Unboxing a Raspberry Pi 4 and installing in a case

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(Edited)

This little computer has 4GB of RAM, they also make one with 8GB now. Quite amazing how far they have come since the first Raspberry Pi having only 512MB of memory. With the Raspberry Pi 4 being released in 2019, many new applications can now run on this tiny computer. The size of a wallet, it can do alot!

My plan is to run my Splinterlands bots on this device. I only need around 4GB of RAM so I skipped on buying the more expensive version of the RPI4. I bought a case to go along with the device so its well protected. You can find this case online for around $15 on Amazon.. Its made by Flirc and I am quite happy with it. The design of the case has a built in heatsink to the body, using aluminum it dissipates the heat coming off the processor.

The CPU of this device is an ARM based processor, so this requires different versions of software that would normally run on a PC using x86 architecture. Hopefully that will not be too much of an issue to get the Splinterlands bot running. If I can get it working, then I can stop using a virtual machine that normally runs them.

One major change to the Raspberry Pi 4 is the micro HDMI ports. I forgot about this when I bought it and had to order an adapter to get it working on my PC. Though while I waited I used SSH to gain access to the machine and installed VNC, so using the Raspberry Pi 4 OS you can still access it without having special cables.

Its powered by a USB charger, a pretty powerful one drawing 3.5 amps. Normally you see these USB chargers anywhere from 1 amp to 2 amps. So 3.5 is quite a bit but seems the device needs it. I ordered a CanaKit power supply, its driven by a USB type-C connector which makes plugging in easy.

I used the wired Ethernet but it also has Wifi and even bluetooth support. Pretty amazing all the features they have stuffed into this tiny device since the first version. With all of these features, faster CPU and more memory you can now run Ubuntu with a GUI on it. Previously it was recommended you run a headless OS to keep the memory usage low. But with the 4GB and 8GB versions it now has more than enough bandwidth to run a full operating system.

I pop in a micro SD card, only used 16GB but it can handle up to 1TB from what I have read.

With it all set up, its time to install the Operating system. Since I was missing my micro HDMI I used the Raspberry Pi OS. But later on I plan on running Ubuntu on the device.

LBRY Video Link

(Unsupported https://lbry.tv/$/embed/rpi4build/d92c8de0ab48773e8fce253642db4c6d42007b2b?r=3urrKhdN9iH7zyRX6cjYysCbSwPSAPus)

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14 comments
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Thanks for all the info!
Got Me interested!
Have a Awesome Thursday!
👍🏼😊👍🏼

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Ah no problem, glad you found it interesting.. thanks you too!

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Yeah!
I was a computer nerd at one time, I spent 8 years in a room just learning a bunch of today worthless stuff, but it was fun!
Back in the day.... (Early 80's), in Europe we used to build them like Hot-Rods!
So I am always interested in computer things...
Another funny story...
After I got out of School, I quit computers (as a job). I worked for 23 years in the field mostly by "word of mouth", and good too.
Got through with My IT Schooling and quit!
Amazing!
🤣🤣🤣
Well I hope that the "mini comp" works out well for You!
Have a Safe & Blessed Weekend!
👍🏼😊🙏🏼😊👍🏼

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Hah ive been in IT most of my professional life.. It has really paid off for me. Allowed me to buy btc and alts that really paid off.

Thanks alot!

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Cool Beans!
I will admit that what I gained was "priceless"!
I got out more because of the people in the field here...
And to be stuck in an office with them or around them was just too much. After switching jobs a few times, I just bailed out!
But...
As far as what I do now, the education and experience has helped immensely.
And,
Thank You!
Have an Awesome Sunday!
👍🏼🌴🌄🌴👍🏼

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I've not got a Pi 4 yet. I ought to use the various ones I already have for something. I have thought about a Hive bot to run some scripts. Need to have a play with that.

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I have some RPI2s and RPI3s, but they lack much memory so glad to have a RPI4 where I can run more things on it. Scripts dont use much memory so you should be fine, but for me running four tabs at once for Splinterlands bots I needed more.

Best of luck with your scripts.

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Hey Marky,

Yeah I commented on "Does cooling matter on the Raspberry Pi 4?" back in June. Great to see others working on this amazing little machines. Now that they have some serious RAM I think many more people will start using them too.

So far its been suiting my needs well, but if I end up overclocking it I may add a fan.

Thanks for making STEMgeeks a thing, will post more in here when I have some related content.

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The ram isn't really that much of a concern. 2gb is enough for 99% of the use cases.

For me the bus speed has been the biggest problem as it is was insanely slow for random io until the Pi 4 which improved it a lot and anything serious I’d use an SSD.

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(Edited)

2gb is enough for most cases if your running headless. But as soon as you want some GUI and webpages it starts to use up a few GB of RAM. Since my Splinterlands bot needs five chromium tabs open to make use of puppeteer it does start to get close to 4gb usage.

But yeah headless use cases will probably not need more than 2gb like you said. And any time I can I like to run headless to reduce my resources, especially if I am renting VPS's.

Hopefully sometime in the future RPIs will have dedicated GPUs so it can offload some of the CPU work like 2d/3d acceleration.

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(Edited)

If you are using it as a desktop, I d recommend a pi 400, it is slightly faster than a Pi 4 and has 4g.

Interesting use case you have though.

Most of the time I run headless. In fact most of my pi have never been connected to a k v m in its life.

Hopefully sometime in the future RPIs will have dedicated GPUs so it can offload some of the CPU work like 2d/3d acceleration.

Have you seen there is a third party building Vulkan support for the Pi 4. Performance will be significantly better.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-4-vulkan-support-update

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(Edited)

Oh damn, I didnt even know about that model. Looks pretty cool it has a built in keyboard. Ill keep that model in mind.

Yeah the Splinterlands bot is the first RPI project I needed to run a GUI on, otherwise I always go with the minimal install and stick to CLI.

Nice! Vulkan support has been a big improvement in the emulation world. I use it when I play alot of my emulated PS3 games.. Before it we had to use dx12 and it really limited performance. Looking forward to it working on a RPI, will make retropies even more powerful I bet.

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Interestingly the pi 400 is slightly faster than a standard pi 4. Not a ton but it has some slight improvements on cpu.

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