The Raspberry Pi is a nice, cheap little computer but for me it has never been fast enough – I’m not interested in making another media server (I have a DISKSTATION which does that just fine) but as I’ve recently been working with MQTT in my home control setup, I did think it would be nice to have an MQTT broker and some ability to send commands to it in one little reliable box.
Repeated messages out there indicate that the Raspberry Pi is pushing it’s luck to do all of that at high speed as it approaches the limits of speed (and possibly even memory).
What I’ve been looking for is the same thing with much more memory and much more speed. Well, how does (claimed) 6* more speed and twice the memory sound – for the same price?
I’m sure those who have recently purchased the original Raspberry Pi will have a million reasons why it’s not necessary – and I feel sorry for them but now it looks like the Raspberry Pi II (2) at long last has the power I need.
I wonder how long it will take before the price settles to what we would expect – I have NO doubt that early copies will be expensive – that tends to happen in Britain.
And as for Windows 10 – apparently Microsoft will make this available for free – that could be desperation or it could be EXTREMELY good marketing – for those who don’t really want to get into Linux – Windows development + Windows in the embedded code… has to be some mileage there.
More on this when my board turns up!
Well, I’ve made a start. The Pi 2 works just fine. After a couple of false starts with no Internet, I’m sitting typing this response in the default browser on the Pi which is slower than my normal browser on the PC but usable. I have no idea why it took 3 reboots to get this far nor why I get some user error on bringing up the graphical environment – but it’s working – I’ve been to several websites. I already have FTP running and I tried Chromium browser but that’s quite buggy – I get a distorted view inside the browser. The default browser however works ok. Next stop I need some kind of remote control so I can bring this into a window on my PC and save on a keyboard and mouse. The next stage will be to find out why the error and eliminate it and make sure this board powers up reliably. But right now, it seems just fine to me. Not bad for under £30
With a 32GB microSD in place, I’m left after the basic install with just over 23GB available for general use.
I use a B+ to run Node-Red, Mosquitto, Emoncms (with mysql) and is running well. The only problem has been a duff sdcard due to too much data writing. I now just use a microsd to boot and have a small (leftover) ssd to handle stuff.
When the v2 was launched, I bought one to replace the functions of the B+ but I’m thinking it is too good for this – I might use it for xbmc instead!.
Hi Peter,
I don’t think you’ll have to worry too much about running Mosquitto on a RPi. Done that, with broker stats similar to this:
$SYS/broker/load/messages/received/1min 455.92
$SYS/broker/load/messages/sent/1min 840.63
$SYS/broker/load/publish/received/1min 214.59
$SYS/broker/load/publish/sent/1min 740.23
$SYS/broker/load/bytes/received/1min 21987.99
$SYS/broker/load/bytes/sent/1min 36488.03
$SYS/broker/load/messages/received/5min 437.87
$SYS/broker/load/messages/sent/5min 784.05
$SYS/broker/load/publish/received/5min 209.48
$SYS/broker/load/publish/sent/5min 684.63
$SYS/broker/load/bytes/received/5min 21399.09
$SYS/broker/load/bytes/sent/5min 34486.05
$SYS/broker/load/messages/received/15min 444.48
$SYS/broker/load/messages/sent/15min 751.74
$SYS/broker/load/publish/received/15min 215.80
$SYS/broker/load/publish/sent/15min 652.81
$SYS/broker/load/bytes/received/15min 21979.86
$SYS/broker/load/bytes/sent/15min 33297.07
My HA system has to deal with about 290 devices (sensors, actors, virtual etc) and almost 1600 device values and all ran OK on a RPi. However since beginning of 2014 Mosquitto is running on a Cubietruck, where it’s is happily running while consuming 0.3% CPU and about 4500 kB of memory. Reason for the switch was that I wanted to use an SSD for storage of historical data (all the way back to 2007 @ hour-level, not for all 1600 though 😉 ) – not the processing power I needed. Why not just give it a try?
HTH,
Robert
I will – just as soon as the Pi 2 turns up – I’m currently running Mosquitto on a Diskstation flawlessly but then I also want to run Node-Red etc… so the Pi 2 seems like a solution – similarly I want long term data.
Being using the Raspberry Pi running ThingBox and Node Red, pretty good so far, though not tested it in terms of heavy throughput.
http://thethingbox.io/
Regards
Cdr
Node-Red is one of the reasons I want the new Raspberry Pi 2 – with the extra RAM I’m hoping that I can make a permanently running setup of Node-Red and Mosquitto. Time will tell – I know ZILCH about the PI at this point and I intend to find out without becoming a Linux expert.
I’ve had two of the original B board for over a year now, and I just ordered an A+ from Seeed studio cos they were on sale for US$20 shipped.
For small server stuff, especially something lightweight like Mosquitto to run your home network, I think they would be plenty fast, especially if you don’t start the GUI.
Did I just hear you gasp in horror? Don’t worry, while you’re developing, you can always start the GUI by typing “startx” at the prompt after logging in.
You might look at the Banana Pi. Not as common, but a much faster chip. I think the RPi2 will be a standard just because of the sheer force of the community developed with the original RPi.
If I’m right (and I might not be) the new Raspberry Pi is slightly cheaper and slightly more powerful than Banana Pi – of course they’ll probably bring out a MK II as well.
As you probably know, Raspberry Pi 2 is on sale now 🙂
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-development-kits/832-6274/
Ordered – £23 + VAT – next day – RS Components – and some guys on Ebay are trying to get over £30.