The Microsoft Canada online store was out of stock on the Rasp Pi 3 kit, so I ordered a Lanzo Rasp Pi kit from Amazon.ca for $66 and free shipping.
https://www.amazon.ca/LANDZO-Raspberry-Ultimate-Kits/dp/B01M5AGSGN/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1483134533&sr=8-5&keywords=raspberry+pi+3+kits
The kit doesn't come with an SD card ( with the NOOBS software). I do have some appropriate SD cards, so I will just download the NOOBS software and install it to the SD card.
Only catch is, this Lanzo kit seems to be shipping from China because it shows the delivery date to be late jan/early Feb. :-(
I expect I will also be ordering an add-on DVMega board, so that I can turn the Pi into an Amateur Radio hotspot, to access the digital DMR networks, with my Hyterra UHF handheld transceiver radio.
This will allow me to communicate with other Hams, all over Canada, the US and the rest of the world.
I need this hotspot device because, at this time there is no DMR Amateur Radio repeater in Lindsay, to connect to with the DMR networks, with my Hyterra handheld digital radio.
Hopefully I can figure out how to get the DVMega board to work on the Rasp Pi. The setup seems a bit complex, to me.
Bill
Sounds like a good project, Bill. Let us know how it goes. I hope to acquire a kit in February.
So for anyone who is going to need to buy a sd card for their raspberry Pi. Staples in Lindsay has a generic, no name 16G Class 10 micro sd card with an adapter for $5.90, at the moment.
If you'd like to be the proud possessor of a new Lindsay repeater, just let me know; I have the basic hardware and all of the software, mostly just need the IRLP board... Old school but doable - but it sounds even easier with the RPi and PiRLP...
Let me know...
Ok Bob, I will have to talk with you at the next Mug, that I get to.
Yipee! The Lanzo Raspberry Pi 3 kit, has arrived! Delivery time was very quick.
The kit looks good. Came with qty 5 heat sinks, of 2 sizes. 2 of the large heat sinks look to be copper and the rest are aluminium. They have adhesive pads for mounting.
2.5 amp power adapter.
Wow! Nice! You know, it's great to know we're probably NEVER going to run out of new toys...!! <^8#
I have a spare USB mouse to use with the pi, but all my keyboards are ps2.
When to the local thrift store and got a nice, smallish Dell USB keyboard for $5.
I have a nice handheld wifi keyboard/trackpad coming from China, but I didn't t want to wait for it to show up.
Sounds like you're going to have a lot of fun, Bill!
So is this a better deal than the one at the (Microsoft Store (https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msca/en_CA/pdp/Raspberry-Pi-3-Board-and-16GB-10class-with-NOOBS/productID.334729600)? What about the Creatron bundle (https://www.creatroninc.com/product/raspberry-pi-3-16gb-noobs-bundle/)?
With the Creatron bundle you would also probably need to buy a 2.5 Amp power adapter, which would probably be $10-$12, plus the shipping costs. The kit does not include a case,
Unless you want to wait, for when we have another shopping trip organized, to Toronto. :-) Hopefully in April when the weather is nicer.
With the Landzo kit at Amazon.ca, you would need a 8G -16G SD card to install the NOOBS software, onto. Power adapter and case is included.
I just got a 16G micro SD card (with SD adapter) for $6, from Staples (they are now sold out, on that special, here in Lindsay). Shipping is free for the Landzo at amazon.
The Microsoft Canada Store has a kit with the PI, power adapter, case and SD card for $75 and free shipping. But, again, as of today , it shows as being out of stock.
There is also a kit for $70, but it doesn't include the power supply.
So the Landzo at Amazon.ca is maybe the best deal, if you want the power adapter, case.. It took about 2 weeks to get mailed to me.
The prices are pretty close among all 3 retailers, so it may be more a case of availability and how quick you want to get your Pi.
Turns out that i have a 16 gb Class 10 micro SD with adaptor, that I bought awhile back to fit into an Android tablet. (Took the table back but I had already opened and used the SD card.) In fact it comes from Staples, and I think I paid around $6-7 for it. Is this what I would use with an Rpi3? On the other hand, this would be an excuse for a Geek Trip. We haven't done one of those for awhile.
Yes, apparently the Pi uses a micro SD card, so you can make use of that micro SD card, Mike.
It's Alive! Got my Raspberry Pi 3 up and running.
It was a struggle but I got the Pi running with Raspbian, using the NOOBS program.
It took 3 tries to get the install to work.
Once I got to the desktop, I opened up the browser, only to find it was complaining that there was no wifi setup. That was strange since the NOOBS software allowed me to setup my wifi and it appeared to have found and logged onto my wifi.
Dug around on the Raspian OS, a bit, and found the wifi seemed to be set for a GB locale (I found the keyboard and language set to GB, also, with the NOOBS setup, so I had changed that to US keyboard and language).
I finally noticed the wifi icon at the top right, of the desktop and got the wifi going.
Very nice Desktop picture showing on my large screen HD TV. :-)
You guys will have to let me know how the Pi 3 works. One of my recent make work projects will be building a MAME Arcade cabinet. Currently I plan on putting in one of my older computers. However, I have a friend who wants to build a cheaper bar top unit and a Pi 3 with RetroPi would work out very well for that.
I got a small handheld Rii mini i8, combination keyboard/touchpad and tried using it with my Pi 3. It works very well. the Rii is very small, about the same size as a small gaming handheld controller.
the Rii comes with its own micro wifi dongle, which I plugged into the Pi, to get the Rii to work. I initially was mistaken in thinking the Rii usb dongle was a bluetooth dongle.
The Rii has an internal lithium battery that you have to charge up with the supplied usb cable.
So I am typing this message and internet browsing, with the Pi, using this handheld Rii. :-)
What are you using for a monitor and how is it connected to your pi?
I am using the 20 inch monitor from my desktop computer. The monitor has a dvi input connector so I bought a HDMI to to dvi adapter, from PC paramedics in Peterborough, to enable the HDMI from the pi, to connect to the monitor.
I also can connect the pi, to my 40" HD TV, which has HDMI inputs.
Cool, Bill! How do you like the keyboard for typing?
The keyboard is good for typing. There seems to be a fair amount of travel, to click each key, so speed typing may suffer a bit.
The touchpad is very small but is very nicely sensitive. You have to take a number of swipes to move across or down a browser page but this sensitivity, to travel the cursor, I think might be adjustable.
The unit I purchased has backlighted keys. :-)
Will do, Scott. I want to use it on Raspbian to set up a full Kodi box... Should be doable - anybody know if it'll stream adequately for 1080p and 4K? Like Mike said at the meeting, it might take an Odroid - or a Banana Pi, or something with a little more horsepower. But then, it's initial design spec was as a platform to get your head around programming, so it's a little off the mark, but I expect that's the case with about 93% of RPis out there today (but I could be wrong...)
Okey Dockey, I can try to install Kodi on the Pi 3 and see how it works with my 40" HD TV. :-)
I don't think there would be any 4K movies being served through Kodi, though. 1080p media, might be streamed but I am not sure how you would determine if the Kodi streaming was 720p or 1080p.
The screen-shotting I've seen on YouTube shows the resolution at the bottom of the screen, though that may be specific to some add-on, rather than a Kodi thing...?
I have the OpenElec which is running Kodi ver 16.1, running on my Pi 3.
It streams 1080p movies (I am going by the media title, which shows 1080p) very nicely and I am using the wifi of the Pi to connect to my router.
I am sending the hdmi to a 20" computer monitor. I will try it on my 40" hd tv, next time.
Bill
Quote from: bobf on February 08, 2017, 12:12:36 PM
Will do, Scott. I want to use it on Raspbian to set up a full Kodi box... Should be doable - anybody know if it'll stream adequately for 1080p and 4K? Like Mike said at the meeting, it might take an Odroid - or a Banana Pi, or something with a little more horsepower. But then, it's initial design spec was as a platform to get your head around programming, so it's a little off the mark, but I expect that's the case with about 93% of RPis out there today (but I could be wrong...)
OpenElec Kodi 16 is working well, streaming HD movies to my 40" HD TV.
The Rii R8i mini keyboard/touchpad works very nicely at operating the Kodi menu. :-)
Bill
I picked up the Creatron RPi 3 "kit" on Saturday during our geek trip. It isn't really a kit; you just pick out the parts you want. I got the Pi, a small enclosure, a fan, heat sink kit and a 2.5 amp power supply. I had a bit of trouble assembling the enclosure and mounting the fan, as nothing came with instructions. Fortunately, I was able to find photos and videos of RPi additions close enough to mine to figure it out. Although I didn't buy a preloaded sd card, I had a 16 gb one already. I downloaded the Noobs software and had no problem transferring it to my sd or ultimately, installing my distros. I chose to install Raspbian and LibreElec, figuring that the Raspian would be good for more general stuff and the LibreElec for the media server I'm trying to use it with. Noobs nicely installed both in one try, as well as a nice grub (?) menu to choose between them at boot up. Raspbian needed a lot of updates, which I tried implementing with Synaptic, which I had to install first. Unfortunately, it froze during the installation, and wouldn't reboot thereafter. So I reinstalled everything from scratch and this time did it "properly" using apt. I still have one hitch - my zagg wireless bluetooth keyboard was recognized but not functional in Raspbian. (I'm going to try this in LibreElec later today.) My only other complaint is the fan, which is very noisy and on all the time. Turns out that I shouldn't need it in a media server, but if you know of a program to control its speed, let me know. The other thing I need to decide about is what the media will be stored in. It's possible that an RPi 3 with my power supply might be able to run a 2.5" usb drive; or not. I'm going to try that first, as I would like to avoid having to buy a powered external drive or even a powered usb hub if I can. Alternatively, Bob pointed me to the Western Digital website, as they make a low-consumption drive/enclosure combination that is meant to run on the Pi. I'll certainly consider this if Plan A doesn't work.
Update: I got my Zagg bluetooth keyboard working with both LibreElec and Raspian on the pi. I unplugged the fan and experienced no ill effects with any software I played with. I tried plugging in three different usb 2 external 2.5" drives, and all worked on the pi without any external power for these drives. Similarly, a 32 gig usb pendrive worked. So I'm now asking myself whether it's really necessary to get a special external drive to connect to the pi to hold my media.
I did experience a few problems that I have yet to solve. The first is that my iPhone could connect to the pi via bluetooth, but I couldn't get the software to work with the iPhone program I tried. The second is that some videos and even whole video channels didn't seem to work on Kodi running in Raspbian, including the Linux Action Show on youtube. These channels worked OK in LibreElec, which is running a newer version of Kodi. More troubleshooting to do, but results are encouraging so far.
Neat! I didn't know that NOOBS would set up a dual boot of 2 RPi OS's.
Quote from: fox on February 21, 2017, 01:56:00 PM
LibreElec, figuring that the Raspian would be good for more general stuff and the LibreElec for the media server I'm trying to use it with. Noobs nicely installed both in one try, as well as a nice grub (?) menu to choose between them at boot up. Raspbian needed a lot of updates, which I tried implementing with Synaptic, which I had to install first. Unfortunately, it froze during the installation, and wouldn't reboot thereafter. So I reinstalled everything from scratch
Mike commented, on our road trip on Saturday, that he would use a cell phone app to navigate Kodi on his RPi, I hadn't even thought of that possibility.
Turns out there is an Android app by the name of Kore, to use with navigating the Kodi media player, using an Android phone.
Kore works very well for me, with my Moto G 3G phone. :-)
I've been reading up on the internet about storage options. The most elegant is the Western Digital pidrive, which you can buy in Canada from BuyaPi.ca (https://www.buyapi.ca/product-category/raspberry-pi/pidrive/). The price of the 375 gb drive plus cable is $CA 55; not much different from the cost of buying it directly from WD in the USA. The advantage is lower power consumption than a conventional drive and easy setup; you can even buy an enclosure that holds both the pi and the drive, and a power cable that powers both if you need extra power. But the power is the question - does one really need extra power to run a conventional 2.5" external drive in an enclosure? My reading of this review (http://www.legitreviews.com/wd-labs-pidrive-314gb-hard-drive-review_180301/5) is that you don't for low power use like a media server. I also wonder if you can't just use a high capacity usb pendrive to put your media on, and perhaps even run the operating system from. The BerryBoot (http://www.berryterminal.com/doku.php/berryboot) software that comes with the WD pidrive is available gratis online, and it apparently makes it easy to install the OS(es) on the drive instead of the SD card (except for the /boot portion, which needs to be on the card and is installed there automatically). The advantage of doing this is for the greater speed of the drive (vs SD card), and also to minimize wear of the card due to writes, and finally, it affords the possibility of making a swap partition to extend the 1 GB memory of the pi. As I have already shown, the two external drives I tried so far both mount on the pi without any additional power. Question is whether they will work OK if the OS(es) are running on them and you are using the pi as a low-taxing device like a media server. Comments?
A company called Adafruit makes a script that you can download and use to transfer you OS from the SD card to the external HD, SSD or pendrive; you can read about it here (https://learn.adafruit.com/external-drive-as-raspberry-pi-root/what-the-helper-script-does). This looks like a good alternative to BerryBoot if you already have your OS installed. The other thing it suggests is that additional power is not required if running from a pendrive, and it also suggests that additional power may or may not be needed, depending on the external drive you are using.
...and we're here after the quantum leap from the ROAD TRIP! <^8# thread! <^8#
...so no point dawdling - on it went, in it went, fired it up, and voila! It booted right up! 197 updates later (using apt-get, like you had to ask! <^8#), I added ntpdate, and started surfing with the pre-installed Chromium browser. Now, I make it sound quick and easy, but the updates process took closer to 2 hours than one to complete.
I also found out that only one media player, omxplayer, which is also pre-installed on Raspbian Jessie, takes advantage of the RPi's built-in GPU for hardware acceleration, so my supposition at this point is that it's a subtask on any of the Kodi-type installs for media playback. I have *not* tried anything else, but I have to point out that omxplayer is a standalone command-line interface program only, although I'm aware that there are at least a couple of GUI interfaces written to <ahem!> 'stream'line the process <hyuk, hyuk!>
I first tried a 720p media file from a USB key plugged directly into the RPi, but the following morning, I decided I needed to evaluate a 1080p stream over wifi - the crux of the matter! <^8# I'm delighted to report that it works like a charm! Not one solitary hiccup in a ~2-hour movie. VERY impressive - not that it shouldn't be, but it's nice to confirm that reports are not exaggerated at all, in my limited experience.
So much for the good news...
I then downloaded and installed LibreELEC the same way, and it booted up just fine, but I've found a design flaw in its initialization that I also hope to have found a work-around for. LibreELEC's tagline is, "Just enough OS for Kodi", and sadly, that's apparently inescapably true. Because I use a 63-character WPA wifi key, what I *like* to do is boot up, stick in my USB key, open up my (encrypted!) spreadsheet containing my wifi key, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into the password field to connect to my router. Oh, and when this *couldn't* happen, I also downloaded the OpenELEC version to find that this is a consistent problem, and not specific to the RPi Foundation version... More specifically, in either, there's no way to run a second task like LibreCalc *OR* even terminal, and try to facilitate the copying-in of the pre-typed key. And I did find a suggestion that <CTRL><ALT><F3> would bring up a terminal... Nope... Tried every combination of <CTRL><ALT><SHIFT><F-key> there was... NADA!
So... After much experimentation - AND GROUSING! - I *finally* relented and attempted to type that sucker in manually. *NO DIFFERENCE!* It appears that the interface cannot handle a full 63-character key, pasted in or typed in manually, and I tried at least a half-dozen times, determined that I *must* be mucking it up somehow, and "practice makes perfect". Nope...
So I abandoned all attempts, and instead went to NOOBS. Very simple to set up; download and unpack the zip file, format your SD card, copy the extracted stuff over, stick it in, boot it up, done. AND NOOBS HAS THE SAME SHORTCOMING - you CANNOT jump to a second task to facilitate copying over the wifi key, or any other parallel task you may want or need!! Now, I did NOT try to type in the main wifi key, I used my guest wifi network instead, and absolutely no problems, connected perfectly fine, worked like a charm. AND I WAS *NOT* going to try to type all that other in again! Which is the heart of the problem; I've got some 1500 movies on my NAS media server, and it's ON THE MAIN NETWORK SIDE, OF COURSE! <^8# So, on my isolated guest wifi side, I've got NOTHING. Which sucks...
But then I took a closer look at the NOOBS documentation, and it "says" I can copy over the appropriate wpa_supplicant.conf file that's already been set up (in this case, by Raspbian!!) to the NOOBS root folder with the rest of its files, and it can immediately make use of it. ***SO***, by extension, *if* I can reimage Raspbian from Clonezilla (of course I did! <^8#), I can copy off that file and put it on the NOOBS reinstall thereafter. *NOW*, I make no presumption that having that file on there will automatically provide enabled access to LibreELEC et al that might be installed onto the SD card *by* NOOBS, *but*, if I reload a fresh copy of LibreELEC, initialize it, then return it to my laptop and copy the wpa_supplicant.conf file over containing the necessary wifi access information *to it*, then I may neatly circumvent the problem and place my entire library at Kodi's feet - so to speak - at the next boot...
IS THAT BROKE ENOUGH FOR YOU?!â,,¢ <^8# And naturally, I'll keep you posted...
Quote from: fox on February 22, 2017, 01:53:04 PM
A company called Adafruit makes a script that you can download and use to transfer you OS from the SD card to the external HD, SSD or pendrive; you can read about it here (https://learn.adafruit.com/external-drive-as-raspberry-pi-root/what-the-helper-script-does). This looks like a good alternative to BerryBoot if you already have your OS installed. The other thing it suggests is that additional power is not required if running from a pendrive, and it also suggests that additional power may or may not be needed, depending on the external drive you are using.
According to the website, the USB ports in total can manage up to 1.2 A of current draw (if your power supply supports 2.5 A). If you look up the specs for the hard drive you're interested in from the manufacturer website, it should tell you the current draw. They may list several current values, you want the maximum one. Flash drives use very little power so they should all work.
Source: https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#power
Yeah, it sounded to me like the recommendation for a 2.5A 5V microUSB power supply for the Raspberry Pi was to ensure that, no matter what you plugged into (supposedly?) ALL of the ports at the same time, it would still provide enough power to the Pi itself to avoid starvation, like we saw quite some time ago during Glen's presentation. I don't KNOW this for sure, and I've forgotten just where I read that (it was recently, though), but if you try it, and you get the little beach ball icon in the upper right corner of your screen, as Dan & Trevor pointed out, the RPi's even capable of signalling it's not getting enough power. Now, I wouldn't go plugging in a bunch o' USB hard drives to test out the theory...! Oh, and Mike, there's a RPi-specific image available for OpenMediaVault that you might find VERY interesting...!
***UPDATE***
I also went back and created a wpa_supplicant.conf file and installed it on the SD card with the NOOBS software. Nuh-uh! *NOT* gonna do it. The documentation says it should work; in my testing, it somehow disabled the RPi's wifi completely. Like it wasn't there. Try to connect wifi, "no devices are available". Four iterations of that, and I said, "Screw it! It was working without it...", so I reformatted and copied the NOOBS stuff back over, and there it was, both my networks available. SO... I took another shot at putting in my main password, which I hadn't tried in NOOBS, and no go. I tried it again, and, lo and behold <angelic chorus!>, it worked! Now, as I'd mentioned, I'd done it with my guest wifi side, but this was better.
I selected LibreELEC for the install, and off it went, and as sure as God made little green apples, LibreELEC/Kodi fired up the default configuration wizard, and wanted the wifi password - again <sigh!> So I selected my main AP, put in the password, took GREAT care to check it twice, clicked on "Done", and sure enough, it popped off some network timeout error - AND LISTED AN IP ADDRESS NEXT TO ITS NAME!!
So, I'm in! I told it how to get to my movies, and I'm watching "Training Day" (the older one with Denzel Washington & Ethan Hawke) in 1080p without ANY losses over wifi. I'll work on add-ons later...
And it makes me wonder whether timing issues on the RPi have something to do with the wifi's ability to work at all, and how... I don't have any more than some of the anomalies to go on, but it's in the back of my head...
Thumbs up to all those who are winning their battles, too! <^8#
Quote from: elpresidente on February 22, 2017, 04:42:04 PM
According to the website, the USB ports in total can manage up to 1.2 A of current draw (if your power supply supports 2.5 A). If you look up the specs for the hard drive you're interested in from the manufacturer website, it should tell you the current draw. They may list several current values, you want the maximum one. Flash drives use very little power so they should all work.
Source: https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#power
This is helpful. So one of the drives is a Samsung Spinpoint M8. According to a review I read, maximum power consumption is 3.9 watts at startup. Another site noted that the drive is 5 volts. Doing the math (amps=watts/volts), I get a maximum draw of 0.78 amps. With the max draw of all usb ports being 1.2 amps and no other occupied ports with a media server, this looks safe to me, as any function other than startup would use no more than 2/3 on average than startup. To put it another way, if it starts up OK, it should be fine. Any flaws in this logic?
Quote from: fox on February 22, 2017, 07:51:35 PM
This is helpful. So one of the drives is a Samsung Spinpoint M8. According to a review I read, maximum power consumption is 3.9 watts at startup. Another site noted that the drive is 5 volts. Doing the math (amps=watts/volts), I get a maximum draw of 0.78 amps. With the max draw of all usb ports being 1.2 amps and no other occupied ports with a media server, this looks safe to me, as any function other than startup would use no more than 2/3 on average than startup. To put it another way, if it starts up OK, it should be fine. Any flaws in this logic?
I don't see any. You double-checked that your power supply is rated at 2.5 A?
You don't see any what? Yes, power supply I bought is 2.5 amps.
Quote from: fox on February 22, 2017, 01:53:04 PM
A company called Adafruit makes a script that you can download and use to transfer you OS from the SD card to the external HD, SSD or pendrive; you can read about it here (https://learn.adafruit.com/external-drive-as-raspberry-pi-root/what-the-helper-script-does). This looks like a good alternative to BerryBoot if you already have your OS installed. ....
Well I tried that script and it didn't work properly and messed up my boot. It may have been because I had two distros already installed on the SD card. I could recover it, but I reread the instructions for BerryBoot and decided that this is what I should have used at the outset instead of Noobs. I'm going to start over.
You may find that the adafruit script can manage the coherency of a single-boot system, but a NOOBS/multi-OS config messes it up completely. If I remember, I'll check the script. I'd be inclined to think that dd would still win the day in this instance... YMMV.
Thumbs up on the drive, though, Mike. I don't see any problem, and yes, the greatest draw would be at spin-up, so if it's up, it's good to go. And keeping it up might be a good reason for a UPS of some size. I have a APC BE350G-CN that supposedly wouldn't hold up anything bigger than a laptop (which I consider the only type of computer that has a UPS [read: battery] built in.) It supports my cable modem, VoIP modem, and telephone base station perfectly, though...
Quote from: fox on February 23, 2017, 12:36:33 AM
You don't see any what? Yes, power supply I bought is 2.5 amps.
I don't see any flaws in your logic.
Well BerryBoot doesn't seem to be any better, and it's arguably worse. It will load an OS on your external drive, but then it tells you to remove the SD card and boot. But the Pi won't boot without the SD card in! I tried this twice, and then I tried booting leaving the card in, but when you do that it just brings up the install menu again. It is also very, very slow at downloading Raspbian. What I'm trying now is to install the OSes on the card again with BerryBoot, and then see if I can then get it to install them on the drive. I have a feeling that I'm going to go back to Noobs and reinstall one on the card, move it with Adafruit, and then install another OS on the drive manually.
You probably already did this but just in case, this might help. I would follow the instructions in the first section and then prepare the boot media however you like.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/msd.md
Thanks, Jason. I hadn´t seen that. Had I seen it 30 minutes ago, I would have tried it immediately. However, I am again in the process of reinstalling Raspian with Noobs onto my SD card. I´ll then try the Adafruit script and see if it works to move my installation to the usb drive. That would still require the SD card to boot, but it refers immediately to the files on the drive (if it works). If not, Iĺl try it the way you referred me to.
Update: again the Adafruit script didn´t work. Again, I tried editing the config files to change what should be booted, but no dice. So I´m now downloading the Raspbian image and will be trying Jason´s method.
I must say, this is starting to get quite annoying. I´ve restarted this process 4 or 5 times and am getting pretty frustrated. Maybe I´m out of my depth on this one.
Success; sort of. I now have Raspbian running from my external drive, though it still needs to boot from the SD. That's fine with me; it was all I was after all along until Jason's article pointed to the possibility of booting entirely from a usb drive. Now I'm wondering if I can install and boot LibreELEC from the same drive? Not sure how to proceed to get that. The link Jason gave me for how to set up Raspbian from an external usb drive mostly worked, but I had to hand-edit the cmdline.txt and /etc/fstab to substitute my drive (/dev/sda2) for the partition on the SD. Several attempts ago, I tried doing same using the UUID#, but it didn't work. The problem could have been how I specified the UUID or because I used Noobs instead of the Raspian image for the installation. The operation of Raspian is definitely faster from the external drive.
I'm now happy to report that it is possible to install multiple OSes on a usb external HD or pendrive through Berryboot. The problem I had was due to one line in a config file. The file is cmdline.txt, and all you have to do is remove the line about enabling usb boot. This seems rather strange on two accounts. The first is that you would think that you actually need that line and the second is that it starts with a "#", which to me means it's a comment and won't be used anyway. No matter; remove that line on the SD card after you have run Berryboot and installed an OS, and then all is well. Once the OS is installed, a menu comes up which allows you to add another OS. I installed OpenELEC first, and then Ubuntu Mate; this time on a usb pendrive instead of a disk. (I had previously tested the pendrive and two external drives and all gave a speed of around 35 mbsp; about 5x the speed of the SD card. Both distros are working and the speed increase over the SD card is quite noticeable. Ubuntu Mate has a few minor problems, including that the wifi doesn't work until you reboot. But it seems pretty good so far.
Incidentally, I can now give a talk on RPi distro installation options as a result of all of my fiddling.
Mike: Thanks to you and Bob for working through these bugs. Should make it much easier for when I get a Pi and set it up. Incidentally, what class was your SD card? I remember you had one already so you didn't purchase one and the ones they usually include in kits are class 10. I ask because if you're not using a class 10, the speed boost of 5x might not be as much. And when you mention the 35 mbps speed, are you counting writes or reads?
Would you like to present that topic in April, Mike?
Mine here is a ADATA 32GB Class 10 UHS-1 card, works fine (but I'm going to have to source multiple cards to allow me to quickly switch out one for another, it's just easier, and there are SO many flavours to try...! <^8#) Still haven't made it to Pidora...
I now have two cards, both bought at Staples, both Class 10. The original, which I got for $7 on sale but is now $11, is a Kingston. The new one I got is a Sandisk Ultra; it was about $15. The Ultra might be faster but the tests I've seen online suggest no great difference except in random writes (much faster than the Kingston in that). Staples also has a Samsung 32 gb EVO+ for $30. This is one of the fastest cards in the RPi tests, but I don't need 32 gb and it still doesn't approach the speed of an external usb HD or pendrive. The Staples website also lists a 16 gb Samsung EVO for $15, and I definitely would have bought that had it been in the store.
Regardless of what SD card you use, the way to go if you are installing a full distro is to use the card for bootup only, with the actual distro and data on usb. While the good SD cards claim to operate at speeds exceeding 30 mb/sec, none of them are even close when used in a Pi. Refer to this (https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/raspberry-pi-microsd-card) site for speed tests.
Berryboot can run your distro from a usb medium as long as you're using an OS that has been converted to Berryboot squashfs format. (There is a slight modification needed to make this work, but the mod is very easy to do - see my posting on this above.) The Berryboot site also gives instructions on how to convert an RPi distro image to Berryboot format, but I couldn't make it work for the just-released LibreELEC 8.0. The Berryboot site (http://berryboot.alexgoldcheidt.com/images/) does have a large number of distros already converted to that format, including Ubuntu 16.04 Mate, and the latter is included as one of the defaults to install when you put Berryboot 2.0 on your SD card.
Update: a bunch of upgraded distros were posted on the Berryboot site today, including LibreELEC 8.0.