matapan Posted February 5, 2022 Posted February 5, 2022 I'm thinking about trying out Polyglot and wanted to know the best place to purchase a Raspberry Pi 4 for this purpose. Any recommendations? Thanks.
stillwater Posted February 5, 2022 Posted February 5, 2022 All Raspberry PIs are in short supply owing to chip shortages and their use in commercial products. There are several approved dealers in North America that sell the boards at the official (low) prices. (They sell others as part of kits at what may be higher margins). If you go to the Raspberry PI official website and choose the model you want under the Hardware tab and the region that applies to you it will give you links to these official suppliers. EG https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/?variant=raspberry-pi-4-model-b-4gb Recently there were some Raspberry PI 4B 2 GB boards available at Adafruit but they sold out quickly and others available for delivery in a month at (I think) Canakit.... I do not have experience with Polyglot and thus can't comment on how much memory you will need. If you want to have the pi run with a display you'll want more than if you go "headless" and just ssh in from another computer. In fact the latest raspiOS (Bullseye) doesn't even install the new fancy display manager in boards with less than 4GB. (It installs an older one). I IMAGINE that polyglot would run fine on a Headless 2GB Pi 4 but you would want to confirm that from someone who knows or from official Polyglot info somewhere. If you are just getting started with rPI it's reasonable to get a starter kit with a case and a power supply and cables etc. I am familiar with and can recommend ones from Adafruit and Canakit. Probably others are fine also.
lilyoyo1 Posted February 5, 2022 Posted February 5, 2022 1 hour ago, matapan said: I'm thinking about trying out Polyglot and wanted to know the best place to purchase a Raspberry Pi 4 for this purpose. Any recommendations? Thanks. Why not just get polisy? With developers developing their nodeservers for PG3, the likelihood of pg2 nodeservers being developed further is very slim. You'd be investing time and money into something with a limited shelf life in regards to Isy usage 1
larryllix Posted February 5, 2022 Posted February 5, 2022 (edited) I ran polyglot 1 & 2 on a RPi 3B and it ran just fine. With the prices of an RPi 4 in the last year or so, you could buy a full size PC with much more memory etc. for about the same price. RPi4 needs a fan and polisy has a heat syncing metal case for fanless operation. I like to deal with canakit.ca for my RPis mostly. I have dealt with raspberrypi.com once, received a bad SD card, and their NOOBs that gave me endless problems. Then they wanted me to return the whole unit, in order to replace the SD card under warranty. Shipping would have been about 4x the price of a new SD card. Also you could buy a polisy with just as much power and a much more stable hardware system, including a proper SSD instead of an SD card that will likely give you problems within 5-6 years. It is designed to support PG3 coming and RPi won't, as reported. RPi would require licensed software and vendors would have to pay for that. Currently, I run three other pieces of my own ISY support software on my polisy, along with ISY and polyglot, no problem. Edited February 5, 2022 by larryllix
io_guy Posted February 5, 2022 Posted February 5, 2022 9 hours ago, larryllix said: RPi4 needs a fan I have 4 Pi4's running, none use or require a fan.
stillwater Posted February 5, 2022 Posted February 5, 2022 @larryllixI was just answering the originally posted question and did not think to discuss Polisy. I am sure you are right for the long run Polisy will be superior to adding on a Raspberry PI to ISY but the Polisy could be seen as a large investment for dipping a toe into Polyglot now.. What I said was helpful and accurate. I did not recommend purchasing anything directly from raspbberrypi.com -- the page I linked to has direct links to the Pi 4 boards at North American official suppliers that charge the MSRP for the boards. I specifically recommended Adafruit and Canakit but also have bought successfully from Sparkfun and Chicago Electronics Distributors. @io_guyis correct based on my experience. I have multiple Raspberry Pis and have never needed a fan. I did have one 3B that ran hotter than others but it was fine with just heatsinks. On the other hand I wasn't mining bitcoin... or trying to render video. It is simply untrue that a full-fledged pc can be had for the price of a raspberry pi 4b or Pi 400 +peripherals at anything close to official prices. I am sure you can find someone who will charge $400 for a Raspberry Pi but you can find people who will charge $400 for an Insteon switch also. The difference is we know that more Raspberry Pis are being produced.
io_guy Posted February 5, 2022 Posted February 5, 2022 If someone wants to pay $400 for a Pi4 I have a 4GB version shipping to them tomorrow.
LarryCRetired Posted February 5, 2022 Posted February 5, 2022 I have bought two Pi's from Chicago Electronics early last year. I have also bought from Canakit. Both were just fine. Shipping costs were less expensive from Chicago Elecronics because I am in the US. But I will say, Canakit was very helpful when I had some questions. i could not find any Pi's in December. Have not looked recently.
matapan Posted February 5, 2022 Author Posted February 5, 2022 Several users on this forum have suggested trying out some of the node servers which provide specific support for functionality I'd like to add to my existing setup. They suggested running Raspberry Pi as a means to try this out. The way forward for those people who have Raspberry Pi setups wasn't clear to me. I assumed eventually there would be no Raspberry Pi fork when the Polisy replaces the ISY994i. There have been other users on this forum who have tried and use Home Assistant. I was curious about this as well, since it uses essentially the same hardware. Is there a specific setup for a fanless configuration of Raspberry Pi 4B someone can recommend here?
larryllix Posted February 6, 2022 Posted February 6, 2022 4 hours ago, stillwater said: @larryllixI was just answering the originally posted question and did not think to discuss Polisy. I am sure you are right for the long run Polisy will be superior to adding on a Raspberry PI to ISY but the Polisy could be seen as a large investment for dipping a toe into Polyglot now.. What I said was helpful and accurate. I did not recommend purchasing anything directly from raspbberrypi.com -- the page I linked to has direct links to the Pi 4 boards at North American official suppliers that charge the MSRP for the boards. I specifically recommended Adafruit and Canakit but also have bought successfully from Sparkfun and Chicago Electronics Distributors. @io_guyis correct based on my experience. I have multiple Raspberry Pis and have never needed a fan. I did have one 3B that ran hotter than others but it was fine with just heatsinks. On the other hand I wasn't mining bitcoin... or trying to render video. It is simply untrue that a full-fledged pc can be had for the price of a raspberry pi 4b or Pi 400 +peripherals at anything close to official prices. I am sure you can find someone who will charge $400 for a Raspberry Pi but you can find people who will charge $400 for an Insteon switch also. The difference is we know that more Raspberry Pis are being produced. Here is one at less than half the price of a RPi4 and it uses a 2.3GHz quad core processor. You need to shop in the right place. Also includes a mouse, keyboard, and shipping. Try to get any RPi (that is actually a functioning computer, not just a bare board) for that price in Canada.
stillwater Posted February 6, 2022 Posted February 6, 2022 (edited) 20 hours ago, larryllix said: Here is one ... Sure. Invisible link. Also who wants an extra keyboard and mouse? Added later: Why was I annoyed by this comparison (even if actual information had been provided and not just an assertion ? It isn't because of the misinformation provided (not just the fan but also a Pi4 or Pi400 can easily boot from a USB 3.1 SSD -- one of mine does.) It's for two reasons: 1) Even thought the PI 4 can drive 2 HDMI displays, most people on this forum aren't looking to use a Raspberry Pi as a general purpose (desktop substitute) computer or for doing machine learning or video processing or similar tasks for which computing power or large memory spaces are particularly relevant. Most people on this forum are interested in the PI as a relatively easy to use device that they can use to run Python programs or packages that can serve as integrators or translators for other digital devices. Compared to Microcontrollers the full linux system has advantages (for example high level drivers for hosting USB devices), and compared to most Linux boards the PI provides low level interfaces (SPI, I2C, UART serial, GPIO) not typically available on general purpose linux boxes. People on this forum already use a Windows machine or a Mac already to get to their ISY so they don't need a keyboard or mouse to access the PI. So comparison to some Quad core processor with a keyboard and mouse was irrelevant. 2) Even if some other vendor provides a marginally cheaper solution, buying a PI helps support a whole ecosystem that makes computing more accessible to a wide variety of people worldwide, including those who do need an inexpensive alternative to traditional desktop devices. For students and others who are not yet accomplished computer geeks, the community of PI users makes entree into the world of many types of computer use and "making" (including programming microcontrollers) much easier. Oh -- and by the way, the Raspberry PI people just eliminated the one major criticism people had about the official operating system by issuing an official 64 bit version of RaspiOS. They had held on to 32 bit OS to maintain commonality across older boards but so many proprietary linux packages are only available in 64 bit version that they accepted the need for change. Edited February 6, 2022 by stillwater elaboration
io_guy Posted February 6, 2022 Posted February 6, 2022 4 hours ago, matapan said: Is there a specific setup for a fanless configuration of Raspberry Pi 4B someone can recommend here? A 2 or 4 GB Pi4 is fine, no cooling required. Home Assistant doesn't use much CPU at all. I would recommend using a USB3 stick instead of an SD card - they're faster and more reliable.
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