Boosting Raspberry Pi 3 WiFi

[kbrown]

1 minute ago, Gina said:

Oops, sorry, my mistake - read the name in the quote - must be bedtime...  Yes, it was aimed at you, Kari   Good, I've modified some but there are one or two things that puzzle me.  I'll get back to you, if I may, next time I have a problem.  Thank you.

Happy to help if I can!

[wimvb]

On 25/07/2018 at 14:02, kbrown said:

Layout looks similar to RPi. Do you know if it would fit in an RPi enclosure?

Yes, the Rock64 will fit. I have two, one in a metal RPi case, and one in plastic. You need to make the hole for the power connector larger, as the Rock has a standard round power connector, and not that flimsy micro usb. Rock sbc's are a lot faster, and have USB3, which isn't shared the ethernet hardware, afaIk. All for the price of a Raspberry Pi. I run INDI server on both. One controls the mount, motor focuser, and guiding, the other controls the imaging camera and wheel. Both are controlled from Ekos on a windows laptop.

On 25/07/2018 at 13:49, GuLinux said:

Just one problem though: QHY support is currently very bad. I need to work on that (whenever I get the time..  )

That's why I bought an ASI174 and not a QHY. I had hoped that QHY would've caught up by now, because that was a year ago already.

[kbrown]

2 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Yes, the Rock64 will fit. I have two, one in a metal RPi case, and one in plastic. You need to make the hole for the power connector larger, as the Rock has a standard round power connector, and not that flimsy micro usb. Rock sbc's are a lot faster, and have USB3, which isn't shared the ethernet hardware, afaIk. All for the price of a Raspberry Pi. I run INDI server on both. One controls the mount, motor focuser, and guiding, the other controls the imaging camera and wheel. Both are controlled from Ekos on a windows laptop.

That's why I bought an ASI174 and not a QHY. I had hoped that QHY would've caught up by now, because that was a year ago already.

Thanks for the Rock64 insights. It does look like a better option tbh.

Totally understand why you've steered away from QHY. It's a shame some of their software just isn't where it should be. Nothing wrong with the hardware as far as I can tell. I might actually look into getting a third CCD camera. Keep my Atik 383L+ for DSO stuff and the QHY for guiding. Then a third, potentially an OSC camera, for planetary stuff...

[wimvb]

17 minutes ago, kbrown said:

Thanks for the Rock64 insights. It does look like a better option tbh.

Totally understand why you've steered away from QHY. It's a shame some of their software just isn't where it should be. Nothing wrong with the hardware as far as I can tell. I might actually look into getting a third CCD camera. Keep my Atik 383L+ for DSO stuff and the QHY for guiding. Then a third, potentially an OSC camera, for planetary stuff...

Hardware-wise, QHY was actually ahead of the game. Only recently have ZWO added memory buffers and integrated window heaters to their design. But it took QHY longer to get to market. Regarding software, they're behind ZWO. I've also heard/read about QHY cameras being sensitive to electrical interference, such as grounding loops. You might want to look into that, before deciding on a camera.

Rock64 sbc's are as simple to set up as Raspberry pi's. You just have to check availability of software. (PHD wasn't at first, and INDI was not as stable, but now both work fine). Rocks use arm64, and not armhf that RPi uses. It's possible to run armhf software if you install a special environment, but you'll lose the advantage of 64 bit. I also still have an issue with running xrdp and ekos. For some reason the keyboard gets mixed up in the indi client (but not in any other software). I have a thread on the INDI forum regarding this issue. So far, no solution yet.

[Gina]

I'll check that out as I have an ASI174MM for my solar Ha rig and planning to buy a Rock64 for use with INDI.

[cjdawson]

What about the RPI 3B+?    I bought one to put in my media center, The network connection runs much faster than before and there's an extra 200Mhz on the clock speed.   Wondering if that's getting closer to the power needed?

[kbrown]

1 hour ago, cjdawson said:

What about the RPI 3B+?    I bought one to put in my media center, The network connection runs much faster than before and there's an extra 200Mhz on the clock speed.   Wondering if that's getting closer to the power needed?

Haven't got one at the moment but I'll look into it, thanks. Is that wired or wireless network you mean? Have you run any site speed tests with it? 

[cjdawson]

As I understand it, both the wired and wireless runs better.   In my setup, I've got it connected to a wired network.  Copying a film up to it, and placing the film on a USB HDD, I was setting a consistent 200Mbps speed.  I know it's anecdotal, I'm happy to say that the network performance is much improved over the older versions.   The WIFI also has both 2.4 and 5Ghz, so that's been updated, although I've not tried it out yet.

[cathalferris]

A note on the RPi 3B+ - there are apparently problems with transfer of large files across the wired network to/from USB disks. I've run into this on mine at least. Seems to be an issue with the network card driver based on the reports I've read so far. Rather annoying at the moment, getting tempted to get a RPi3b instead until it's solved.

I've mine set as a NAS with a handful of services running on it for my rather large home network - pi-hole, motion, Plex, samba server, smokeping, deluge. The difference in power draw means the Pi pays for itself within the year compared to the little PC I had running those services instead. Those services are fairly heavy on both cpu and network!

[cjdawson]

27 minutes ago, cathalferris said:

A note on the RPi 3B+ - there are apparently problems with transfer of large files across the wired network to/from USB disks. I've run into this on mine at least. Seems to be an issue with the network card driver based on the reports I've read so far. Rather annoying at the moment, getting tempted to get a RPi3b instead until it's solved.

I've mine set as a NAS with a handful of services running on it for my rather large home network - pi-hole, motion, Plex, samba server, smokeping, deluge. The difference in power draw means the Pi pays for itself within the year compared to the little PC I had running those services instead. Those services are fairly heavy on both cpu and network!

Just done a quick google on this, seems that the problem has already been fixed by a patch, so as long as things are up to date, there shouldn't be any problems.