8 ms·
They are the premier ARM platform anyway, but the real problem is that a 5W CPU is too slow to work with, unless you write everything minimalistic from scratch!
by bullen 6y ago
They are the premier ARM platform anyway, but the real problem is that a 5W CPU is too slow to work with, unless you write everything minimalistic from scratch!
- posterboy 6y agoMillions of smartphones running on ARM would disagree.
- gegtik 6y agoare you saying phones are running general purpose OS and apps?
- u678u 6y agoyes. Browser, youtube, video calls, docs, games, there isn't much they can't do.
- tasogare 6y agoThey can’t be used for local development, so hard to consider them a general computing platform. They are more akin to consoles than PC.
- posterboy 6y agoIf I wanted to programm I could get a shell on a server for example. Now touch screen keyboards are a different problem.
- entropicdrifter 6y agoThonny runs well on my Pinebook Pro, so in that case comparably wimpy ARM based Linux machines can be used for things like Python development even with an IDE. It just depends on how heavy-duty what you're trying to do is. Scripting in general runs fine on my ARM SBCs. The real trouble is if you've got something that you need to recompile every time you make a change and you don't have a cache set up.
- bullen 6y agoWhen I see truth being downvoted I try to upvote, hn would be a better place if people learned to upvote, the high karma downers are really toxic. You need a keyboard and mouse to be productive, case closed! Edit: see the toxic high karma downers even got to this one!
- 3np 6y agoMeta commenting on comment voting is against the HN guidelines and tends to get downvoted. Please review them again.
- bullen 6y agoJesus christ this place is toxic by design. I bet you the high karma people click on your profile to see how much karma you have before they push you down. Eventually the HN database will leak, it's inevitable, I'll make sure to grab a copy then.
- 3np 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtV_gfkLgSc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtV_gfkLgSc
- detaro 6y agoThe tooling isn't particularly nice, but on Android it is clearly possible.
- posterboy 6y agoAbstractly speaking, yes. I notice the limitations on mobile of course, but you cannot deny the potential. I'm barking up the wrong tree, am I? sorry for the misunderstanding
- mattnewton 6y agoI think that kinda proves the parent comments point, since all the apps were re-written for mobile.
- posterboy 6y agoNo, not everything requires a complete rewrite. The browsers for example benefit from code reuse. The UI is another matter. Wrapping and rewriting is a given on the system side, though.
- bullen 6y agoI meant work as in compiling work, when you are used to 65W X86 the ARMs stand no chance. My 3D MMO engine compiles in 2 seconds on my Windows PC but it takes 10 seconds on Raspberry/Jetson, enough that I decided to build a 45W Atom computer to try the inbetween... with 25W CPU and 20W GPU! Even if that would mean I have to "port" the engine to linux/X86. Until now I just had windows/X86 and linux/ARM!
- xmodem 6y ago> when you are used to 65W X86 the ARM stand no chance. My m1 mac says hi! :)
- bullen 6y agoYes, it says hi and then when you want to upgrade the disk/RAM you can't. And when it breaks you can't fix it and Apple sells you another one for bazillion dollars. And you have to use Metal instead of OpenGL. That's when I say goodbye until they reverse engineer the GPU and port OpenGL to it! :D Now I didn't even mention the App store tie in and how you need to sign the binaries on Apple hardware and how they poach 30%, but you get the picture.
- antiterra 6y agoYou just moved the goalposts to another planet. Your initial comment was about wattage and ARM performance.
- kube-system 6y agoNot to mention that plenty of x86 hardware has also ditched socketed components.
- nkellenicki 6y agoNone of that is even remotely related to your initial point.
- lostlogin 6y ago
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoWhats this obsession with ysing raspberri pi for work? It makes no sense, PI doesnt ecen have proper cooling. Get an Intel Nuc if you want a miniature PC, at least it has all the ports, disks, etc.
- lostlogin 6y agoThat’s a vastly more powerful machine, 8-10x the size when counting the brick, and way less fun to hack about with. I love my Nucs but the Pi is better.
- foobar33333 6y agoThe nuc is better when you want to use a PC for real work. The pi is better for when you want to drive random sensors and displays as well has general tinkering. I'd hardly call one better than the other.
- jandrese 6y agoThe NUC is literally 5x the price of a Raspberry Pi.
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoHm... A Celeron NUC without memory and disk starts at around 130$, IIRC.
- u678u 6y agoWhich is about 5x the price of raspberry pi. I get your point though, I actually have a pentium nuc.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoBut you also need storage / Sdcard, mouse, keyboard, monitor, etc. Im embedded/Iot none of that matters, but if we are talking about work, using PI makes no sence when compared to even an old laptop form ebay.
- jandrese 6y agoIt really depends what you're doing. The 5W CPU in the Pi is more than adequate for a lot of tasks. Heck, I wrote papers using Libreoffice on the original model Pi. The Pi4 is powerful enough to run web browsers comfortably, which was a problem on the original Pi. Office programs run no sweat. You can even do light development work.
- 72deluxe 6y agoYes I have switched to using a Pi4 8GB as a desktop machine running WindowMaker and it's speedy as can be. Am using a USB3 SSD but booting from /boot on the SD card, which then loads the main system from the SSD. Can happily do C++ work on it or RDP to a Windows machine.
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoIt’s got plenty of speed to drive my autonomous GPS guided solar powered open source farm robot! I guess I did write the code from scratch, but it’s just Python, nothing fancy. https://community.twistedfields.com/t/introducing-acorn-a-precision-farming-rover-from-twisted-fields/17 https://community.twistedfields.com/t/introducing-acorn-a-pr...
- bullen 6y agoYou should be able to drive that with a Zero no? Where is the battery? Lead-acid or Lithium? What does this even do, I see no arms, cutters or anything?
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoIt could be done with a zero with C++ I would imagine. IIRC the zero is 700mhz single core. I’m using a Pi4 which is quad core 2.XGhz. Our current Python code uses 20-50% (I forget exactly) of each core. I’ve not made any attempt to optimize, and most of that is probably object serialization for IPC which could be improved (for eg with shared memory). No battery. It runs directly off of solar power with a supercapacitor bank to provide peak currents. Power draw while driving walking speed on level ground is 20-30 watts with the latest drive system (not shown in the video). Solar panels are 8 100 watt panels. The project is a work in progress. We just open sourced everything and wanted to start building a community of interested followers who would like to see our progress and share ideas. I do mention this in the blog post but I realized afterwards that understandably a lot of people just watch the video and don’t get the full picture. But we’re adding a vision system now and tools will come in the future. We’re solidifying the base vehicle right now which is what you saw in the video. Feel free to ask me here or join our community at the first link I shared if you have any more questions!
- bullen 6y agoNo the 4 is 1.5GHz, it would melt at 2+GHz! If you code Python then you really have missunderstood what tools are available. My recommendations: C or Java. You need a battery if you want to be able to predict work, we had a whole month of cloudy weather last year! I missed the video, I'll check it now.