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From: antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Grounded grid VHF front-end
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2024 14:50:58 -0000 (UTC)
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Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
> On a sunny day (Sun, 17 Nov 2024 01:34:45 -0000 (UTC)) it happened
> antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) wrote in
> <vhbh7j$26abk$1@paganini.bofh.team>:
> 
>>Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
>>> 
>>> What bothers me today (thought maybe use an extra Raspberry Pi) is that prices
>>> are going up to insane lavels for a Raspi5 8 Gb + supply + housing + sdcard to above 120 USD:
>>>  https://www.sossolutions.nl/raspberry-pi-5-8gb-starter-kit-compleet
>>> 
>>> For just a bit more you have a decent mini computer:
>>>  https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-mini-pc-x86.html
>>> 
>>> Inflation?
>>> Time to end raspi stuff and look for other solutions.
>>
>>I bought Raspberry Pi 1B when they appeared, but after that used
>>Chinese alternatives. 
> 
> Same here, have some old Pi2 versions...
> one Pi2 is on 24/7 running a server, measuring air pressure, radiation,
> this Pi4 8 GB I use for web browsing and Usenet
> a Pi4 4 GB records security cams and plays audio, records airplane traffic (with dump1090)
> and lots more stuff...
> 
>>Orange Pi used to be cheap, most is more
>>expensive now.  But Orange Pi Zero 3 is reasonably priced and
>>powerful enough for my purpose.  You apparently want PC class machine,
>>for this I want real PC.
> 
> I have several 'real' PCs.. but those are big and use a lot of power, have DVD burner, huge harddisks, 
> Almost never on these days, stopped burning optical disks, almost all USB harddisks for data storage now.

I mostly depend on storing data on multiple HDD-s (my PC have mirrored
pair of discs and I have extra discs for backup).  In last several years
I did not burn any DVD-s, but maybe I will do some with importand data
for extra safety (DVD are too small for bulk data).

I depend on data stored on HDD, most is fetched from Internert but
things vanish randomly from the net and I have my own indices of
interesting data, so I normally use local copy from my disk.  Also,
have some compute intensive stuff.

>  >For light use mini-PCs may be enough and
>>are quite cheap.  I got one for equvalent of $70, 6GB RAM, dual core
>>Celeron N3350, 64 GB solid state disc, 2 USB 3.0 slots (+ 2 USB 2.0),
>>LAN, Wifi, of course in case and with included power supply.  For
>>me important advantage is that there is no fan (passive cooling only).
>>Less powerful used mini-PCs can be as cheap as equivalent of $5.
> 
> Sound good, x86 based is nice too, have written lotd of stuff for that
> 
>>Supposedly some "TV boxes" are cheap, resonably powerful and can
>>be programmed with Linux.  But I did not try one.
> 
> Indeed, I have several satellite reception boxes, HD recording and playback no problem with those
> some have internet connection too, record to USB SD stick.
> When full with stuff I like to keep I copy it to a 4 TB Toshiba USB harddisk connected to my Pi4 8 GB.
> 
> I do have a satellite reception PCI card in an old x86 PC too, but that is not HD.
> But wrote a lot of software for it.
>  
> 
>>Pi-s are better for electronics/automation thanks to available
>>interfaces, but that needs much less compute power (camera is the
>>only high bandwidth interface that I use).
> 
> Yes, GPIO is nice, on the PCs I uses the parport for I/O, 
> even specifically bought a parport PCI card for that on ebay..
> 
> Much goes via ethernet these days and that works fine on Rspberry too.
> Building / designing things with ethernet interface is not that hard.
> severl projects on my site:
>  https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html
> USB is also fast enough for many things.

USB can do milliseconds, ethernet hundreds of microseconds, small
micros can do much better.  Theoretically with a micro connected via USB
one can synchronize clocks of the micro and PC with microsecond
accuracy, I plan to try this but do not know how this will work.

>>When you are satified
>>with lower compute power there are some cheap ones.  I am trying
>>now Milkv Duo.  Radxa ROCK also seem to be reasonably priced.
>>But once you want faster CPU, more RAM, EMMC, etc they are getting
>>more expensive.  I am not sure why, memory modules for PC seem
>>to be cheaper than price of adding memory to SBC-s (possibly this
>>is just pure marketing).
> 
> Yes, a lot of marketing is involved
> You get sort of addicted to GPIO with Raspberries...
> Anyways how much processing power do I really need?
> 
> I program a lot of stuff in asm for Microchip PICs:
>  https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/pic/index.html

Nice.  I have avoided PICs, using now mostly STM32 and coding in C.
One can create quite small and efficient programs in C.  I use
assembler when I feel it is better but currently that is mainly
for delay loop.  Doing all in efficient assembler would be large
effort for moderate gain (maybe 20% efficiency/size improvement),
and IME "easy assembler" tend to be less efficient than C.
 
> This world creates bloat sftware so it can sell new hardware, Microsoft has shares in hardware companies,
> so new bloat needs new hardware.. more money

I dislike bloat but OTOH thanks to bloat powerful PC-s are available
at affordable price.  Otherwise they would be an expensive industry/
corporate items.

-- 
                              Waldek Hebisch