My Raspberry Pi experience (using Model 3B)

fox · August 18, 2019, 11:58:21 AM

Brief update. I updated my Raspbian installation to see if that would improve anything. It didn't. I'm still puzzled as to why that distro, of all distros, won't play YouTube or mp4 videos. With YouTube, I fiddled around a bit with Chromium settings and occasionally got something playing. But the same video wouldn't play again later. I couldn't find anything online to address this problem. Maybe by comparing settings with Jason? I also wonder if it could be specific to the bootloader settings used by BerryBoot, since Jason is using Noobs.

Ubuntu Mate 16.04 is updated, but its performance may actually be worse right now, as Firefox will no longer run at all. I can get YouTube videos running on Chromium, but they do occasionally stall or stutter. I found an image for Ubuntu Mate 18.04, and will try it out shortly.

My Xubuntu installation couldn't be repaired (at least not by me), so I blew it away and am starting over. Right now I am upgrading it, but unlike the last disastrous effort, I'm doing it with "apt dist-upgrade". (Yes, Harry - command line). Once that is done, I'll have to install the browsers again to try it out. Stay tuned.

Jason · August 18, 2019, 01:05:15 PM

Quote from: fox on August 18, 2019, 11:58:21 AM
Maybe by comparing settings with Jason? I also wonder if it could be specific to the bootloader settings used by BerryBoot, since Jason is using Noobs.

Originally I did that but I had trouble getting the full install of Raspian going so once I discovered that you could just use Etcher, I downloaded the Raspian ISO and did that. That might be worth trying for you. What also might be worth trying at the next MUG is we bring our Pi 3Bs and I'll bring my 24" HDMI monitor (unless you have something smaller) and you use my microSD card. Maybe your card is just really slow unless you're still using your USB port. By doing that we could remove any variables related to the how the distro has been configured. I haven't tried running a distro from the USB port so I have no idea if perhaps on the Pi 3B the port has been stymied in terms of speed though it would be remarkable if it was so bottlenecked as to be slower than 25 Mbps which is the top speed of the SD card interface apparently.

Regarding throttling, there is a panel add-on that shows the temperature of the processor and another one that shows the speed. So you could use those to see if that is happening with or without your fan.

fox · August 18, 2019, 02:09:20 PM

My Pi distros are all booted off the usb drive, although the first step is that the SD card is accessed to tell the Pi where to find the boot files. If I had a spare micro SD card sitting around, I would try Raspbian on it, but I don't. I also don't need Raspbian for anything in particular.

Another experiment completed. Xubuntu 18.04 is the best distro I have tried so far on the Pi, excluding the more specialized LibreElectric. I have updated it successfully except for a new kernel install (we can look at the errors the next time we meet). It runs pretty fluidly, and YouTube videos work pretty well on either Firefox or Chromium. Regular movies also play pretty well on VLC. In both cases, there is a very minor lag between sound and picture, but I didn't detect any stuttering. These play better in LibreElectric, but they are certainly playable in Xubuntu. Raspbian is as responsive as Xubuntu, but poor with videos. Ubuntu Mate 16.04 is much slower than the other two, but I have downloaded Ubuntu Mate 18.04, and will try that next.

fox · August 18, 2019, 08:03:16 PM

The 18.04 Ubuntu Mate Pi image wouldn't boot through BerryBoot, so that's the end of the experiment for now. (Note that this particular image wasn't prepared for BerryBoot, or at least it wasn't on the BerryBoot site.) In any case, I wasn't optimistic about it anyway, since the 16.04 version was quite laggy. I am curious about what was on it, as the image was a whopping 5GB in size. The other images range from less than 500mb to about 2GB.

fox · August 20, 2019, 05:40:02 PM

Well it looks like we might have a new contender. This one came to me from the BerryBoot site; I am registered and I get emails every time Alex loads a new image. The image of interest is called RaspEX, and it comes in two variants, one with Kodi. It is Debian and Ubuntu-based. i am downloading the smaller, regular variant, and will report back. A member of the RaspEX describes it as running a Raspberry Pi on steroids. Read about it here.

fox · August 20, 2019, 11:00:23 PM

RaspEx is interesting. It runs a highly customized LXDE desktop; though the desktop is somewhat gaudy looking. It also appears to need some extra setup steps, which I haven't tried. For some reason, its file application sees the usb stick it resides on, but it won't open any files from any of its three partitions, so I can't try running a movie on it. But I did try a YouTube video, and it handled that pretty well. Maybe we can look at this at the PLUG MUG and figure out how to open its files.

Jason · August 21, 2019, 12:16:32 PM

You need to share a screenshot of this gaudy desktop. We must see it!

fox · August 22, 2019, 04:04:47 PM

Well I made a screenshot, but never had a chance to post it. I tried following the instructions of that distro and I ended up blowing away the bootloader. Now my rpi won't boot. Meanwhile, I tried downloading Noobs and transferring it to my SD card, but it wouldn't boot either. Upon consultation with Jason, I found out that he used Raspbian directly, not Noobs, so I'm trying that now.

Jason · August 22, 2019, 04:11:58 PM

Noobs originally booted for me but there wasn't enough room left to install Raspbian so then I switched to Noobs lite which worked fine but it more or less downloaded Raspian to install it. After playing around with it for a while, I decided to just see if Raspian could go on it directly which is what I did in the end. That was after having read that Etcher can handle the entire process of putting Raspian onto the SD card and I just wanted to see if that was the case. It was.

Note that the Noobs Lite image has a lot more options to choose from for installation choices but I think everything is downloaded. Risc OS was on there, too.

fox · August 22, 2019, 06:15:54 PM

Perhaps that distro blowing away my setup was for the best. I just tried Raspbian on the SD card, which I set up with Etcher. It is very responsive; more so than any distro I tried on my usb stick. Playback of the same YouTube video I've tried on all distros was superior to any of the distro on my usb stick except possibly LibreElec. Same with playback of a movie I had on the usb stick; much more fluid and with audio and video in better sync than what I saw on Raspbian, Ubuntu Mate, Xubuntu or Lubuntu on the stick. Windows opened quickly and movement of them was fluid. LibreOffice Writer was slow on the first boot; much better thereafter. I would say that Raspbian set up this way (on SD card) is quite usable.

What I would like to do next is figure out how to add LibreElec and get a grub to choose which of the two to boot. When I tried copying the files from my download of Noobs (which does allow multiple booting) onto my SD card, the card wouldn't boot. Topic for PLUG MUG tonight?

Jason · August 22, 2019, 11:23:15 PM

It's LibreELEC. Glad it's working for you.

I'm astounded that the USB ports are the RPi 3B are so slow. This link might explain why (emphasis mine):

"The USB ports on a Raspberry Pi have a design loading of 100mA each - sufficient to drive "low-power" devices such as mice and keyboards. Devices such as WiFi adapters, USB hard drives, USB pen drives all consume much more current and should be powered from an external hub with its own power supply. While it is possible to plug a 500mA device into a Pi and have it work with a sufficiently powerful supply, reliable operation is not guaranteed."

So if you has a USB powered HUB that might fix the issue of the flash drive being so slow - the ports have too little power supplied to them. I have such a hub but have to see if I can find the power supply for it.

fox · August 22, 2019, 11:38:40 PM

Quote from: Jason Wallwork on August 22, 2019, 11:23:15 PM
It's LibreELEC. ...

Oops; fixed.

Good to know about the power limitation of the usb ports. I'll have to look in my junk box for a powered hub to see if that makes a difference. Meanwhile, I have Noobs working. The trick, as Jason suggested at PLUG MUG tonight, is to format the SD card with the Noobs Format Tool on a Mac or PC (Mac in this case). Formatting on Linux with gparted didn't cut it. The advantage of Noobs over a straight install of Raspian is that Noobs allows you to install several distros and choose one at startup. In this case I wanted Raspbian and LibreElec, but there were many to choose from. Berryboot is similar to Noobs, but Berryboot allows you to add or delete distros at a later date.

fox · August 23, 2019, 08:21:03 AM

Well apparently you can add other distros to Noobs after it is set up by holding the shift key the next time you boot. This is explained here.

fox · August 23, 2019, 08:26:07 AM

Apparently, one can turn an Rpi into a statistical machine by adding R and RStudio to Raspbian. This isn't as straightforward as adding a distro to Noobs or BerryBoot, as it does involve the compiling of RStudio. But the instructions (shown here) look to be pretty straightforward (cut and paste from a Terminal - sorry Harry). This might be a future project for me, or maybe Jason?

ssfc72 · August 23, 2019, 09:41:10 AM

I mentioned at the PLUG Mug last evening to Jason, that he could power his RPi from a battery power bank bought at the dollar store, instead of having to deal with the plug in power supply and long cord. Edit - this would remove one less item, that is chained to your power bar.
The specs on the dollar store power bank are, output 5V, 2.1 Amp (max) which is plenty of current for the RPi. The power bank capacity is 4400 mAH, which should be ample enough for the 2 hours we are at Tim Hortons. :-)