5 ms·

I wonder what the price point will be. I always wanted a low cost DIY NAS server with PLEX server capabilities. I tried with a RasPi 3 but had some problems wit

I wonder what the price point will be. I always wanted a low cost DIY NAS server with PLEX server capabilities. I tried with a RasPi 3 but had some problems with it hanging up all the time when I ran a SAMBA server concurrently.

ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
Is it a problem with all raspis? I have two of them and they all conk off after few days due to voltage issues and I have to physically restart them.
- kryptk 8y ago
  What are you using to power them? A proper 5V 2A supply should have no issues at load.
  - trashcan 8y ago
    Yeah, that is a very likely cause. Make sure to get a quality power supply and a decent MicroSD card (as in, not the cheapest one on Amazon) so it doesn't fail after a few months. I have Raspberry Pis that have had uptimes of years+ with no issues.
    - 05 8y ago
      And set up readonly rootfs. Or use a Banana Pi with onboard NAND to store rootfs. Or do both, just to be sure.
  - zamalek 8y ago
    Yup. You want to keep it plugged into a monitor for a while and watch out for the undervolt warning (either a lightning bolt or a rainbow in the corner of the screen). Improving the cooling, the quality of the USB cable, and the power supply are also really good ideas.
    - peatfreak 8y ago
      > Improving the cooling, the quality of the USB cable, and the power supply are also really good ideas. What have you found so far to be the best options? In my experience the quality of cabling and power supplies are the factors that most frequently affect stability of electronics hardware.
      - zamalek 8y ago
        The power supply was definitely the biggest help, but I was using a dreadful one to begin with.
- Florin_Andrei 8y ago
  The problem is with bad power supplies and USB cables. Make sure the USB port can pump out enough current. Make sure you use a short, thick USB cable. Once you do that, stability issues are gone. I also put a heat sink on the CPU, but it probably has no effect on stability. It reduces the amount of time the CPU spends in thermal throttling.
  - ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
    I have a heat sink and always SSH but like others are suggesting its probably an undervolt issue although its feeding directly from USB power port. Might be the long cables I use
    - peatfreak 8y ago
      > Might be the long cables I use The long cables where? I think I know what you're getting at but I would really love some more explanation if possible.
      - hoosieree 8y ago
        I'll take a guess at what they meant, and offer an explanation. All wires have resistance, and all else being equal, a 2x longer wire will have 2x more resistance. Due to Ohm's law, there is a voltage drop in the cable when you are powering a load (such as the RPi), and this drop will eventually go below the minimum for the load. Example: the RPi needs 5 volts at 2 amps. If your cable is 0.1 ohms, then the voltage at the Pi will be 5 - (2 * 0.1) == 4.8 volts. If your cable is 1 ohms, the voltage at the Pi will be 5 - (2 * 1) == 3 volts. But because the Pi doesn't always need the full 2 amps, that 1 ohm cable will work sometimes, making debugging harder. Only when you try to do something compute and/or RAM intensive will you notice the board randomly die.
        ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
        This is right. The way I have setup my home office I need a 3x wire cables for my raspberry pis and this is probably causing an undervolt. I might have to connect a display/vnc and check for warnings. The LED light does go steady red which is an indication that it has conked off and needs a hard reboot
- Rotareti 8y ago
  > Is it a problem with all raspis? My Pi currently has an uptime of 388 days. I use it as a file-server/backup-machine in my home network. It runs hourly backups for multiple boxes in the background (I use vhpi [0] for this). I have a usb battery attached to it for uninterruptible power supply. It works like a charm. I use NFS over Samba, though. [0] https://github.com/feluxe/very-hungry-pi https://github.com/feluxe/very-hungry-pi
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    I have had good uptime too on a pi which runs a UniFi controller. All the outages I have tracked in the last year have been power (maybe 2) or my ISP doing something, as the IP address changes after a 2 second outage. It sends me Slack notifications of what’s happened so it’s easy to see.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  I've run a bunch of pi zero based cameras w/motioneye. Ignoring some QC problems with the camera modules they've proven to be very stable even in >100F ambient temps. But I power them off dedicated wall warts.
  - peatfreak 8y ago
    > But I power them off dedicated wall warts. ... and what effect are you implying that this has in this particular context?
    - newnewpdro 8y ago
      ... that my experience is consistent with the others stating RPIs can be reliable with sufficient power supplies.
- lphnull 8y ago
  I blame bad USB micro cables. Replacing bad cables with new high quality solid cables fixed the unreliability for my pi3.
ojn 8y ago
Macchiatobin is a pretty good alternative these days. Mini-ITX form factor, 4 relatively high-performance cores, good amount of RAM and PCIe/SATA/10GbE.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  The MACCHIATObin line does charge over 300€ for a underpowered 4-core processor with 4GB of RAM, and 500€ for a 16GB model. That's the price of a low/mid-range COTS x86-64 box.

ganeshkrishnan 8y ago

Is it a problem with all raspis? I have two of them and they all conk off after few days due to voltage issues and I have to physically restart them.

kryptk 8y ago
What are you using to power them? A proper 5V 2A supply should have no issues at load.
- trashcan 8y ago
  Yeah, that is a very likely cause. Make sure to get a quality power supply and a decent MicroSD card (as in, not the cheapest one on Amazon) so it doesn't fail after a few months. I have Raspberry Pis that have had uptimes of years+ with no issues.
  - 05 8y ago
    And set up readonly rootfs. Or use a Banana Pi with onboard NAND to store rootfs. Or do both, just to be sure.
- zamalek 8y ago
  Yup. You want to keep it plugged into a monitor for a while and watch out for the undervolt warning (either a lightning bolt or a rainbow in the corner of the screen). Improving the cooling, the quality of the USB cable, and the power supply are also really good ideas.
  - peatfreak 8y ago
    > Improving the cooling, the quality of the USB cable, and the power supply are also really good ideas. What have you found so far to be the best options? In my experience the quality of cabling and power supplies are the factors that most frequently affect stability of electronics hardware.
    - zamalek 8y ago
      The power supply was definitely the biggest help, but I was using a dreadful one to begin with.
Florin_Andrei 8y ago
The problem is with bad power supplies and USB cables. Make sure the USB port can pump out enough current. Make sure you use a short, thick USB cable. Once you do that, stability issues are gone. I also put a heat sink on the CPU, but it probably has no effect on stability. It reduces the amount of time the CPU spends in thermal throttling.
- ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
  I have a heat sink and always SSH but like others are suggesting its probably an undervolt issue although its feeding directly from USB power port. Might be the long cables I use
  - peatfreak 8y ago
    > Might be the long cables I use The long cables where? I think I know what you're getting at but I would really love some more explanation if possible.
    - hoosieree 8y ago
      I'll take a guess at what they meant, and offer an explanation. All wires have resistance, and all else being equal, a 2x longer wire will have 2x more resistance. Due to Ohm's law, there is a voltage drop in the cable when you are powering a load (such as the RPi), and this drop will eventually go below the minimum for the load. Example: the RPi needs 5 volts at 2 amps. If your cable is 0.1 ohms, then the voltage at the Pi will be 5 - (2 * 0.1) == 4.8 volts. If your cable is 1 ohms, the voltage at the Pi will be 5 - (2 * 1) == 3 volts. But because the Pi doesn't always need the full 2 amps, that 1 ohm cable will work sometimes, making debugging harder. Only when you try to do something compute and/or RAM intensive will you notice the board randomly die.
      - ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
        This is right. The way I have setup my home office I need a 3x wire cables for my raspberry pis and this is probably causing an undervolt. I might have to connect a display/vnc and check for warnings. The LED light does go steady red which is an indication that it has conked off and needs a hard reboot
Rotareti 8y ago
> Is it a problem with all raspis? My Pi currently has an uptime of 388 days. I use it as a file-server/backup-machine in my home network. It runs hourly backups for multiple boxes in the background (I use vhpi [0] for this). I have a usb battery attached to it for uninterruptible power supply. It works like a charm. I use NFS over Samba, though. [0] https://github.com/feluxe/very-hungry-pi https://github.com/feluxe/very-hungry-pi
- lostlogin 8y ago
  I have had good uptime too on a pi which runs a UniFi controller. All the outages I have tracked in the last year have been power (maybe 2) or my ISP doing something, as the IP address changes after a 2 second outage. It sends me Slack notifications of what’s happened so it’s easy to see.
newnewpdro 8y ago
I've run a bunch of pi zero based cameras w/motioneye. Ignoring some QC problems with the camera modules they've proven to be very stable even in >100F ambient temps. But I power them off dedicated wall warts.
- peatfreak 8y ago
  > But I power them off dedicated wall warts. ... and what effect are you implying that this has in this particular context?
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    ... that my experience is consistent with the others stating RPIs can be reliable with sufficient power supplies.
lphnull 8y ago
I blame bad USB micro cables. Replacing bad cables with new high quality solid cables fixed the unreliability for my pi3.

ojn 8y ago

Macchiatobin is a pretty good alternative these days. Mini-ITX form factor, 4 relatively high-performance cores, good amount of RAM and PCIe/SATA/10GbE.

geezerjay 8y ago
The MACCHIATObin line does charge over 300€ for a underpowered 4-core processor with 4GB of RAM, and 500€ for a 16GB model. That's the price of a low/mid-range COTS x86-64 box.