Raspberry Pi - $35 Linux computer

  • Thread starter Thread starter daz
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dymetrie said:
There's an excellent guide here about getting an RC6 MCE IR remote (your standard microsoft media center edition remote control) working with Raspbmc.

Not all the buttons work, for me (although I am still on RC2, can't be bothered to spend 60 seconds updating to RC3 :p), but it makes the remote more than usable (direction and enter buttons work even if the video control buttons don't) :)

I'd actually hazard a guess that if you can get a Harmony to emulate an RC6 remote, it might work...
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You'd need an IR receiver though obviously...
 
Well the Pi really dislikes my keyboard.... Fired it up with the debian image on a recomended 16gig samsung card with a 1a matx charger. Booted up fine but the led backlight on my keyboard is flickering and it doesn't seem to register half the keypresses - and when it does it sometimes acts like I'm holding the button down :/

Reckon the keyboard is trying to take more power than the pi can supply over usb?

Keyboard is the "Logitech Illuminated Keyboard"




edit - bit of googling suggests it is power... Looks like I need to find my old usb keyboard :/
 
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Most PC USB ports are expected to be able to supply 500mah (for 2.0 certification anyhow) that's quite possible. Didn't the Pi get tested as consuming between 500mA and 1A under load Got a boggo standard £5 keyboard laying about?
 
d_brennen said:
Most PC USB ports are expected to be able to supply 500mah (for 2.0 certification anyhow) that's quite possible. Didn't the Pi get tested as consuming between 500mA and 1A under load Got a boggo standard £5 keyboard laying about?
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The Pi is designed to run on a standard 700mA charger I think, the USB ports are fused for 150mA so the Pi doesn't crash, when using a 700mA supply.

Nate
 
d_brennen said:
Most PC USB ports are expected to be able to supply 500mah (for 2.0 certification anyhow) that's quite possible. Didn't the Pi get tested as consuming between 500mA and 1A under load Got a boggo standard £5 keyboard laying about?
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My old Logitech is a standard keyboard - no backlights or anything flash. Just need to find it - otherwise I'll see if I can borrow one from work!
 
I'm having an absolute nightmare with the PI so far. Running latest RC3 Raspbmc. I've got lag everywhere including menus and it's constantly crashing and locking up. Everytime I power it on I get a red light solid and nothing else. I have to muck about with the SD card and/or power combination serveral times until it even boots. Last time it booted I got a load of errors with the file system. I've decided to start again with the image on the SD.
Will an unclean shutdown cause big problems then?

When I have got it up and running enough to be in the menus looking at settings without it crashing, I noticed the CPU usage is constantly very high around say 90% on the bar graph. The ram is only at about 20% though. And this is just in the menus doing nothing, not even scraping in the background.

I connected it up to my PS3 Media server service on the PC via upnp discovery and this time my 1080p rips I got a bit further in. They do not stutter as much, but they still do. I set a few settings to make it presumably better like fixed refresh rate of 24hz plus I turned off downmixing of audio and fed it straight to my DTS/HD audio capable receiver so it should be doing the minimal work possible. The 1080p mkv I watched just now got 5 minutes in then locked the Pi up so I had to pull the power.

Before I managed to get HDMI CEC remote control commands working when plugged directly into my TV. Now via my amp...nope. Won't work at all. :(

At the moment it's just not a case of plug it in and 1080p rips work. Anyone that says it does, I'd like to hear their start to finish guide on what they did and how they have it set up exactly at client and server end, including networking. Or...maybe they are using very low quality 1080p rips.
 
jaybee said:
I'm having an absolute nightmare with the PI so far. Running latest RC3 Raspbmc. I've got lag everywhere including menus and it's constantly crashing and locking up. Everytime I power it on I get a red light solid and nothing else. I have to muck about with the SD card and/or power combination serveral times until it even boots. Last time it booted I got a load of errors with the file system. I've decided to start again with the image on the SD.
Will an unclean shutdown cause big problems then?

When I have got it up and running enough to be in the menus looking at settings without it crashing, I noticed the CPU usage is constantly very high around say 90% on the bar graph. The ram is only at about 20% though. And this is just in the menus doing nothing, not even scraping in the background.

I connected it up to my PS3 Media server service on the PC via upnp discovery and this time my 1080p rips I got a bit further in. They do not stutter as much, but they still do. I set a few settings to make it presumably better like fixed refresh rate of 24hz plus I turned off downmixing of audio and fed it straight to my DTS/HD audio capable receiver so it should be doing the minimal work possible. The 1080p mkv I watched just now got 5 minutes in then locked the Pi up so I had to pull the power.

Before I managed to get HDMI CEC remote control commands working when plugged directly into my TV. Now via my amp...nope. Won't work at all. :(

At the moment it's just not a case of plug it in and 1080p rips work. Anyone that says it does, I'd like to hear their start to finish guide on what they did and how they have it set up exactly at client and server end, including networking. Or...maybe they are using very low quality 1080p rips.
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What power cable are you using and what is it rated at? Having a supply with not enough amp action has caused similar for me. I have a power supply that works fine now though.
 
jaybee said:
snip...

Or...maybe they are using very low quality 1080p rips.
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What would you call a low quality rip? I can run a 2 hour film at 9Gig in size no problem, and that is with down-sampling the DTS audio as my telly can't handle it as an input.

I roll my own OpenELEC builds and use the settings I've previously described here: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=22252959#post22252959

On the networking side I use NFS from my NAS over a cable length of about 4 metres.


From the issues you describe it sounds like something isn't stable in your setup. Are other images usable (e.g. the official Debian image)? If not, then I suspect you may need to look for a different power supply.
 
Power supply is the Samsung travel charger standard 700ma supply provided with modern day mobile phones.
SD card is a brand new Samsung 8gb class 10 20mb+ read and write as recommended and used extensively in this thread.

I have now got the Pi to the point where it played a 720p rip earlier for 15 minutes with no issues.

I just tried a 1080p rip which was 8gb and a bitrate of 8mbps and it stuttered every 20-30 seconds.

Weirdly, I then tried one of my highest bitrate rips (which still isn't even that high mind) @ 15mbps (19gb file) and it played fine from the start for 15 minutes.

So the higher bit rate one was trouble free.
The audio between the two files is identical DTS @ 1510kbps.
The video is the same but the higher quality file has higher resolutiona nd bitrate and filesize.
They are otherwise identical matroska format .mkv files.

I am using PS3 Media server to serve these up via UPNP discovery on Pi. Maybe I should setup a simple SAMBA/NFS share and bypass any PS3MS shenanigans that could be taking place with transcoding etc. I remember I did setup PS3MS to run over gigabit network so I left all settings at unlimited quality.
 
jaybee said:
I am using PS3 Media server to serve these up via UPNP discovery on Pi. Maybe I should setup a simple SAMBA/NFS share and bypass any PS3MS shenanigans that could be taking place with transcoding etc. I remember I did setup PS3MS to run over gigabit network so I left all settings at unlimited quality.
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Definitely try that. I don't use PS3 media server and haven't got problems. Unless I try to play DTS without my amp on.
 
bad luck or what.

To get my raspberry pi working, i have tried an sd card reader on camera as i didnt have one on the computer. Drivers dont work anymore. I try another pc (my friends work laptop) but im installing it with Raspbmc which installs through an EXE... but the laptop doesnt allow EXE's to run.

I try an actual sd card reader but it is dead on arrival, i buy a 2nd reader.. finally works! I plug in my keyboard all excited.... but when i push one key it presses it 50,00000..... so when i try and login it types rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooootttttttttttttttttt

I try my wireless keyboard... that doesnt type at all.... ok... ill just buy a generic one... £6... now my pi comes back with errors on boot..... this £30 pc has now become £60...... screw this... anyone wanna buy a raspberry pi???????
 
From May 30th:
topdog@OC said:
... today got my invitation to place my order.

Just in case anybody pitched theirs in around the same time or soon after and is still waiting, shouldn't be long now.
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Arrived today. I was estimated ~6 weeks by RS when they contacted me on 30th, so they seem to be pretty well aware of their ability to process orders and move units to the dates they give.

Now just need to figure out how to get it to read my SD card (sandisk extreme 8gb c10) as I think that's the reason it's not working for me at the moment - time to have a read/play.

Edit: Order number was 58xxx
 
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topdog@OC said:
Now just need to figure out how to get it to read my SD card (sandisk extreme 8gb c10) as I think that's the reason it's not working for me at the moment - time to have a read/play.
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Assuming the image has been written correctly, just update the 3rd party bootloader files from here and it should work fine.
 
Evilpaul said:
Assuming the image has been written correctly, just update the 3rd party bootloader files from here and it should work fine.
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Cheers, just looking at something similar right now, as it shows this for my card @ http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals#SD_cards :

8GB SDHC Class 10 Extreme (30MB/s HD Video) - working with new bootcode.bin. Confirmed on 2012-07-10 for Debian Squeeze 2012-04-19 and Arch Linux 2012-06-13 images (BI1130916254G).
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Giving it a try, fingers crossed :)

Edit: And yep, easy as that, just replaced the bootcode.bin, plugged it back in, and immediately breathed life into it - sweet. I've an avermedia capture card in my PC with hdmi input so watching it boot up through that now :D
 
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dalehitchy1 said:
bad luck or what.

...

I try an actual sd card reader but it is dead on arrival, i buy a 2nd reader.. finally works! I plug in my keyboard all excited.... but when i push one key it presses it 50,00000..... so when i try and login it types rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooootttttttttttttttttt

...
Click to expand...

I was getting the same thing with my keyboards. Neither are admittedly great-build keyboards for non-Windows use (roccat arvo and valo), the arvo wouldn't function at all, the valo would if I plugged in both USB cables (it has a USB hub on the keyboard so by plugging in both USB cables to the pi it feeds extra power into the keyboard to function).

It's with the valo that I was then getting the repeated keystrokes. I perservered long enough with that craziness to get logged in (best thing that worked for me was stabbing the shift key 3x before every keypress and about a 1/3 seconds between each stab, so shift shift shift p, shift shift shift i, shift shift shift enter, shift shift shift r, etc.!).

Maddenning, but I got in, then enabled remote ssh, rebooted, and pulled the keyboard out - I'm gtg now.
 
Ive got a Yellow PiCrust and its fits very well and looks quite nice, but it is held together using a single rubber band, which isn't very professional.
 
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