7 ms·

Ever since the very first model, sub-par, underrated power supplies have been responsible for a good slice of tech support issues with the Pi. It wouldn't be a

Ever since the very first model, sub-par, underrated power supplies have been responsible for a good slice of tech support issues with the Pi. It wouldn't be a real Pi launch without power issues. IIRC the Pi 3B+ was butting up against (if not exceeding) the maximum rated current for the microUSB port, so I believe the switch to USB Type-C is more about picking a port that can handle a 3A@5V supply than a conscious effort to support the dozens and dozens of terrible and near arbitrary USB Type-C supplies on the market (some output 12V with zero negotiation. You know- for giggles). I'd be surprised if they tested with more than a couple of staff phone chargers and their own-brand chargers. I can't imagine the idea of anyone using an expensive power-delivery enabled dock with a thick, 40cm Thunderbolt 3 cable really entered their minds. My advice to anyone buying a Pi 4 would be "Just buy a Pi-branded power-supply. They're inexpensive and guaranteed to work." Granted you might want to save a few bucks and use your phone charger... but then what are you going to use to charge your phone?

DangerousPie 7y ago
> Ever since the very first model, sub-par, underrated power supplies have been responsible for a good slice of tech support issues with the Pi. It wouldn't be a real Pi launch without power issues. Except this time the issue is not with the power supplies by the Pi itself.
- gadgetoid 7y ago
  I think the problem is that people see a USB Type-C port and expect everything with a USB Type-C connector to work in it, which has and never will be the case with USB Type-C connectors. If you think this is bad, go ask PlanetCom what the heck "Pump Express" is and why USB Type-C PD power supplies wont charge their phone ;)
  - jrockway 7y ago
    Nintendo also interpreted the USB Type-C standard interestingly.
    - cevn 7y ago
      Yeah, this is what I was thinking. IIRC the Switch will brick if you use the wrong dock / charger to this day. If Nintendo can get away with it, surely Raspi foundation can, lol.
      - irq 7y ago
        Not true. I charge my Switch with USB-C Macbook chargers all the time without issue. Have also used external USB-C batteries with it too.
        kokx 7y ago
        Anecdotal evidence does not make a counterexample. After a quick internet search, you will find several USB-C chargers and docks which have reportedly bricked Nintendo Switch devices.
        naikrovek 7y ago
        No you won't. Only a single dock has ever bricked the Switch, and the vendor of that dock (Nyko) replaced switches that were bricked. There is no shortage of people who spout off about old news as if it is still current who say that there are still docks that brick a Switch, and I've tried them all, trying to prove them right, and all I get is proof that they're wrong. I've tried hundreds of chargers and probably a dozen docks on my three Switches, and all three of them are still working just fine.
        AgentME 7y ago
        I believe the Switch works fine if you plug a macbook charger directly into it (I do this frequently with no problem), but it may break if you plug a macbook charger into the Switch's dock and power the Switch through that.
      - gadgetoid 7y ago
        While I totally understand the dream of “use the same power supply for everything” I really can’t emphasise just how much impact “use the flippin’ official power supply” has in support burden. The rash of people digging out their dusty old 500mA microUSB chargers for their early Pi’s made “have you tried a good power supply” almost a meme. The Switch not truly embracing USB Type-C makes me grumpy. I wonder if the - possibly dockless and portable only - Switch 2 will rectify that. Ah- to just use a regular HDMI alt mode cable!
- makomk 7y ago
  A lot of the problems with the original that were blamed on bad power supplies were probably issues with the Pi itself, to be fair. For example, as originally released connecting any USB keyboard or mouse would cause the onboard USB hub to fall over after a while due to a spec violation. There was a long list of supported and broken devices on the wiki, with the non-working ones being accused of drawing too much power, but in reality the problem affected every USB keyboard and mouse. When someone's Pi fell over despite using supposedly tested and working devices, guess what was blamed next? That's right, the power supply they were using. Inadequate power supplies became a handy scapegoat for every single Pi reliablility issue. (Eventually, some outside engineer with a USB analyzer got fed up enough to track down that issue. The Pi Foundation didn't spot it. They almost never do.)
  - seba_dos1 7y ago
    The problem actually affected any USB 1.1 device, not just keyboards and mice (which are almost exclusively USB 1.1). Video streams from cheap webcams were getting corrupted as well, for instance (that's how I got introduced to this bug).
Havoc 7y ago
Yup. For 3b+ it was generally a good idea to feed it via the gpio pins anyway if you want stability with devices attached. So not at all surprised that they moved away from the old usb
- m463 7y ago
  After all the pi power problems I faced over the years, I was hoping for a simple 12v barrel jack.
marble-drink 7y ago
Funnily enough my trusty Pi2 which has been running continuously for several years now stopped working last night. At first I thought it must be the SD card, as those are known to fail. Nope. So I thought it must be the Pi itself. I suppose they weren't really designed to be left on for several years? I was sure it couldn't be the power supply, but somehow it was. It will now power up a Pi1, but not a 2 or 3. I've no idea why but it's gone in the bin and the Pi2 works again on a new one. People really should consider a refurbished Dell Optiplex FX160 instead of a Pi if it's going to be in a headless server role, though. You can get one for about half the price of a new Pi4 on eBay and it comes with a proper power supply unit, high quality case, and of course an Atom CPU which I'm sure compares favourably even to the new Pi4. There was an article about them on HN a while back. Mine has been running happily for almost two years now.
- snovv_crash 7y ago
  Atom CPUs are core-for-core comparable to the A72 cores in the RPi4. ICP isn't really comparable since the instruction set is different, but performance is similar. The RPi has 4 of them, only the most modern Atoms have that.
  - Narishma 7y ago
    'Atom' is pretty vague. There are several different micro-architectures under that name, with different performance characteristics.
  - marble-drink 7y ago
    Yeah, well I don't think you'd get a 4-core Atom for the same price, so maybe not so good compared to the Pi4 then.
  - asark 7y ago
    I'm not seeing USB 3 on that particular Optiplex, either. Gigabit ethernet, yes. No HDMI. DVI, VGA. Maybe displayport? Hard to tell. Do have PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, which is kinda nice.
zimmund 7y ago
In my experience, phones break more often than chargers, so you end up having several chargers laying around. Using the Pi for DIY projects, computing experiments (e.g. clusters) or learning, it makes sense to recycle those chargers (specially if you are in a budget). Being in a third world country I can assure you that getting a simple Pi-branded charger can get difficult and/or expensive.
- gadgetoid 7y ago
  I don’t disagree that they should be recycled (albeit I’d expect a phone to last 3-5 years), but historically all but the best phone chargers have proven to be wholly unsuitable for powering Pi’s. I’m not convinced USB C is poised to change that since charging doesn’t require a continuous, stable supply whereas running a power-hungry CPU does. Ironically most cheap, captive cable phone chargers are exactly the sort of thing that will work in the Pi 4. For varying values of “work.”
cjcampbell 7y ago
> My advice to anyone buying a Pi 4 would be “Just buy a Pi-branded power-supply.” I agree in theory but not in practice. I use RPi largely with students and tend to prefer inexpensive USB batteries over fighting facilities to provide enough AC access for 35 students (or carrying a bag of power strips with me to every lab). I’m going to be doing some testing, but it seems like I’ll probably be sticking with the 3B+ until the situation improves.

DangerousPie 7y ago

> Ever since the very first model, sub-par, underrated power supplies have been responsible for a good slice of tech support issues with the Pi. It wouldn't be a real Pi launch without power issues. Except this time the issue is not with the power supplies by the Pi itself.

gadgetoid 7y ago
I think the problem is that people see a USB Type-C port and expect everything with a USB Type-C connector to work in it, which has and never will be the case with USB Type-C connectors. If you think this is bad, go ask PlanetCom what the heck "Pump Express" is and why USB Type-C PD power supplies wont charge their phone ;)
- jrockway 7y ago
  Nintendo also interpreted the USB Type-C standard interestingly.
  - cevn 7y ago
    Yeah, this is what I was thinking. IIRC the Switch will brick if you use the wrong dock / charger to this day. If Nintendo can get away with it, surely Raspi foundation can, lol.
    - irq 7y ago
      Not true. I charge my Switch with USB-C Macbook chargers all the time without issue. Have also used external USB-C batteries with it too.
      - kokx 7y ago
        Anecdotal evidence does not make a counterexample. After a quick internet search, you will find several USB-C chargers and docks which have reportedly bricked Nintendo Switch devices.
        naikrovek 7y ago
        No you won't. Only a single dock has ever bricked the Switch, and the vendor of that dock (Nyko) replaced switches that were bricked. There is no shortage of people who spout off about old news as if it is still current who say that there are still docks that brick a Switch, and I've tried them all, trying to prove them right, and all I get is proof that they're wrong. I've tried hundreds of chargers and probably a dozen docks on my three Switches, and all three of them are still working just fine.
      - AgentME 7y ago
        I believe the Switch works fine if you plug a macbook charger directly into it (I do this frequently with no problem), but it may break if you plug a macbook charger into the Switch's dock and power the Switch through that.
    - gadgetoid 7y ago
      While I totally understand the dream of “use the same power supply for everything” I really can’t emphasise just how much impact “use the flippin’ official power supply” has in support burden. The rash of people digging out their dusty old 500mA microUSB chargers for their early Pi’s made “have you tried a good power supply” almost a meme. The Switch not truly embracing USB Type-C makes me grumpy. I wonder if the - possibly dockless and portable only - Switch 2 will rectify that. Ah- to just use a regular HDMI alt mode cable!
makomk 7y ago
A lot of the problems with the original that were blamed on bad power supplies were probably issues with the Pi itself, to be fair. For example, as originally released connecting any USB keyboard or mouse would cause the onboard USB hub to fall over after a while due to a spec violation. There was a long list of supported and broken devices on the wiki, with the non-working ones being accused of drawing too much power, but in reality the problem affected every USB keyboard and mouse. When someone's Pi fell over despite using supposedly tested and working devices, guess what was blamed next? That's right, the power supply they were using. Inadequate power supplies became a handy scapegoat for every single Pi reliablility issue. (Eventually, some outside engineer with a USB analyzer got fed up enough to track down that issue. The Pi Foundation didn't spot it. They almost never do.)
- seba_dos1 7y ago
  The problem actually affected any USB 1.1 device, not just keyboards and mice (which are almost exclusively USB 1.1). Video streams from cheap webcams were getting corrupted as well, for instance (that's how I got introduced to this bug).

Havoc 7y ago

Yup. For 3b+ it was generally a good idea to feed it via the gpio pins anyway if you want stability with devices attached. So not at all surprised that they moved away from the old usb

m463 7y ago
After all the pi power problems I faced over the years, I was hoping for a simple 12v barrel jack.

marble-drink 7y ago

Funnily enough my trusty Pi2 which has been running continuously for several years now stopped working last night. At first I thought it must be the SD card, as those are known to fail. Nope. So I thought it must be the Pi itself. I suppose they weren't really designed to be left on for several years? I was sure it couldn't be the power supply, but somehow it was. It will now power up a Pi1, but not a 2 or 3. I've no idea why but it's gone in the bin and the Pi2 works again on a new one. People really should consider a refurbished Dell Optiplex FX160 instead of a Pi if it's going to be in a headless server role, though. You can get one for about half the price of a new Pi4 on eBay and it comes with a proper power supply unit, high quality case, and of course an Atom CPU which I'm sure compares favourably even to the new Pi4. There was an article about them on HN a while back. Mine has been running happily for almost two years now.

snovv_crash 7y ago
Atom CPUs are core-for-core comparable to the A72 cores in the RPi4. ICP isn't really comparable since the instruction set is different, but performance is similar. The RPi has 4 of them, only the most modern Atoms have that.
- Narishma 7y ago
  'Atom' is pretty vague. There are several different micro-architectures under that name, with different performance characteristics.
- marble-drink 7y ago
  Yeah, well I don't think you'd get a 4-core Atom for the same price, so maybe not so good compared to the Pi4 then.
- asark 7y ago
  I'm not seeing USB 3 on that particular Optiplex, either. Gigabit ethernet, yes. No HDMI. DVI, VGA. Maybe displayport? Hard to tell. Do have PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, which is kinda nice.

zimmund 7y ago

In my experience, phones break more often than chargers, so you end up having several chargers laying around. Using the Pi for DIY projects, computing experiments (e.g. clusters) or learning, it makes sense to recycle those chargers (specially if you are in a budget). Being in a third world country I can assure you that getting a simple Pi-branded charger can get difficult and/or expensive.

gadgetoid 7y ago
I don’t disagree that they should be recycled (albeit I’d expect a phone to last 3-5 years), but historically all but the best phone chargers have proven to be wholly unsuitable for powering Pi’s. I’m not convinced USB C is poised to change that since charging doesn’t require a continuous, stable supply whereas running a power-hungry CPU does. Ironically most cheap, captive cable phone chargers are exactly the sort of thing that will work in the Pi 4. For varying values of “work.”

cjcampbell 7y ago

> My advice to anyone buying a Pi 4 would be “Just buy a Pi-branded power-supply.” I agree in theory but not in practice. I use RPi largely with students and tend to prefer inexpensive USB batteries over fighting facilities to provide enough AC access for 35 students (or carrying a bag of power strips with me to every lab). I’m going to be doing some testing, but it seems like I’ll probably be sticking with the 3B+ until the situation improves.