HeaterMeter on the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B


 
Bryan Mayland

Bryan Mayland

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The Raspberry Pi foundation in their quest to further release incremental improvements to their hardware have released yet another incremental upgrade the the B line of devices, the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. This swaps the single core 700MHz chip for a quad core 900MHz chip, and doubles the memory to 1GB. CPU-wise this is a 6x speed improvement, however you're still incredibly bottlenecked running the OS through a (max) 20MB/s SD card and there's still no integrated wifi!

Will HeaterMeter run on this hardware? Mmmmaybe! It definitely will not run on the existing firmware because the kernel won't "just work". It's definitely going to be not fun getting support for it into OpenWrt though and makes me again consider the alternatives.

I just thought I'd answer the question before anybody asks. No, the software does not work and no the hardware doesn't fit together. The software may work at a later date and the v5.0 will mate with it.
 
Just saw the announcement on Slashdot. One more reason to bite the bullet (not to in any way to underestimate the serious pain for all involved) and migrate off of OpenWRT and move to a natively supported o/s like Raspian, ...
 
That's really the only reason to migrate off OpenWrt. The reason Raspbian isn't the base is because:
-- It is massive, multiple gigabytes instead of 32 megs. I can't host giant preconfigured images so it would add more steps to the install process.
-- There is no web config tool for configuring wifi or network settings
-- Variability. Knowing exactly what is in the firmware on everyone's devices makes troubleshooting less painful.
-- Slower boots! Although this isn't as bad as it used to be.

There's also the complete rewrite of all the existing linkmeter code and web pages (wrinkles nose).

Totally agree on the wifi though Joel. $9 isn't much for an Edimax dongle but it would be great to have one less part and a guaranteed wifi adapter with a supported driver.
 
Bryan Mayland said:
Totally agree on the wifi though Joel. $9 isn't much for an Edimax dongle but it would be great to have one less part and a guaranteed wifi adapter with a supported driver.
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Exactly. This is nuts. I know they want to keep the price at $35, but at some point you need to bite this bullet and have an integrated wireless stack if you are going to be a part of the IoT. I'm sure they could do it at $5 or less on top of the current board price.

Have you guys signed up for Windows 10 on this board? Should be a lot of fun to use them around the house for various things, might be a great 3D Printer system: http://dev.windows.com/en-us/featured/raspberrypi2support
 
Yeah I signed up for it but I am not so keen on Windows as an embedded system. In my mind Windows needs a lot more horsepower just as a baseline and throwing .NET apps on top of that doesn't sound like a way to speed things up at all.
 
Well, I didn't mean for this project, but for other things where Windows-centric developers will gravitate to. I count myself as one of them. I'd like to see garden and lawn automation complete with moisture sensors, for one. I also think that Windows 10 might be a pretty killer media center on HDTVs with the RPi 2.
 
Oh yeah but Kodi (XBMC) is already the world's best media player for home theaters for over 10 years, and that already runs on the Pi. There is a super huge performance bottleneck now at the SD card. Quad cores and a gig of ram are just going to spin while waiting for that dang slow SD card!

Also they still have their buggy dwc_otg USB core code which controls everything so maybe that will be better when it is rewritten for Windows 10?

EDIT: Oops I mean Kodi not Kobi.
 
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Kodi works great on the Raspberry Pie, I don't have much faith in ever seeing a light weight efficient Windows operating system. MS seems to always go for bloat....
 
RalphTrimble said:
Kodi works great on the Raspberry Pie, I don't have much faith in ever seeing a light weight efficient Windows operating system. MS seems to always go for bloat....
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Windows 8/8.1 is better than previous version..... quick boot run good on low end systems compared to win 7....
 
I've got a Vbox VM with 10 running 1 core (3.5Ghz) & 2GB RAM & it's more than usable. Maxes the processor out at times, but you'll have that. 3 cores/4GB feels like bare metal. Surface Pro 4 + Win10 will likely be in my future. Sticking with Win7 till then. 8 Runs fine, but is a pain in the *** to set up, find drivers, etc. 10 doesn't feel like an evolution of 8, it feels like 7 + Android/iOS (never used win8 mobile, but I assume it's like that too).
 
Bryan Mayland said:
Oh yeah but Kodi (XBMC) is already the world's best media player for home theaters for over 10 years, and that already runs on the Pi. There is a super huge performance bottleneck now at the SD card. Quad cores and a gig of ram are just going to spin while waiting for that dang slow SD card!
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Have you see https://osmc.tv yet? Has a bit of promise. I do grant you the SD card bottleneck, but I just need it to load the OS into memory and do the rest over gigabit or 802.11n/ac LAN.
 
Well, OSMC is Kodi is XBMC so I suppose I have :-D There's still stuff that needs to come off the SD card, skin files, 100 tiny pngs for each skinned screen, database information, it just all seems very sluggish to me compared to my HTPC which has a latest-gen core i3 and a Samsung 840 SSD. A *bit* of a price difference between the two though! My HTPC also is my HeaterMeter development box too so it pulls double duty.
 
I just wish that there was a solution that would allow recording of the premium channels like HBO.

Currently i am using WMC with a Ceton but would love to look at something like the XBMC / OSMC
 
My only prob with Kodi on rPi is the rPi has no digital audio output. The digital audio comes out through the HDMI with the video, but my tv (and many tv's I would assume) does not repeat the digital audio that comes in through HDMI out through my TV's digital audio output. This means I have no way to connect my surround sound receiver when I am using the rPi with Kodi as a media center. I guess the audio is not repeated to prevent using it to copy DVD's etc...real PITA. If my surround receiver had HDMI in it I would be good to go, or if the rPi had digital audio output (separate from the HDMI) I would be set, unfortunately they don't, so I can't use my surround sound when running Kodi on the rPi...
 
RalphTrimble said:
The digital audio comes out through the HDMI with the video, but my tv (and many tv's I would assume) does not repeat the digital audio that comes in through HDMI out through my TV's digital audio output.
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My LG plasma from 2008 does this with the exception DTS. As long as I keep things at Dolby Digital 5.1, my TV will send the digital audio to my receiver via the optical s/pdif cable. You should be able to change the audio options in XBMC to allow this to work. I know I've done it in the past, but haven't used XBMC in quite some time.

Alternatively, you could use something this HDMI switch, which will allow you to send the audio signal directly to your receiver without the need for your TV to decode it and pass it back to the receiver.
 
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Trust me. I've tried all the settings! It's not an XBMC/KODI issue, it is an issue with the TV. The TV is designed not to repeat digital audio, unless the audio is coming from the tv tuner the digital audio output is dead.... That said, if the rPi had a separate digital audio output there would be no issue, so it is kind of a rPi/TV issue...
The prob with the unit you linked is it costs more than the rPi....
 
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