Exploring The Raspberry Pi 4 USB-C Issue In-Depth

July 16, 2019 by Maya Posch 117 Comments

It would be fair to say that the Raspberry Pi team hasn’t been without its share of hardware issues, with the Raspberry Pi 2 being camera shy, the Raspberry Pi PoE HAT suffering from a rather embarrassing USB power issue, and now the all-new Raspberry Pi 4 is the first to have USB-C power delivery, but it doesn’t do USB-C very well unless you go for a ‘dumb’ cable.

Join me below for a brief recap of those previous issues, and an in-depth summary of USB-C, the differences between regular and electronically marked (e-marked) cables, and why detection logic might be making your brand-new Raspberry Pi 4 look like an analogue set of headphones to the power delivery hardware.

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Raspberry Pi Cyberdeck Inspired By Rare MSX

July 16, 2019 by Tom Nardi 11 Comments

When we see these cyberdeck builds, the goal is usually to just make something retro-futuristic enough to do William Gibson proud. There’s really no set formula, but offset screens coupled with large keyboards and a vague adherence to 1980s design language seem to be the most important tenets.

Granted the recent build by [lewisb42] still leans heavily on those common tropes, but at least there’s a clear lineage: his Raspberry Pi retro all-in-one is styled after a particularly rare bright red variant of the MSX that Sony released in Japan. Known as the HIT-BIT HB-101, some aficionados consider the circa-1984 machine to be the peak of MSX styling. Since getting his hands on a real one to retrofit wasn’t really an option, he had no choice but to attempt recreating some of the computer’s unique design elements from scratch.

The faceted sides were 3D printed in pieces, glued together, and then attached to a 1/4″ thick backplate made out of polycarbonate. For the “nose” piece under the keyboard, [lewisb42] actually used a piece of wood cut at the appropriate angles with a table saw. The top surface of the computer, which he calls the FLIPT-BIT, is actually made of individual pieces of foamed PVC sheet.

If all this sounds like a big jigsaw puzzle, that’s because it basically is. To smooth out the incongruous surfaces, he used a combination of wood putty, body filler, spot putty, and more time sanding then we’d care to think about. For the 3D printed surface details such as the screen bezel and faux cartridge slots, he used a coat of Smooth-On’s XTC-3D and yet more sanding. While [lewisb42] says the overall finish isn’t quite as good as he hoped, we think the overall look is fantastic considering the combination of construction techniques hiding under that glossy red paint job.

As for the electronics, there’s really no surprises there. The FLIPT-BIT uses a keyboard and touchpad from Perixx, a seven inch TFT display, and of course the Raspberry Pi 3. The display runs at 12 V so [lewisb42] used a combination of a generic laptop-style power supply and a 5 V step-down converter to keep everyone happy. While it doesn’t currently have a battery, it seems like there’s more than enough room inside the case to add one if he ever wants to go mobile.

If this build doesn’t properly scratch your Neuromancer itch, never fear. Just take a look at this decidedly less friendly-looking build that even includes a VR headset for properly jacking yourself into the matrix.

Make A Compatible Raspberry Pi Clone – But Your Pi Must Die

July 11, 2019 by Jenny List 34 Comments

The world is awash with Raspberry Pi clones that boast fruity names, but those looking for a piece of the real thing will find their compatibility only goes so far. Shaky Linux distros abound and, with a few honourable exceptions, they are not for the faint-hearted. The reason that a market hasn’t emerged for fully-compatible clones is that the Pi people seem to have a monopoly on the world’s supply of the particular Broadcom SoCs that they use, forcing would-be competitors to source the brains of their outfit elsewhere.

It’s easy to buy a Raspberry Pi SoC though, if you don’t mind receiving a Raspberry Pi along with it. So to make a compatible Pi clone for space-constrained applications, the folks at Arducam removed the SoC from a Pi 3 and designed a surface-mount module board for it, making a 40 mm x 25 mm postage-stamp style system-on-module. It’s not a Raspberry Pi, but it runs Raspbian.

Their board is not one that they will be selling, but it does open up interesting possibilities for others with an eye to creating Pi boards in different form factors. It would be fascinating for example were somebody to produce an open-source module board for a Pi SoC. Some of you might be asking why the existing Compute Module was not suitable for them; in the write-up they cite mechanical issues with the SODIMM socket.

This isn’t the first compatible Pi clone we’ve seen. Aside from the intriguing but short-lived Odroid W there was another even smaller Arducam offering that never made it to market.

Giving The Pi 4 PCI Express

July 10, 2019 by Brian Benchoff 71 Comments

The release of the Raspberry Pi 4 brought us a new SoC, up to 4 Gigs of memory, and most importantly, got away from that janky USB to USB and Ethernet solution. The Raspberry Pi 4 has a PCI Express interface buried under some chips, and if you’re very good at soldering you can add a PCIe x1 device to the new best single board computer.

[Thomasz] took a look at the Raspberry Pi 4 and realized the new USB 3.0 chip is attached to the PCI Express interface on the SoC. That is, if you remove this chip and you have some very fine wires, you can patch in a real PCI Express slot. Removing the chip is easy enough with a hot air gun, although a few caps did get messed up. Throw that in an ultrasonic cleaner, and you have a blank canvas to work PCI magic.

This hack requires six wires, or three differential pairs, there’s a reference clock, a lane 0 transmit, and a lane zero receive. Working backwards from a PCI Express riser, [Thomasz] traced out these connections and soldered a few wires in. On the Pi side, a few capacitors were required to be compliant with the PCI Express spec, but the soldering isn’t too bad. You can do a lot with a small tip on an iron and a microscope.

The Pi was successfully wired up to a PCI Express riser card, along with the lines for ground, 5V, link reactivation, and a power good signal. The only thing left to do was to plug in a PCI card and test. This didn’t go as well as expected, because the PCI Express adapter didn’t like being enumerated by the Raspberry Pi kernel. In subsequent experiments, an Adaptec SAS controller worked. Does this mean external graphics cards for the Pi? No, not quite; this is only one lane of PCIe, where modern graphics cards require an x16 slot for the best performance. Still, if you’ve ever wanted a SCSI card for a Pi, this is the best option yet.

Raspberry Pi 4 Benchmarks: Processor And Network Performance Makes It A Real Desktop Contender

July 10, 2019 by Brian Benchoff 87 Comments

The new Raspberry Pi 4 is out, and slowly they’re working their way from Microcenters and Amazon distribution sites to desktops and workbenches around the world. Before you whip out a fancy new USB C cable and plug those Pis in, it’s worthwhile to know what you’re getting into. The newest Raspberry Pi is blazing fast. Not only that, but because of the new System on Chip, it’s now a viable platform for a cheap homebrew NAS, a streaming server, or anything else that requires a massive amount of bandwidth. This is the Pi of the future.

The Raspberry Pi 4 features a BCM2711B0 System on Chip, a quad-core Cortex-A72 processor clocked at up to 1.5GHz, with up to 4GB of RAM (with hints about an upcoming 8GB version). The previous incarnation of the Pi, the Model 3 B+, used a BCM2837B0 SoC, a quad-core Cortex-A53 clocked at 1.4GHz. Compared to the 3 B+, the Pi 4 isn’t using an ‘efficient’ core, we’re deep into ‘performance’ territory with a larger cache. But what do these figures mean in real-world terms? That’s what we’re here to find out.

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Five Years Of The Raspberry Pi Model B+ Form Factor, What Has It Taught Us?

July 8, 2019 by Jenny List 84 Comments

With all the hoopla surrounding the recent launch of the new Raspberry Pi 4, it’s easy to overlook another event in the Pi calendar. July will see the fifth anniversary of the launch of the Raspberry Pi Model B+ that ushered in a revised form factor. It’s familiar to us now, but at the time it was a huge change to a 40-pin expansion connector, four mounting holes, no composite video socket, and more carefully arranged interface connectors.

As the Pi 4 with its dual mini-HDMI connectors and reversed Ethernet and USB positions marks the first significant deviation from the standard set by the B+ and its successors, it’s worth taking a look at the success of the form factor and its wider impact. Is it still something that the Raspberry Pi designers can take in a new direction, or like so many standards before it has it passed from its originator to the collective ownership of the community of manufacturers that support it?

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Vintage Philco Radio Looks Stock, Contains Modern Secret: A Raspberry Pi

July 7, 2019 by Jenny List 69 Comments

Antique radio receivers retain a significant charm, and though they do not carry huge value today they were often extremely high quality items that would have represented a significant investment for their original owners. [CodeMakesItGo] acquired just such a radio, a Philco 37-11 made in 1937, and since it was it a bit of a state he set about giving it some updated electronics. Vintage radio purists, look away from the video below the break.

Stripping away the original electronics, he gave it a modern amplifier with Bluetooth capabilities, and a Raspberry Pi. Vintage radio enthusiasts will wince at his treatment of those classic parts, but what else he’s put into it makes up for the laying waste to a bit of ’30s high-tech.The original tuning dial was degraded so he’s given it a reproduction version, and behind that is an optical encoder and two optical sensors. This is used to simulate “tuning” the radio between different period music “stations” being played by the PI, and for an authentic feel he’s filled the gaps with static. The result is a functional and unusual device, which is probably better suited than the original to a 2019 in which AM radio is in decline.

If you think of a high-end set like this Philco as being the ’30s equivalent of perhaps an 8K TV set, you can imagine the impact of AM radio in those early days of broadcasting. We recently took a look at some of the directional antenna tricks that made so many AM stations sharing the band a possibility.

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