh,
| it's more like 5 cents and 3 cents depending on the time.
|
| With that logic, the $20 in difference of $30 per year vs $10
| per year of Pi is fairly meaningless for performance boost I
| am getting.
|
| If your electricity is expensive, sure, but I imagine the
| performance boost would be worth it for an actual homeserver
| that a G3 can make vs a tinkering/fun project you can make
| with a Pi.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What do they idle at? I have two home servers that are
| essentially at idle 24/7.
| hollerith wrote:
| You're comparing a CPU that became generally available in
| 2017 or earlier (i.e., the 7th-gen or 6th-gen Core CPU in the
| Prodesk G3) with a more much recent CPU.
| xxpor wrote:
| $0.30/kWh is 3x the average US price of electricity.
| m463 wrote:
| california goes from .30 - .50 per kwh - thanks to
| regulatory capture and pg&e
|
| wait...
|
| https://www.pge.com/tariffs/Res_Inclu_TOU_Current.xlsx
|
| I can't tell what my current rate really is, but seems like
| average is 38.2c/kwh
| fswd wrote:
| I just bought a 10th gen i5 laptop with 16gb of ram for $60 off
| of ebay. HP c640 chromebook. Fast enough to run a 7B LLM at 1-2
| tokens/sec
| KaiserPro wrote:
| the new intel m100 nuc platform chip is probably where its at.
|
| yes its double the price, but in terms of power usage its ~4
| watts at the plug at 50% load, (vs 30) and more over a million
| times faster.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Wow, I'm surprised this took this long to come out! The
| raspicam/raspivid ecosystem is huge and without hardware h264
| encoding it is absolutely dead in the water. This makes the rPi5
| a neutered bit of hardware and the rPi4 (and even the rPi3)
| better options for quite a number of applications!
| tjoff wrote:
| I'm not sure how you could get to that conclusion from the
| link?
|
| > _[...] but actually it only takes around 1 processor to
| encode 1080p60 with our default settings (which is still better
| quality than the PI 4 hardware encoder)_
|
| Power consumption is worse, yes, but that is not a huge issue
| for the raspicam/raspivid ecosystem you are talking about.
|
| If anything the price is a huge issue, so just buy the pi4 if
| the hardware suffices or the 5 if you need something better.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| If you want hardware video encoding check out this SBC running a
| latest gen AMD 7840, all the encoding inc h264, av1, hevc plus
| latest gen AMD GPU:
|
| https://youtu.be/WCRK-Uwb0EA?si=BlxaYkg7Ecq2rALJ
| snvzz wrote:
| Buy Raspberry Pi 5 if, and only if, you want to support MPEG and
| their proprietary codecs through royalty fees.
| suprjami wrote:
| No h264? Useless to me. I'll stick with my Pi 4, and will replace
| them with a NUC or Ryzen mini PC when the time comes.
| rightisleft wrote:
| There are a ton of pi derivatives that offer a pretty broad range
| of configurations. I always think of the Pi as the general
| consumer flagship. I was still pretty impressed with the Pi 4B...
| I just wish it had broader availability.
|
| Just a handful of examples:
|
| Banana PI M5: https://www.banana-pi.org/
|
| Odroid C4: https://wiki.odroid.com/start
|
| Odroid N2+: Odroid C4: https://wiki.odroid.com/start
|
| Libre "Le Potato": https://libre.computer/
|
| Libre "Renegade": https://libre.computer/
|
| Orange Pi 3 LTS: http://www.orangepi.org/
|
| Orange Pi 5: http://www.orangepi.org/
|
| Rock Pi 4C+: https://rockpi.org/
|
| Nano Pi M4B: http://nanopi.io/
| hatthew wrote:
| Yeah, there's a huge variety of SBCs that exist, most of which
| have a better specs/price ratio than RPi. If you buy a RPi,
| you're spending money on the hardware, you're spending it on
| the mountains of support/tutorials/standardization. I suspect
| that most people on HN can handle the reduced knowledge base
| that exists for BPi, OPi, ROCK, etc.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I think it's a really weak excuse of Gordon Hollingworth "On the
| processor you have more control over the output". The one on the
| pi 1-4 worked totally fine and nobody complained about its
| quality.
|
| Don't forget you can always do software if you want to, it was
| just really great to have the hardware option.
| cosmojg wrote:
| For $85, the Orange Pi 5 supports 8K hardware video encoding
| (H265/H264) via gstreamer, and that's just what I'm aware of. I'm
| sure there are other single-board computers with similar (or
| better) features.
|
| Unless you're dependent on the Raspberry Pi HAT ecosystem or
| you're not particularly technical, it's worth considering the
| alternatives.
| mastax wrote:
| RaspberryPi's documentation about the CPU has this to say:
|
| https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/processo...
|
| - 4Kp60 HEVC hardware decode
|
| - Other CODECs run in software
|
| - H264 1080p24 decode ~10-20% of CPU
|
| - H264 1080p60 decode ~50-60% of CPU
|
| - H264 1080p30 encode (from ISP) ~30-40% CPU
|
| Doesn't seem like the end of the world to me but I'm not trying
| to use the thing as a media server.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| 4K in 24 FPS is enough for me for media stream server. Films are
| in 23.97 FPS so no reason to have higher FPS if you dont want
| smooth UI experience.
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