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First Impressions with the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
- Stampo00 5y agoThe idea of using it as a self-hosted Github Actions runner spoke to me. I wouldn't have thought of that. Thank you!
- alexellisuk 5y agoDon't blame me. The idea came from Martin Woodward (from GitHub) and I was surprised how I had it up and running, executing builds in a few minutes. What kinds of things would you run with yours? Maybe you could use a GitHub action to trigger IoT lights on and off.
- one_off_comment 5y agoI use Github Actions mostly for automatically publishing my website when I change its content. But I haven't fully set up my build pipeline to my liking. And getting logs and stuff when the pipeline goes sideways isn't very easy right now with Github Actions. If I hosted my own running, at least I could poke around my build environment to see why it failed until I have it running reliably enough to let the cloud handle it. That's a long-winded way to say: debugging.
- PragmaticPulp 5y agoPersonally, I'd prefer to get a standard Raspberry Pi 4 model for any server-like duties. Get the 8GB RAM model and it's easy to run a lot of virtual machines on it for all of your different mini-server needs on a single device. Managing a lot of different little Pis for different server-like things is fun for experimenting with clustering and multi-server management tools, but it gets old fast if you really just want several different VMs or containers. VMWare ESXi is even available for the Raspberry Pi now: https://www.servethehome.com/getting-started-with-vmware-esxi-on-arm-with-a-raspberry-pi/ https://www.servethehome.com/getting-started-with-vmware-esx...
- matthewaveryusa 5y ago>VMWare ESXi is even available for the Raspberry Pi now Wow, thanks, I'll definitely be checking that out
- alexellisuk 5y agoI know many of you may be wondering if you should get one of these, and if they can be used to create a cheaper cluster than RPi4s. I try to answer that as well as talk about my experience with the RPi Zero and how quick it is with Go and Node.js compared to the older generation. Are you running Zeros now or other models? What would you run on an RPi Zero 2?
- rasfincher 5y agoThanks for your RPi content Alex. Even though I'm not really active in the space, I still enjoy reading/watching about what's going on.
- marktangotango 5y agoMy dream device for clustering is dual core 1Ghz+, 1GB ddr4 (ddr3 in a pinch) and wired Gb ethernet. In bulk (where bulk ~ 100) price $5-10. Some of the allwinner and rockchip based pi clones get close but price is a lot more.
- tomcam 5y agoYou don’t ask for much ;)
- sitkack 5y agoYou can hit this now with the CM4 modules, For qty 1 @ $30 you get 2GB and 4 cores, you could put 2 more ethernet ports on the PCIe port for a total of 3. That gets you into the same-ish performance regime. I am all for aggregates of low end compute, but I think something with more processing power and more PCIe lanes would scale better. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC0287/13530945 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC02...
- GeorgeTirebiter 5y agoAvailability is a Real Issue, tho. 16-week leadtime on that URL.
- Waterluvian 5y agoDoes anyone else have feelings about “there’s too many tiers of Pi” yet? I’m not sure if I feel that but it’s on my mind.
- xor99 5y agoNot really: the pico is in the mcu space, compute module for industrial projects, pi4 as large sbc, and pi zero as small sbc. Seems like a good range. I think the least differentiated are the pi4 and pi zero but there's still a big difference when you think about applications (e.g. trying to stick a pi4 in a diy smart speaker or multiple VMs).
- michaelt 5y agoI don't know about too many tiers, but they've certainly run out of sensible naming ideas. Who the hell signs off naming a product 'Zero 2' let alone the 'Zero 2 W' ?
- exporectomy 5y agoIt's becoming like USB version names. If you're familiar with them from working with them all regularly, you can just remember what name means what. But for newcomers, it's a massive struggle. I feel that naming things in general imposes a lot of cognitive burden on people. Chrome version numbers are beautiful. Just incrementing integers, the way we numbered things as kids. I wonder if the naming mess is intentional for marketing or an accident of not predicting the future well enough? They certainly seem to be trying to keep it simple and it's nowhere near the impossible muddle of, say, Intel and AMD CPUs or Nvidia GPUs yet.
- martin_a 5y agoWhat baffles me is the rather bad availability of older versions. I'd have guessed that there's somewhere a warehouse full of Pi Zero Ws, but I can't buy one right now in Germany. There's a shop in Switzerland, but I'd have to pay import taxes and whatnot to get hold of that. So, let's try a Model 3 B+ then... Same as before: Official vendors are almost all sold out, one has some but it's 15 to 20 Euro above the recommended price... Something's broken in the reselling system if you ask me.
- kristianpaul 5y agoInteresting, dint know faasd
- 1MachineElf 5y agoI wonder if this faster CPU will cause the stenogotchi project consider de-prioritizing performance optimization of their code.
- devwastaken 5y agoRaspian still relies on inferior wifi management. You have to replace with network-manager to get it to connect to Enterprise wifi. Is there any specific reason why it's not the default?
- moffkalast 5y agoWell that's stock on both Debian and Ubuntu still, right? It's more of a question why they haven't replaced it either.
- ComputerGuru 5y agoIt’s not.
- kiwijamo 5y agoBeen a while since I've used Debian but I'm sure Debian is already using NetworkManager. This means the Raspberry OS has actually removed NetworkManager from its Debian base and put in something else. I agree with the OP this shouldn't happen. For my Raspberry Pi, I ended up switching out the Raspberry Pi OS' default networking manager thingy in preference for NetworkManager so I could share wireless networking configuration among my devices. It also helps with troubleshooting as well since I can just use the same commands I use on other Linux machines even those running other distros.
- jandrese 5y agoProbably because SystemD network management is harder to use on a headless install. With a Raspberry Pi you just need to edit a couple of lines in the boot.conf to have it connect to WiFi on boot. You can deploy one without ever plugging in a keyboard or monitor.
- pc86 5y agoHow do you edit boot.conf without a keyboard or monitor?
- 5y ago
- pytlicek 5y agoNice article, well written. I like Alex's approach and I like that I have found all the information I wanted to know about this new shiny board :) Keep up the good work alexellisuk :)
- djanogo 5y agoHow are people dealing with subpar SD card storage option which is guaranteed to fail if there are ANY consistent writes? Why don't they add M.2 port?, it would instantly make Pi lot more reliable.
- hadlock 5y agoI've switched to only buying SD cards from AAA+ platinum-rated photography websites (B&H, Adorama), they seem to be the only reliable places to buy non-counterfit SD cards these days. I've never had an issue with an SD card since I made this shopping change. Shipping and price are about 10% higher, but guaranteed quality product is worth it. If you buy your SD cards from Amazon or Ebay you can't guarantee quality for these products.
- kiwijamo 5y agoWhat SD brands do you usually buy? Are the Sandisk Extreme range any good?
- Teongot 5y agoI find Samsung much more reliable than Sandisk in my pis
- hadlock 5y agoSandisk, Lexar, Prograde. Depends on the application. My raspberry pi doesn't do many disk operations so the speed isn't critical and 90 MB/s is plenty. My digital camera, on the other hand, has dual SD card slots, and can record uncompressed(!) 10 bit 4k video @ 60fps but needs 2 x 400 MB/s continuous write, which is... a pretty specific need. And cost accordingly.
- ThrowawayR2 5y agoSandisk makes high endurance microSDXC cards, e.g. SDSQQNR-064G-GN6IA, which are inexpensive. Beyond that, they also make industrial SLC microSDXC cards with very specific longevity guarantees, e.g. SDSDQED-064G-XI, but those are rather expensive.
- kzrdude 5y agoWill existing HATs for pi zero work for this one? I'm wondering about the ANAVI Infrared pHAT