New piBeacon hardware platform

Post by **jay (support)** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 10:26 am

Just read about the new Raspberry Pi Zero W - seems like a great platform for piBeacons, no?

jalves · Post by **jalves** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 12:13 pm

Read about that too. Looks like a great resource and only $10US. Will be buying a few just to play.

Shutter · Post by **Shutter** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 2:19 pm

Jay,

Dare I say a great platform to run the Indigo server on?

Post by **jay (support)** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 2:40 pm

For the server? Not really. Too little memory, single core, not enough USB ports, etc. It would make for an interesting distributed plugin platform perhaps.

kw123 · Post by **kw123** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 4:19 pm

Pibeacon works on the old zero when you add Bluetooth and wifi and USB hub

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kw123 · Post by **kw123** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 4:30 pm

And with $10 you can replace the ESP chips. The rpi is somewhat more stable and has much more capabilities.

But out of stock. At $10. But you can get one for $30. I guess we have to wait.

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Shutter · Post by **Shutter** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 4:56 pm

jay (support) wrote:For the server? Not really. Too little memory, single core, not enough USB ports, etc. It would make for an interesting distributed plugin platform perhaps.

So the quad core Raspberry Pi 3 with 4 USB ports and 1GB then?

Post by **matt (support)** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 5:15 pm

Getting warmer.

Post by **jay (support)** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 5:21 pm

kw123 wrote:Pibeacon works on the old zero when you add Bluetooth and wifi and USB hub

The point is that you don't have to add them to the new one...

Post by **jay (support)** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 5:23 pm

Shutter wrote:So the quad core Raspberry Pi 3 with 4 USB ports and 1GB then?

kw123 · Post by **kw123** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 5:45 pm

The comment on the pi zero for pibeacon was: yes it works in with 500 MB ..

For indigo you would need to add a real disk and use the ssd as read only boot device. Or go to a beefed up version like the ti beagle bone

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Post by **jay (support)** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 6:32 pm

kw123 wrote:For indigo you would need to add a real disk and use the ssd as read only boot device.

Not really. A largish SSD card would work fine for the majority of users.

If you use the SQLogger you'd need a big one, store the data somewhere else, etc.

RogueProeliator · Post by **RogueProeliator** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 8:43 pm

So now I am imagining a time when I have like 20 Raspberry Pi's running in my rack in place of my current computers, each doing a specific job - Indigo, Plex, music, etc. I don't know that really sounds that much more wonderful than a couple of rack mount servers and a Mini...

I guess it would have the added advantage of looking like a bunch of Replicators were running your HA system (any Stargate SG-1 fans here?)

DaveL17 · Post by **DaveL17** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 9:03 pm

RogueProeliator wrote:So now I am imagining a time when I have like 20 Raspberry Pi's running in my rack in place of my current computers, each doing a specific job - Indigo, Plex, music, etc. I don't know that really sounds that much more wonderful than a couple of rack mount servers and a Mini...

I guess it would have the added advantage of looking like a bunch of Replicators were running your HA system (any Stargate SG-1 fans here?)

Do you think they could handle Plex? I have my Plex server running on a bone stock Drobo 5N and it can barely keep up.

I keep thinking about using an rPi to serve a legacy Drobo USB, and I've been meaning to set up a new NTP server--I had one running on an old Vera 2 until it croaked. Come to think of it, I could probably do the NTP thing on my UBNT EdgeRouter. #weekendproject

RogueProeliator · Post by **RogueProeliator** » Tue Feb 28, 2017 9:35 pm

Do you think they could handle Plex? I have my Plex server running on a bone stock Drobo 5N and it can barely keep up.

People are running it on the Pi 3 models -- but I wouldn't expect that it would handle video transcoding very well. So if you can direct-play (have compatible formats stored for your media clients) then it is probably all good; I'm guessing it would handle audio transcoding just fine too. Of course, would also depend on the number of concurrent sessions you expect...

All in all not what I would want to do at the moment, though the Pi's will keep improving until 4k is taking off and you have the transcoding problem again...

Indigo Domotics