Documenting an 1115 ft radio tower climb Some broadcast engineering tasks are a bit too daunting for me to consider. Climbing the massive towers that power radio and TV stations is one of them! Your browser does not support the video tag. Recently, local engineer Aaron Cox had th … | Continue reading
Getting beyond ProcessExecutionErrors when installing Ubuntu on arm64 Currently there are precious few SystemReady Arm computers—computers like the System76 Thelio Astra I was sent recently to test. The level or 'band' of SystemReady SR used by modern Ampere-based arm64 workstati … | Continue reading
Pi modder successfully adds M.2 slot to Pi 500 As I briefly mentioned yesterday, someone mentioned in this blog's comments a successful M.2 socket installation on the empty header on the Pi 500 (something I attempted, rather poorly!). With a few added components, and 3.3V supplie … | Continue reading
Raspberry Pi 500 uses QMK Firmware for built-in keyboard I mentioned in my Pi 500 review Raspberry Pi is dogfooding their own microcontroller in the new Pi 500. An RP2040 sits next to the keyboard ribbon cable connector, and interfaces it through a USB port directly into the RP1 … | Continue reading
The Pi 500 is much faster, but lacks M.2 Raspberry Pi this morning launched the Pi 500 and a new 15.6" Pi Monitor, for $90 and $100, respectively. They're also selling a Pi 500 Kit, complete with a Power Supply, Mouse, and micro HDMI to HDMI cable, for $120. This is the first tim … | Continue reading
AmpereOne: Cores are the new MHz Cores are the new megahertz, at least for enterprise servers. We've gone quickly from 32, to 64, to 80, to 128, and now to 192-cores on a single CPU socket! Amazon built Graviton 4, Google built Axiom, but if you want your own massive Arm server, … | Continue reading
Raspberry Pi boosts Pi 5 performance with SDRAM tuning tl;dr Raspberry Pi engineers tweaked SDRAM timings and other memory settings on the Pi, resulting in a 10-20% speed boost at the default 2.4 GHz clock. I of course had to test overclocking, which got me a 32% speedup at 3.2 G … | Continue reading
Home Assistant Yellow - instant 2x IoT speedup with CM5 In a win for modular, private, local IoT, I just upgraded my Home Assistant Yellow from a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 to a Compute Module 5 this morning, and got an instant 2x speed boost. I first posted about the Yellow i … | Continue reading
Raspberry Pi CM5 is 2-3x faster, drop-in upgrade (mostly) The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 is smaller than a credit card, and I already have it gaming in 4K with an eGPU, running a Kubernetes cluster, and I even upgraded my NEC Commercial display from a CM4 to CM5, just swapping … | Continue reading
LLMs accelerated with eGPU on a Raspberry Pi 5 After a long journey getting AMD graphics cards working on the Raspberry Pi 5, we finally have a stable patch for the amdgpu Linux kernel driver, and it works on AMD RX 400, 500, 6000, and (current-generation) 7000-series GPUs. With … | Continue reading
AMD Radeon PRO W7700 running on Raspberry Pi After years of work among a bunch of people in the Pi community (special callout to Coreforge!), we finally have multiple generations of AMD graphics cards working on the Raspberry Pi 5. We recently got Polaris-era GPUs working (like t … | Continue reading
M4 Mac mini's efficiency is incredible I had to pause some of my work getting a current-gen AMD graphics card running on the Pi 5 and testing a 192-core AmpereOne server to quickly post on the M4's efficiency. I expected M4 to be better than M1/M2 (I haven't personally tested M3) … | Continue reading
Popular Rockchip SBC distro in limbo after maintainer burns out Recently Joshua Riek posted he's dropping off from GitHub. If you haven't heard of him, he's one of the few reasons working with Linux on Rockchip SBCs is so much easier today than it was just a few years ago. His Ub … | Continue reading
Why Raspberry Pi for an SBC guy If anyone asks why I prefer to work with Raspberry Pis when I want to tinker on a random project, consider: I just spent the past hour with a brand new ArmSoM Sige7 board (see my debugging notes in my sbc-reviews repo). This SBC has been on the mar … | Continue reading
Home Assistant and CarPlay with the Pi Touch Display 2 After a decade, Raspberry Pi finally upgraded their official Touch Display from 480p to 720p, while keeping the price and overall aesthetic the same. I've had early access to the Touch Display 2, and have been testing it in a … | Continue reading
LTT's Precision Screwdriver - better than iFixit? Two years ago, Linus Sebastian released a general purpose ratcheting screwdriver tailored towards PC building and IT needs. I reviewed the LTT Screwdriver, and found it to be a good tool that did improve a couple things where it c … | Continue reading
Finding a server's BMC / IPMI IP address with ipmitool I test servers on a temporary basis a lot, and many enterprise servers don't have as user-friendly external port indications, or little OLED displays to provide useful information. They're no-frills because they don't need fr … | Continue reading
JetKVM: tiny IP KVM that's not an Apple Watch Despite what it looks like, this isn't a hot-rod Apple Watch. This is an IP KVM. What does that mean? It's basically a remote control rocket pack for any computer, from a giant tower PC, to a little mini PC you might run in your homel … | Continue reading
Qualcomm cancels Snapdragon Dev Kit, refunds all orders This afternoon I received the following email from Arrow, regarding the Snapdragon Developer Kit for Windows: Dear Valued Customer, Please see this important message from Qualcomm: ”At Qualcomm, we are dedicated to pioneerin … | Continue reading
Realizing Meshtastic's Promise with the T-Deck Meshtastic—a simple off-grid mesh network used to transfer short messages—is a neat bit of tech, but until recently, most development has focused on little nodes with or without tiny OLED displays, and a separate phone app or web UI … | Continue reading
3rd Party PoE HATs for Pi 5 add NVMe, fit inside case Today I published a video detailing my testing of three new Raspberry Pi HATs—these HATs all add on PoE+ power and an NVMe SSD slot, though the three go about it in different ways. You can watch the video for the full story (e … | Continue reading
Use an External GPU on Raspberry Pi 5 for 4K Gaming After I saw Pineboards 4K Pi 5 external GPU gaming demo at Maker Faire Hanover, I decided it was time to set up my GPU test rig and see how the Pi OS amdgpu Linux kernel patch is going. I tested it out on a livestream over the w … | Continue reading
Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows - the fastest X Elite, tested I have mixed feelings publishing this post: many developers who are actively trying to port their Windows software to Arm are still awaiting shipment of their own Snapdragon Dev Kits, and I seem to be one of the first f … | Continue reading
AVerMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus - Can't record to microSD I recently purchased an AVerMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus to help record screens on devices I test at my desk. It's claim to fame is being able to record to a microSD card standalone (at resolutions up to 1080p60), … | Continue reading
Qualcomm Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows Teardown (2024) In late July, a week after ordering the Snapdragon Dev Kit, I wondered where it was. Arrow's website said 'Ships tomorrow' when I ordered, after all. Many developers eager to test their code on Windows on Arm, on the premier … | Continue reading
Elecrow responded, apologized for AI voice cloning AI voice cloning is a tool. It can be used, and it can be abused. Your browser does not support the video tag. Last week I was made aware that Elecrow, an electronics manufacturer and distributor, was using an unauthorized clone … | Continue reading
They stole my voice with AI Listen to this clip: Your browser does not support the video tag. I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty familiar. I mean I would like you to subscribe to my channel. But that's the Jeff Geerling channel, not Elecrow, where the clip above is fr … | Continue reading
Sipeed NanoKVM: A RISC-V stick-on This is the Sipeed NanoKVM. You stick it on your computer, plug in HDMI, USB, and the power button, and you get full remote control over the network—even if your computer locks up. How did Sipeed make it so small, and so cheap? The 'full' kit abo … | Continue reading
What happens when you touch a Pickle to an AM radio tower? A few months ago, our AM radio hot dog experiment went mildly viral. That was a result of me asking my Dad 'what would happen if you ground a hot dog to one of your AM radio towers?' He didn't know, so one night on the wa … | Continue reading
RF safety experiments - Meat & Pickles demonstrate foldback A few months ago, our AM radio hot dog experiment went mildly viral. That was a result of me asking my Dad 'what would happen if you ground a hot dog to one of your AM radio towers?' He didn't know, so one night on the w … | Continue reading
New 2GB Pi 5 has 33% smaller die, 30% idle power savings Raspberry Pi launched the 2 gig Pi 5 for $50, and besides half the RAM and a lower price, it has a new stepping of the main BCM2712 chip. This is the BCM2712 D0 stepping. Older Pi 5's shipped with a C1. In their blog post, … | Continue reading
Positron - an upside-down and portable 3D printer I've been getting into 3D printing lately. I have an older Ender 3 V2 at home I bought during COVID. And in the past year I've acquired an Ender 3 S1, Bambu Labs P1S, and Prusa MK4. I also dove head-first into 3D CAD, and designed … | Continue reading
Radxa X4 SBC Unites Intel N100 and Raspberry Pi RP2040 At first glance, especially from the top, the Radxa X4 is your typical Arm SBC: But you'll quickly notice the lack of an SoC—that's on the bottom. Looking more closely, what's a Raspberry Pi chip doing on top?! First, let's f … | Continue reading
Raspberry Pi Pico 2 - RP2350 adds more PIO, RISC-V cores The $5 Raspberry Pi Pico 2 was announced today, with a new chip, the RP2350. This silicon improves on almost every aspect of the RP2040: 3 PIOs instead of 2 150 MHz instead of 133 MHz base clock Faster Arm Cortex M33 cores … | Continue reading
Milk-V Jupiter is the first ITX RISC-V board I've tested The latest RISC-V computer I've tested is the Milk-V Jupiter. It's pokey at Intel Core 2 Duo levels of performance—at least according to Geekbench. But performance is only one aspect that interests me. This is the first RIS … | Continue reading
Fixing curl install failures with Ansible on Red Hat-derivative OSes Over the past few months, I've noticed some of my automation failing on Red Hat-derivative OSes like Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux. The reason for this has to do with the inclusion of a curl-minimal package in some … | Continue reading
Hacking Pi firmware to get the fastest overclock Since boosting my Pi 5 from the default 2.4 GHz clock to 3.14 GHz on Pi Day, I've wanted to go faster. Especially since many other users have topped my Geekbench scores since then :) In March, Raspberry Pi introduced new firmware t … | Continue reading
Getting Started with Meshtastic After seeing the Meshtastic booth at Open Sauce, my Dad and I thought it would be fun to learn more about the low power radio tech by getting our own radios and experimenting. Then, we were contacted by Simon from Muzi Works, and he offered to send … | Continue reading
The state of Docker on popular RISC-V platforms I've been testing a Milk-V Jupiter this week, and have tested a number of other RISC-V development boards over the past two years. As with any new CPU architecture, software support and ease of adoption are extremely important if yo … | Continue reading
Where is Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite Dev Kit? I signed up to buy a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Dev Kit the second I found out about it. It's supposed to be the Mac mini killer for Windows. They even promoted it with this amazing-looking transparent shell, and I and hundreds of other … | Continue reading
NUMA Emulation speeds up Pi 5 (and other improvements) Recently an Igalia engineer posted a NUMA Emulation patch for the Pi 5 to the Linux Kernel mailing list. He said it could improve performance of Geekbench 6 scores up to 6% for single-core, and 18% for multicore. My testing d … | Continue reading
If AI chatbots are the future, I hate it About a week ago, my home Internet (AT&T Fiber) went from the ~1 Gbps I pay for down to about 100 Mbps (see how I monitor my home Internet with a Pi). It wasn't too inconvenient, and I considered waiting it out to see if the speed recovere … | Continue reading
Installing Ansible on a RISC-V computer Ansible runs on Python, and Python runs on... well pretty much everything. Including newer RISC-V machines. But Ansible has a lot of dependencies, and some of these dependencies have caused frustration from time to time on x86 and Arm (so h … | Continue reading
Testing new Raspberry Pi 5 Cases - $7 to $79 Since the Pi 5's launch, a number of Pi case redesigns have launched, and there are a few new entrants with something to offer. Like Fractal's 'Baby North'... which, unfortunately, is only a prototype designed for their displays at Com … | Continue reading
Remote shell to a Raspberry Pi at 39,000 ft For a few weeks I've been beta testing remote shell, the latest addition to Raspberry Pi Connect. Just a couple hours ago I was on a flight home from the new Micro Center in Charlotte. One huge problem with VNC or remote desktop is how … | Continue reading
Giving away 480 Raspberry Pis was harder than I expected I gave away 480 Raspberry Pi Picos at Open Sauce last weekend, and ran into a number of challenges doing so. All of them self-inflicted, of course. I didn't want to just hand them out like candy—or, well... that's exactly w … | Continue reading
Newer versions of Ansible don't work with RHEL 8 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 is supported until 2029, and that distribution includes Python 3.6 for system python. Ansible's long been stuck between a rock and a hard place supporting certain modules (especially packaging modules lik … | Continue reading
55 TOPS Raspberry Pi AI PC - 4 TPUs, 2 NPUs I'm in full-on procrastination mode with Open Sauce coming up in 10 days and a project I haven't started on for it, so I decided to try building the stable AI PC with all the AI accelerator chips I own: Hailo-8 (26 TOPS) Hailo-8L (13 TO … | Continue reading