I've had four SD cards die around the same time (still haven't had time to fix them, though I have purchased replacements). The cards that died were between 3 months and 1 year old. I've decided that over the holiday break, I'm going to spend time looking at enabling net booting for the Pi 3 cluster. I also picked up an inexpensive 24 port Gigabit network switch. The switch internals run off 12V so I'm thinking about installing a bigger PSU and I might actually design cards that provide regulated 5V to the Pis through GPIO rather than through USB. They would run off the same 12V source that the switch runs off.
The jessie-backports bit has been added to my blog if anyone wants to try it.
I also reorganised some of my network cabling and have put a couple of the Pi2's back into the cluster. I've still got a couple more of them but need to get some more USB power bricks before I can plug them in. I've got power and LAN cables going everywhere. I wish there was a neater way of connecting a cluster of these up.
My apologies if this has been stated and I am not seeing it. I read there will be no more data from Arecibo, at least for the foreseeable future. When that is finished will there be work for our RPi here?
"A few hundred beams" at "2 beams/day" should last us a while, but after that either we'll have to hope for new data or that the project comes up with something else.
"A few hundred beams" at "2 beams/day" should last us a while, but after that either we'll have to hope for new data or that the project comes up with something else.
Thanks for the link. I had not seen that and that answers my question.
The Bitscope Blades are in a bit of flux right now. They are preparing for the official release. I have one Bitscope Blade Quattro and so far I really like it. It is performing like a champ supplying power and the convenience of not having multiple power supplies with associated cables is nice. I personally think it is worth the money. The Quattro is selling for 49.95 US and a separate supply for each Pi is 8.99 if you buy the official one. That's about 36.00 US for four supplies. For 14 dollars more you get rid of several cables and if you are building a large cluster, several power strips.
The thing to remember is each Blade model, Uno (1 Pi), Duo (2 PI), Quattro (4 Pi), uses the same 3 Amp power supply. That's 3 Amps, 4 Amps surge, for the entire Blade. So if each Pi on a Quattro is pulling .5 Amps, the load on the Blade power supply will be 2 Amps.
Now, a Pi 3 can pull as much as .8 amps under extreme stress conditions. That's not counting any power used by any USB peripherals you have plugged into any of your Pi (keyboard and mouse, for example.)
I need to build up some test connectors so I can measure the amperage pulled by a Pi 3 under various load conditions to see how hard I am pushing the power supply. I'll let you know when I have some solid results as we don't currently know how hard Einstein@Home pushes the Pi. Even with each core running at 100% we don't know if this will push the Pi to .8 Amps. The spec of .8 Amps is listed by the Pi Foundation as under extreme conditions. Only testing will tell. There are several clocks on the PI, not just the CPU clock. You also have the video clock, the SD card clock, and so on. My ultimate goal is overclocking the CPU, running headless (no video), and so on, with no peripherals attached. All access would be done remotely thru SSH.
The goal is to push 4 Pi on a Quattro Blade with no peripherals attached, plus overclocking, and see how the power supply fairs. I have been in contact with the engineers at Bitscope and they are very interested to see how their Blades perform for Einstein@Home.
I'll let you know as I get more info, but so far, so good.
Edit: I'm on vacation for the next 10 days, so hopefully I can make some progress.
Oops, wrong account, grr. This is Phil-Pi on my Ham Radio USA account.
I wonder if those Bitscope Blade setups would also be able to run the ODroid C2, and if they're planning on having a rackmounted PSU to along go with the Blade Rack 20 and 40 setups. I'm also curious as to how well these stay cooled with a consistent workload place onto them ^_^
I wonder if those Bitscope Blade setups would also be able to run the ODroid C2, and if they're planning on having a rackmounted PSU to along go with the Blade Rack 20 and 40 setups. I'm also curious as to how well these stay cooled with a consistent workload place onto them ^_^
I don't know anything about the ODroid C2, so I can't help you there. The Raspberry Pi is connected to the Blade with the GPIO connector and uses 4 nylon screws to keep it in place. More and better information will be available soon from Bitscope as they are preparing for the official release.
So far I know this. The Pi3 by nature runs very warm, and there is not much room for a heat sink as it is mounted face down on the Blade. A Blade loaded with 4 Pi, each Pi running 4 WUs, no heat sink, stock clocking, and a small fan blowing across the Blade, runs around 70C with a room ambient temp of 72F. This results in a WU completion time of around 42K seconds. The Pi3 starts to throttle back at around 85C.
Sometime today (Monday) I'll be receiving another shipment of Pi3 and another Bitscope Blade Quattro. I'll be installing those with some heat sinks that are supposed to fit when the Pi is installed in a Blade. I'll post the part number when I know if they actually fit or not. I'll use this setup to test temps and try out some overclocking.
The least expensive rack mount power supply I have seen so far is about 160US, and I've heard nothing from Bitscope about them carrying a rack mount supply of their own. Keep in mind that anytime you change a product to rack mount, the cost goes way up because demand goes way down. Not much demand for rack mount anything unless you are a business. So, I intend to get my hands on a 2U rack shelf for around 15 bucks and set a 15 Amp desktop type power supply on it. Said supply was one I had laying around for Ham Radio and costs about 45US. I could easily fit about 4 of these supplies on a 2U rack shelf. A total of 60 Amps can power a very large pile of Pi!
Here's my 2 cents. If you plan on running a large number of Pi, put your power supply on a shelf and use the money you save to purchase a rack mount network switch. This really helps with network cable organization and makes it easier to keep track of which cable is which. MCM Electronics has a Cisco 24 port unmanaged switch for about 90US.
Here's my 2 cents. If you plan on running a large number of Pi, put your power supply on a shelf and use the money you save to purchase a rack mount network switch. This really helps with network cable organization and makes it easier to keep track of which cable is which. MCM Electronics has a Cisco 24 port unmanaged switch for about 90US.
Hope this helps.
Phil
If you are going the switch route why not consider a POE network switch that is capable of delivering equal power over all ports on the switch. At the Pi end you just need to split out the power and ethernet . They make these types of splitter cables. Not all switches are equal so you need to make sure that the switch is not total power but power per port. I have done this with a PiZero and it works well. Just be sure to know what power the switch provides per port and that it meets the Pi's requirements.
About the POE switch, a good idea. Unfortunately, the design of the Blade prevents you from going that route. The Pi are mounted very close to each other edge to edge. The end connectors, such as the USB ports are usable on each Pi, but ports such as the power connector are blocked by the Pi next to it. The Pi is fed power through the GPIO pins.
I've had four SD cards die
)
I've had four SD cards die around the same time (still haven't had time to fix them, though I have purchased replacements). The cards that died were between 3 months and 1 year old. I've decided that over the holiday break, I'm going to spend time looking at enabling net booting for the Pi 3 cluster. I also picked up an inexpensive 24 port Gigabit network switch. The switch internals run off 12V so I'm thinking about installing a bigger PSU and I might actually design cards that provide regulated 5V to the Pis through GPIO rather than through USB. They would run off the same 12V source that the switch runs off.
Merry Christmas all!
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PorkyPies wrote:I will put
)
The jessie-backports bit has been added to my blog if anyone wants to try it.
I also reorganised some of my network cabling and have put a couple of the Pi2's back into the cluster. I've still got a couple more of them but need to get some more USB power bricks before I can plug them in. I've got power and LAN cables going everywhere. I wish there was a neater way of connecting a cluster of these up.
MarksRpiCluster
My apologies if this has been
)
My apologies if this has been stated and I am not seeing it. I read there will be no more data from Arecibo, at least for the foreseeable future. When that is finished will there be work for our RPi here?
Cheers!
Is this the message from
)
Is this the message from Bernd that you refer to?
"A few hundred beams" at "2 beams/day" should last us a while, but after that either we'll have to hope for new data or that the project comes up with something else.
Holmis wrote:Is this the
)
Thanks for the link. I had not seen that and that answers my question.
Cheers!
Hi all,The Bitscope Blades
)
Hi all,
The Bitscope Blades are in a bit of flux right now. They are preparing for the official release. I have one Bitscope Blade Quattro and so far I really like it. It is performing like a champ supplying power and the convenience of not having multiple power supplies with associated cables is nice. I personally think it is worth the money. The Quattro is selling for 49.95 US and a separate supply for each Pi is 8.99 if you buy the official one. That's about 36.00 US for four supplies. For 14 dollars more you get rid of several cables and if you are building a large cluster, several power strips.
The thing to remember is each Blade model, Uno (1 Pi), Duo (2 PI), Quattro (4 Pi), uses the same 3 Amp power supply. That's 3 Amps, 4 Amps surge, for the entire Blade. So if each Pi on a Quattro is pulling .5 Amps, the load on the Blade power supply will be 2 Amps.
Now, a Pi 3 can pull as much as .8 amps under extreme stress conditions. That's not counting any power used by any USB peripherals you have plugged into any of your Pi (keyboard and mouse, for example.)
I need to build up some test connectors so I can measure the amperage pulled by a Pi 3 under various load conditions to see how hard I am pushing the power supply. I'll let you know when I have some solid results as we don't currently know how hard Einstein@Home pushes the Pi. Even with each core running at 100% we don't know if this will push the Pi to .8 Amps. The spec of .8 Amps is listed by the Pi Foundation as under extreme conditions. Only testing will tell. There are several clocks on the PI, not just the CPU clock. You also have the video clock, the SD card clock, and so on. My ultimate goal is overclocking the CPU, running headless (no video), and so on, with no peripherals attached. All access would be done remotely thru SSH.
The goal is to push 4 Pi on a Quattro Blade with no peripherals attached, plus overclocking, and see how the power supply fairs. I have been in contact with the engineers at Bitscope and they are very interested to see how their Blades perform for Einstein@Home.
I'll let you know as I get more info, but so far, so good.
Edit: I'm on vacation for the next 10 days, so hopefully I can make some progress.
Oops, wrong account, grr. This is Phil-Pi on my Ham Radio USA account.
Phil
I wonder if those Bitscope
)
I wonder if those Bitscope Blade setups would also be able to run the ODroid C2, and if they're planning on having a rackmounted PSU to along go with the Blade Rack 20 and 40 setups. I'm also curious as to how well these stay cooled with a consistent workload place onto them ^_^
WhiteWulfe wrote:I wonder if
)
I don't know anything about the ODroid C2, so I can't help you there. The Raspberry Pi is connected to the Blade with the GPIO connector and uses 4 nylon screws to keep it in place. More and better information will be available soon from Bitscope as they are preparing for the official release.
So far I know this. The Pi3 by nature runs very warm, and there is not much room for a heat sink as it is mounted face down on the Blade. A Blade loaded with 4 Pi, each Pi running 4 WUs, no heat sink, stock clocking, and a small fan blowing across the Blade, runs around 70C with a room ambient temp of 72F. This results in a WU completion time of around 42K seconds. The Pi3 starts to throttle back at around 85C.
Sometime today (Monday) I'll be receiving another shipment of Pi3 and another Bitscope Blade Quattro. I'll be installing those with some heat sinks that are supposed to fit when the Pi is installed in a Blade. I'll post the part number when I know if they actually fit or not. I'll use this setup to test temps and try out some overclocking.
The least expensive rack mount power supply I have seen so far is about 160US, and I've heard nothing from Bitscope about them carrying a rack mount supply of their own. Keep in mind that anytime you change a product to rack mount, the cost goes way up because demand goes way down. Not much demand for rack mount anything unless you are a business. So, I intend to get my hands on a 2U rack shelf for around 15 bucks and set a 15 Amp desktop type power supply on it. Said supply was one I had laying around for Ham Radio and costs about 45US. I could easily fit about 4 of these supplies on a 2U rack shelf. A total of 60 Amps can power a very large pile of Pi!
Here's my 2 cents. If you plan on running a large number of Pi, put your power supply on a shelf and use the money you save to purchase a rack mount network switch. This really helps with network cable organization and makes it easier to keep track of which cable is which. MCM Electronics has a Cisco 24 port unmanaged switch for about 90US.
Hope this helps.
Phil
Phil_58 wrote:Here's my 2
)
If you are going the switch route why not consider a POE network switch that is capable of delivering equal power over all ports on the switch. At the Pi end you just need to split out the power and ethernet . They make these types of splitter cables. Not all switches are equal so you need to make sure that the switch is not total power but power per port. I have done this with a PiZero and it works well. Just be sure to know what power the switch provides per port and that it meets the Pi's requirements.
@ROBL About the POE switch,
)
@ROBL
About the POE switch, a good idea. Unfortunately, the design of the Blade prevents you from going that route. The Pi are mounted very close to each other edge to edge. The end connectors, such as the USB ports are usable on each Pi, but ports such as the power connector are blocked by the Pi next to it. The Pi is fed power through the GPIO pins.
Phil