90 replies to this topic

[dhyamato]

Hello all. 

 

I know It's been a while since I last posted an update on my RPi.  Unfortunately, family and work have been taking up my time in tinkering with my RPi these last several weeks.  My apologies.

 

However, I'd like to update everyone as to what I'd like to work on as a potential project.

 

Just to let everyone know, I'm not a programmer, so my learning curve with any type of programming is extremely steep.  Also, It's been decades since I've last played with a soldering iron and the various electronic gadgetries that go along with it.

 

With that aside, I live in Southern California and recently we had a moderate earthquake centered less than 10 miles from where I live.  It shook us pretty well. 

 

While having a discussion with my Dad, we came up with an idea to use the RPi as some sort of seismometer/earthquake detector that would broadcast/upload data to the Quake Catcher Network (http://qcn.stanford.edu) using their home-based sensor device.  Currently, their device works with Window's and Mac's, but not well with Linux devices, of which our RPi's are based on.

 

After browsing their site, however, there are a few users that got their RPi's to work with the QCN sensor, however not reliably.  What I'd like to do is to see if I can improve on its reliability.

 

I'm not sure if I'm getting in over my head with this idea/project, but I'd like to make a valiant attempt in doing so.

 

My first step is to order their sensor and see what it can do up to where their forum stopped last August.  http://qcn.stanford....read.php?id=880

 

I'm sure I'll be asking the forum here for pointers along the way. 

 

For now, I will be starting slow and steady, but once I'm on summer break, I'm sure I'll have more time to delve deeper into the project.

 

Looking forward to the challenge.

[GTIM2L8]

No need to worry about programming knowledge.

I learned programming at the ripe old age of 47 years.

Linux can be a little overwhelming at first but you can learn some basic programing skills from Scratch and Python.

Just go back to the first of the threads and you will see a couple of books I recommended and Malakai also had some very good recommendations also.

 

Look for it and you will find it.

If you never ask the question you will never get the answer.

 

Let me know if I can help in any way.

 

Post it or PM me, it makes no difference to me.

I'll try and help you anyway I can.

 

G

[BubbleSort]

Thought I would update what I've done with mine so far. I was going to use it as a personal server, however when I set it up on my VPN, my raspi couldn't get more than 600kbps due to a CPU bottleneck. Right now I'm using it as a status monitor for various projects and a "jumpbox" for anything that I don't want my home IP associated with. Not sure what I want to do next, because having the raspi configured so that all traffic must go through the VPN is actually pretty nice (despite the fact I can't get full network speed).

[Brutus06]

I am waiting for Amazon to ship me another Pi, I plan on using this one to run my NFS server where I store my movies. 
Setup:
RPi, SD card, powered USB hub, 1 TB USB powered HDD, Tontec stackable case

I am going to run raspbian distro (hoping to find an image without a GUI since it won't be needed)
Install nfs-server, set up a share with all IPs on my network giving them read write permissions on my movies folder on the HDD.

I currently have this type of set up right now using an old laptop running ubuntu server for the NFS server and my first Pi running Raspmbc as the client. I would like to have a Pi as the server to reduce energy costs.

[BubbleSort]

I forgot to give an update. I think the VPN speed that I was seeing was actually limited by the Pi's USB. What transfer rates are people seeing to their hard drives? I get around 600kbps

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[Brutus06]

I am not sure on the exact speed but when I had my movie HDD connected directly to my raspbmc pi I was able to watch movies without lag until the power level dropped and the HDD would shut off.

[Malakai]

 

I forgot to give an update. I think the VPN speed that I was seeing was actually limited by the Pi's USB. What transfer rates are people seeing to their hard drives? I get around 600kbps

 

 

 

The  Pi is limited to USB 2.0. And the Ethernet port shares with the USB through a single Chip so it has to handle all the data going in and out. Through both ports. 

 

 

 

 

I am not sure on the exact speed but when I had my movie HDD connected directly to my raspbmc pi I was able to watch movies without lag until the power level dropped and the HDD would shut off.

 

 

 

Hard drive will need to be self powered or plugged into a Powered Hub to prevent drops. Not a lot is left on the USB port only low power devices can be used. i.e. Keyboard, Mouse, Thumb Drive. And many of these can be temperamental as they use more power than they should. If so they will need to be plugged into a Powered Hub. Each USB port is limited to about 150ma output

 

 

 

I am waiting for Amazon to ship me another Pi, I plan on using this one to run my NFS server where I store my movies. 

Setup:

RPi, SD card, powered USB hub, 1 TB USB powered HDD, Tontec stackable case

 

I am going to run raspbian distro (hoping to find an image without a GUI since it won't be needed)

Install nfs-server, set up a share with all IPs on my network giving them read write permissions on my movies folder on the HDD.

 

I currently have this type of set up right now using an old laptop running ubuntu server for the NFS server and my first Pi running Raspmbc as the client. I would like to have a Pi as the server to reduce energy costs.

 

 

 

You might want to look into Arch it's very small, very fast, and has almost no frill. Would work a lot better as nfs server. Boots in like 10 seconds which is another great perk.

 

 

 

Thought I would update what I've done with mine so far. I was going to use it as a personal server, however when I set it up on my VPN, my raspi couldn't get more than 600kbps due to a CPU bottleneck. Right now I'm using it as a status monitor for various projects and a "jumpbox" for anything that I don't want my home IP associated with. Not sure what I want to do next, because having the raspi configured so that all traffic must go through the VPN is actually pretty nice (despite the fact I can't get full network speed).

 

 

Not sure if you've got this worked out here's a tip from Dom on the Pi Forums. Original post is:

 

network speeds above 100 mbit

 

This is only sem-relevant to your issue. You may want to look into Arch as posted above. Raspbian has a lot going on in the background. If 90% of what it has isn't applicable to your build. Arch is a great alternative. It has quite a lot of things available for Server Specific builds and others as well.

 

by dom » Sat May 18, 2013 11:34 pm

100Mbit/s is plenty for blu-ray video. Try measuring what you are getting with iperf. You should get over 90Mbit/s. Blu-ray will be about 40Mbit/s.

 

It's more likely the bottleneck is the protocol you are using. NFS is much better than SMB for example.

NFS mounted with somthing like

CODE: SELECT ALL

sudo mount 192.168.4.9:/Public -o _netdev,nfsvers=3,rw,intr,noatime,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,nolock,async,proto=udp /home/pi/dell

 

will be better than the default nfs support built in to xbmc.

 

I can confidently predict you will get *much* worse performance with a wireless dongle (even if it is 802.11n with a higher theoretical limit) than 100Mbit/s ethernet.

 

[Brutus06]

@Malakai thanks for the suggestion, ill look into Arch. I am also thinking about having the server PI also run some network monitoring for me since the NFS server will be idle most of the time.

[Brutus06]

Got my new PI on Friday. I have Arch installed (slightly different OS from Ubuntu which I am used to but still figured it out) and have it serving up my movie files to my raspbmc pi. I also took some mess wire that I had laying around to create a mini server rack to hold the PI, harddrive and the powered hub. Ill upload pictures after work.

[Brutus06]

Pi server set up
 uploadfromtaptalk1399945926004.jpg   50.06KB   16 downloads

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[BubbleSort]

My largest repurposed has been to set up raspPlex. Not quite happy with it yet, but I still have some tweaking to do.

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