10 ms·

Raspberry Pi 5 now supports Valve's Steam Link

166 points by Venn1 2y ago

talldayo 2y ago
A few months ago I found out my FireTV enabled smart TV supports Steam Link. I had to sideload the APK, but once it was installed the game streaming worked great at 1080p. You can get a surprising amount of hardware to work as a game streaming frontend if your internet is fast enough. Moonlight-Switch is also interesting if you've got a jailbroken Switch sitting around like I do: https://github.com/XITRIX/Moonlight-Switch https://github.com/XITRIX/Moonlight-Switch https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/9553519/135712658-20382345-2da5-4968-9f57-f9f4470ae819.jpg https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/9553519/135712658-...
stavros 2y ago
I have a Steam Link and a Chromecast with Link installed, and neither of them works. Whenever I launch Link, the sound will come through, but the video just stays stuck on the splash screen. It's a pity, Steam is great otherwise.
- steelbrain 2y ago
  Have you verified that this is a client side issue by using another client? (ie the one built into your phone). I’ve seen this happen to me, and a combination of plugging in a dummy HDMI dongle into the GPU, toggling on/off nvidia nvfbenc (hope I’m spelling this right) fixed it for me.
  - stavros 2y ago
    I've used both my Deck and my computer to cast, and the same thing happens, but I'll try again, thanks!
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    I have the same problem, whether using a Chromecast or a Samsung Galaxy S10 Ultra as a client. I got as far as "It looks like it is using software encoding and it should be doing nvenc or something, but it Works Fine for everyone else so nobody ever writes about how any of this shit actually fucking works so troubleshooting it is more effort than it is worth." And it isn't clear to me -- at all -- how plugging in a dongle that acts like a monitor is going to help anything at all. I already have three fucking monitors plugged in. All different shapes. A fourth one cannot help.
    - IPTN 2y ago
      It can help with other solutions like Sunshine/Moonlight because a EDID plug advertises all the possible resolutions and refresh rate combinations under the sun so that it can be configured by the stream server to match the remote client display. Your attached monitor(s) may not support the same resolution/refresh rate as whatever client you are trying to stream to. Needing hardware for this is likely because of the graphics stack and virtualization restrictions of your graphics card if it isn't an enterprise one. Otherwise they could just use a virtual display buffer that isn't output on any screen. All that said, I don't think steam link does this automatically, but there are probably tools that have been made for switching your main display to the dongle and setting the correct resolution for it when you initiate a streaming connection. At least I know there are helper ones for Sunshine so I am assuming it is true for Steam Link as well. Not that this would fix an encoding issue if that is your problem.
radicality 2y ago
What’s the current top choice if I want to occasionally with low friction play games, but don’t want to actually be running the game myself (seems like for this you still use your PC). I have symmetric fios 1Gbs, and want to play either on Macbook, or on tv connected to appletv/firetv stick. Would GeForceNow be the best, or any other better options?
- j1elo 2y ago
  There is GeForce Now, Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Amazon Luna. Those are the most prominent services (if not the only ones, but I'm not sure about that)
  - rat9988 2y ago
    You can add shadow pc too.
- beAbU 2y ago
  Why not try them all and settle with what works for you? I've used Game Pass Cloud a couple of times to try out a game before I commit to downloading it to my xbox, but I cant comment on whether its better or worse than the others.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  I tried the GeForce one last year and it was unplayable, and I have gigabit internet. I’m just not sure streaming will ever be viable, meanwhile running things locally becomes increasingly easy.
  - jsheard 2y ago
    Surely your proximity to the nearest GFN PoP is more important than your connection speed? Gigabit isn't going to help if the bits need to take a >100ms roundtrip.
- poisonborz 2y ago
  Local network: Moonlight+Sunshine Over the net: Parsec
goodburb 2y ago
Parsec[1] would be interesting to compare. [1] https://parsec.app/ https://parsec.app/
daveidol 2y ago
I've had the best luck with Moonlight (OSS client) and Sunshine (OSS server replacement for GeForce Experience's "GameStream") -- very minimal latency (almost completely undetectable) from my RTX 3090 PC to my Nvidia Shield.
- dathery 2y ago
  I have been really happy with Sunshine as well. If your server is Linux and you have an NVIDIA card, I would also recommend applying the NVFBC consumer card restriction removal patch[1] to your driver libraries to allow you to capture directly from the GPU rather than X11/Wayland. Sunshine will automatically detect this and use it and it reduces the latency even further. [1] https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch
  - enronmusk 2y ago
    AFAIK the NVFBC patch is no longer required for new Sunshine versions thanks to https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine/pull/2471 https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine/pull/2471. However, NVIDIA say that "The NvFBC desktop capture library does not have native Wayland support and does not work with Xwayland" (https://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/565.77/README/wayland-issues.html https://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/565.77/R...), so I guess it's of no use for Wayland users.
    - dathery 2y ago
      Oh wow, thanks for pointing me to that -- I've still been patching my driver every update for no reason.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  Strongly agreed. Latency is so much better than Steam Remote / Steam Link! Works great. Everything is super cross platform too! Sunshine / Moonlight was also briefly pitched at the end of Arstechnica's coverage of this RPi Steam Link, fwiw. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/12/the-raspberry-pi-5-now-works-as-a-smaller-faster-kind-of-steam-link/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/12/the-raspberry-pi-5-no...
novaRom 2y ago
What Pi 5 is good for? It doesn't look like a portable because of high power consumption, nor it's a desktop class system because of its weak compute and high price. Pi 3 or 4 is still a better choice for almost anything including retro gaming and Linux education.
- ata_aman 2y ago
  I'm using it on a project to run llama and personal doc embedding, hosting etc...
- aappleby 2y ago
  It's a computer. It does computer things. Also it has easily-accesible GPIO and other interfaces like I2C, SPI, UART, etcetera.
  - prettyStandard 2y ago
    I think GPs point is if you need more horsepower you might as well get a used small form factor, and if you care about the GPIO and other interfaces you might as well get a PI 3 or 4. I get what you're saying it's a computer it could do all sorts of stuff. I think the stronger argument/usecase is it's a drop-in replacement for the pi4. So if you're already dedicated to that form factor... pi5 number go up
    - geerlingguy 2y ago
      Used == a whole different ball of wax. For anyone building a little homelab or whatever, especially in the US where triple the (low) power consumption from 3 to 9W+ isn't a big deal, a used SFF/mini PC is a better value proposition. Especially if you want to add storage, 2.5 Gbps networking, etc. But for people integrating a computer into a larger project (robotics, automation, controls, etc.), or buying a little 'IoT' device to tinker with, buying used gear that is often much larger and usually requires a large external power brick might be a turn-off.
      - 2y ago
nani8ot 2y ago
Since the Pi 5 supports (only) h265 hardware decoding this should be a good experience if set up that way. Altough I'd also recommend looking into Moonlight and Sunshine.
phoronixrly 2y ago
Valve, why is the Steam Link not open sourced?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wkat4242 2y ago
Huh i never realised that Steam link was also for 2D. Thought it was VR streaming only. I mostly game in VR so I guess I'm a bit too focused on that with the news
- zanderwohl 2y ago
  Yeah, it actually started out as a hardware device. You'd buy a small box with an HDMI port to connect your PC to your TV. It wasn't terribly successful, but it did work well, if on wired LAN.

166 points by Venn1 2y ago

A few months ago I found out my FireTV enabled smart TV supports Steam Link. I had to sideload the APK, but once it was installed the game streaming worked great at 1080p. You can get a surprising amount of hardware to work as a game streaming frontend if your internet is fast enough. Moonlight-Switch is also interesting if you've got a jailbroken Switch sitting around like I do: https://github.com/XITRIX/Moonlight-Switch https://github.com/XITRIX/Moonlight-Switch https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/9553519/135712658-20382345-2da5-4968-9f57-f9f4470ae819.jpg https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/9553519/135712658-...

stavros 2y ago

I have a Steam Link and a Chromecast with Link installed, and neither of them works. Whenever I launch Link, the sound will come through, but the video just stays stuck on the splash screen. It's a pity, Steam is great otherwise.

steelbrain 2y ago
Have you verified that this is a client side issue by using another client? (ie the one built into your phone). I’ve seen this happen to me, and a combination of plugging in a dummy HDMI dongle into the GPU, toggling on/off nvidia nvfbenc (hope I’m spelling this right) fixed it for me.
- stavros 2y ago
  I've used both my Deck and my computer to cast, and the same thing happens, but I'll try again, thanks!
- ssl-3 2y ago
  I have the same problem, whether using a Chromecast or a Samsung Galaxy S10 Ultra as a client. I got as far as "It looks like it is using software encoding and it should be doing nvenc or something, but it Works Fine for everyone else so nobody ever writes about how any of this shit actually fucking works so troubleshooting it is more effort than it is worth." And it isn't clear to me -- at all -- how plugging in a dongle that acts like a monitor is going to help anything at all. I already have three fucking monitors plugged in. All different shapes. A fourth one cannot help.
  - IPTN 2y ago
    It can help with other solutions like Sunshine/Moonlight because a EDID plug advertises all the possible resolutions and refresh rate combinations under the sun so that it can be configured by the stream server to match the remote client display. Your attached monitor(s) may not support the same resolution/refresh rate as whatever client you are trying to stream to. Needing hardware for this is likely because of the graphics stack and virtualization restrictions of your graphics card if it isn't an enterprise one. Otherwise they could just use a virtual display buffer that isn't output on any screen. All that said, I don't think steam link does this automatically, but there are probably tools that have been made for switching your main display to the dongle and setting the correct resolution for it when you initiate a streaming connection. At least I know there are helper ones for Sunshine so I am assuming it is true for Steam Link as well. Not that this would fix an encoding issue if that is your problem.

radicality 2y ago

What’s the current top choice if I want to occasionally with low friction play games, but don’t want to actually be running the game myself (seems like for this you still use your PC). I have symmetric fios 1Gbs, and want to play either on Macbook, or on tv connected to appletv/firetv stick. Would GeForceNow be the best, or any other better options?

j1elo 2y ago
There is GeForce Now, Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Amazon Luna. Those are the most prominent services (if not the only ones, but I'm not sure about that)
- rat9988 2y ago
  You can add shadow pc too.
beAbU 2y ago
Why not try them all and settle with what works for you? I've used Game Pass Cloud a couple of times to try out a game before I commit to downloading it to my xbox, but I cant comment on whether its better or worse than the others.
Gigachad 2y ago
I tried the GeForce one last year and it was unplayable, and I have gigabit internet. I’m just not sure streaming will ever be viable, meanwhile running things locally becomes increasingly easy.
- jsheard 2y ago
  Surely your proximity to the nearest GFN PoP is more important than your connection speed? Gigabit isn't going to help if the bits need to take a >100ms roundtrip.
poisonborz 2y ago
Local network: Moonlight+Sunshine Over the net: Parsec

goodburb 2y ago

Parsec[1] would be interesting to compare. [1] https://parsec.app/ https://parsec.app/

daveidol 2y ago

I've had the best luck with Moonlight (OSS client) and Sunshine (OSS server replacement for GeForce Experience's "GameStream") -- very minimal latency (almost completely undetectable) from my RTX 3090 PC to my Nvidia Shield.

dathery 2y ago
I have been really happy with Sunshine as well. If your server is Linux and you have an NVIDIA card, I would also recommend applying the NVFBC consumer card restriction removal patch[1] to your driver libraries to allow you to capture directly from the GPU rather than X11/Wayland. Sunshine will automatically detect this and use it and it reduces the latency even further. [1] https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch
- enronmusk 2y ago
  AFAIK the NVFBC patch is no longer required for new Sunshine versions thanks to https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine/pull/2471 https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine/pull/2471. However, NVIDIA say that "The NvFBC desktop capture library does not have native Wayland support and does not work with Xwayland" (https://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/565.77/README/wayland-issues.html https://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/565.77/R...), so I guess it's of no use for Wayland users.
  - dathery 2y ago
    Oh wow, thanks for pointing me to that -- I've still been patching my driver every update for no reason.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
Strongly agreed. Latency is so much better than Steam Remote / Steam Link! Works great. Everything is super cross platform too! Sunshine / Moonlight was also briefly pitched at the end of Arstechnica's coverage of this RPi Steam Link, fwiw. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/12/the-raspberry-pi-5-now-works-as-a-smaller-faster-kind-of-steam-link/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/12/the-raspberry-pi-5-no...

novaRom 2y ago

What Pi 5 is good for? It doesn't look like a portable because of high power consumption, nor it's a desktop class system because of its weak compute and high price. Pi 3 or 4 is still a better choice for almost anything including retro gaming and Linux education.

ata_aman 2y ago
I'm using it on a project to run llama and personal doc embedding, hosting etc...
aappleby 2y ago
It's a computer. It does computer things. Also it has easily-accesible GPIO and other interfaces like I2C, SPI, UART, etcetera.
- prettyStandard 2y ago
  I think GPs point is if you need more horsepower you might as well get a used small form factor, and if you care about the GPIO and other interfaces you might as well get a PI 3 or 4. I get what you're saying it's a computer it could do all sorts of stuff. I think the stronger argument/usecase is it's a drop-in replacement for the pi4. So if you're already dedicated to that form factor... pi5 number go up
  - geerlingguy 2y ago
    Used == a whole different ball of wax. For anyone building a little homelab or whatever, especially in the US where triple the (low) power consumption from 3 to 9W+ isn't a big deal, a used SFF/mini PC is a better value proposition. Especially if you want to add storage, 2.5 Gbps networking, etc. But for people integrating a computer into a larger project (robotics, automation, controls, etc.), or buying a little 'IoT' device to tinker with, buying used gear that is often much larger and usually requires a large external power brick might be a turn-off.
    - 2y ago

nani8ot 2y ago

Since the Pi 5 supports (only) h265 hardware decoding this should be a good experience if set up that way. Altough I'd also recommend looking into Moonlight and Sunshine.

phoronixrly 2y ago

Valve, why is the Steam Link not open sourced?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

wkat4242 2y ago

Huh i never realised that Steam link was also for 2D. Thought it was VR streaming only. I mostly game in VR so I guess I'm a bit too focused on that with the news

zanderwohl 2y ago
Yeah, it actually started out as a hardware device. You'd buy a small box with an HDMI port to connect your PC to your TV. It wasn't terribly successful, but it did work well, if on wired LAN.