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At last it is here in the Netherlands and I got one !!! A Raspberry Pi5
I have been a longtime fan of the Raspberry Pi family. Here is an (incomplete) overview of all the models I have bought (and used) in all the years they exist.
At the top there is the Pi Zero. I have several of them and I use these as an Internet radio. No screen, keyboard or mouse attached. An USB sound-card and a USB to network converter do the hard work. The Pi Zero has just 2 buttons attached to choose between two radio stations.
https://lucstechblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/raspberry-pi-internet-radio-part-3.html
Here is the full story on how to build it. The humble Pi Zero is perfectly capable for this task. I even used A Pi Zero to give a presentation (yes using office) for our local art-club.
At the bottom from left to right are the Pi2, Pi3, Pi4 and last but certainly not least the Pi5.
I use the Pi2,Pi3 and Pi4 for several purposes at home.
Hell I even still have a Pi (that is the Pi one) used as an IP-cam. And I wrote about that in 2016 !!! Here is that story:
https://lucstechblog.blogspot.com/2016/06/make-your-own-ip-cam-with-raspberry-pi.html
I use these Pi's for:
- My home automation system (Domoticz)
- A printer server so any body with a network connection in my house can print on my office printer
- A media player for playing music stored on my hard-disk.
- Octopi for controlling my 3D printer.
And now there is the Pi5.
The Pi5 is a beast. The Pi4 was already a fast machine but the Pi5 beats all my expectations. You can find all it's specifications here:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-5/
I installed Ubuntu on the Pi5 and it boots within 15 seconds. Starting Libre Office writer just takes 4 seconds and starting Firefox just 3 seconds. Very impressive. I have to admit I bought the 8Gb version so I can open several programs (or large documents) at the same time without running into memory problems that slow the machine down.
My Desktop machine is not the latest state of the art but an AMD Ryzen 1400 with 8GB memory. And the Pi5 beats it easily !!
Not the cheapest.
The Raspberry started as the 25-30 Euro/USD Linux computer. Well you can still get a powerful Raspberry Zero 2W for that price. The Raspberry Pi5 is in a different league.
To take full advantage of it's speed you will need a fan to cool the processor down. I opted for the active cooler. There is a Raspberry casing with build in fan. That fan however makes more noise (as I am told). And I can print my own casing.
This is how the Pi5 looks with the active cooler attached.
Next to the cooler you will need:
- the original Raspberry power supply
- an HDMI to micro-HDMI cable or connector
- a fast SD card.
Combined this will set you back around 140 Euro/USD.
And you will need of course a mouse, a keyboard and a HDMI monitor.
Any desktop computer has a large storage capability nowadays. I use a 256Gb sd card on the Pi5 which is not a lot of storage nowadays. However you can attach USB sticks and drives as external storage.
I have several NAS systems in my network and use these as storage for all my computers. And the Pi communicates easily with these.
Nas systems have a lot of advantages. For example I can slice a 3D object with Cura or Prusa slicer on a computer. Send the files to a NAS. And my Raspberry Pi3 with Octopi gets the file and prints it on my Creality CR20 Pro.
Did you know you can build a NAS from a Raspberry PI (any model) and a USB drive ?? I still have some 1Tb USB harddisks and I am planning to use them as a NAS.
Booting the PI
When the Cooler was attached I powered up the Pi and got some stange error messages. So I carefully looked at them.
Fact was that I forgot to put the SD card in the slot on the Pi5. When I rebooted with the SD card, with Ubuntu installed, the Pi stated without problems.
However the error messages intrigued me.
The Pi was constantly probing the USB ports when there was no SD card.
So I started an experiment.
I powered the PI off and removed the SD card. Then I installed Ubuntu on an USB stick. Put the stick in one of the USB ports of the Pi5 and rebooted and presto: the Pi5 automatically booted from the USB stick !!!
So there are a few boot options. Put the OS on an SD card or on a USB stick.
If you want to boot from a USB stick use a USB3 compatible stick and indeed use one of the USB3 ports on the Raspberry Pi5. Otherwise your system will work (yes I used a USB2 stick on a USB2 port) but it will be slow.
Next
I am not sure yet. Most of the programs I need are available on Ubuntu 23.10 which is currently the only version of Ubuntu which is working on the Pi5. Not working is Discord, Cirkit, Prusa Slicer and Kicad as far as I know now. I'd rather have Ubuntu 22.04 working as that is a Long Term version, supported till 2027, and does support the aforementioned programs.
And there is of course Raspbian.
On Raspbian Prusa Slicer and Kicad are supported but no sign of Discord (yet). So maybe Raspbian is the better choice for now. Still thinking.........
Then, the Pi5 is just out a few months. From their forum I read OpenSuse is working at a version for the Pi5 and without a doubt I can state here that others will follow.
Back to playing !!!!
Till next time
Luc Volders