Raspberry π

There seem to be loads of different models now. What should I be looking at for the following?

1. To run Plex Player (not server), Kodi and some other similar media software. Playing everything up to 1080p Bluray rips (no 4k but some pretty hefty files/bitrates).

2. To run stuff like sonarr, radarr, sabnzbd, etc headless. Needs ethernet.

Would one pi be able to run it all, shall I pick up a couple, should I just buy the latest one?

How does the Pi 3 Model A+/B+ compare with the older Pi 3 (I think I have one at home).

I don't know the technical answer to your question but whenever I face a similar dilemma I just buy the latest one. I recall Eben Upton saying not so long ago that they were going to focus on the software for a while, so if you do get a new one it might be 'current' for longer than usual. Bear in mind that the 3B+ has Gigabit ethernet.

That's my normal option but I already own a couple of older models so wondering if I could get away with them.

Had forgotten about the slow ethernet, going to need at least one 3B+ then.

The 3B+ has gigabit ethernet, but it's still on a USB 2 bus, so you're going max out at ~200Mbps instead of anything close to 1000Mbps. That's still enough for maybe 10 simultaneous 4k streams, so you should be fine.

Reading and writing to an SD card becomes a bottleneck at that point anyway, so true gigabit ethernet probably wouldn't be that noticeable.

Cheers, I'd assumed that they'd upgraded the bus along with the ethernet.

The bigger issue than streaming will be whether it will prove a bottleneck for simultaneously downloading (at 200Mbps I think) and writing to a network drive (and whether that is really important to me).

Also, what are the suggestions for cheap raspberry pi cases?

I don't really care much about the looks or even quality. They're going to get plugged in, shoved behind some gear and not touched for months on end. Just something to protect from dust, shorting, etc.

I like the "official" one. You can remove bits of it if you need to stick wires into it etc.

https://thepihut.com/collections/raspberry-pi-cases/products/official-raspberry-pi-3-case-black-grey

I also tend to get a heatsink when I buy a newer Pi (as that seems to be recommended now).

The £5 acrylic ones work fine for me.

Yeah, good point about the rest of the hardware components, and the streaming rate. I recall that Netflix "Ultra HD" is around 25Mbps, so there's plenty of headroom.

Raspberry Pi 4 just announced.

Faster RAM & CPU, true gigabit Ethernet USB 2, 3 & C, to name a few changes. Very exciting!

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/06/faster-raspberry-pi-4-promises-desktop-class-performance/

On that note, does anybody want an rpi 2 B+ in return for a forum donation?

Aw yeah. Looks sick. Just before end of academic year budget panic too

2b+ ? I thought they only made 2 b?

Do you mean 3b+?

I'll finally have a use for that micro-HDMI cable that I have.

No, I meant 2b. Typo. Have a spare WiFi adaptor and SD card to give away with it too.

The 4 looks great. Powerful enough to use as a daily driver and 500% more ports than a MacBook Pro

Was going to get a 4 or the zero w but it'll inevitably sit in a drawer unused. What's yours worth?

I have no idea. £10 maybe? Plus fiver for the WiFi? Don't want anything for it. Fiver to the forum would be fine.

Issues with Pi USB-C charging.

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/raspberry-pi-admits-it-screwed-up-the-usb-c-port-on-the-newest-model/

Does anyone else with pihole going have a problem with the Evans Cycles website? Even if I disable the pihole I can't get on it. Works on my phone on data.

(Could be my network or something but I can't be bothered to reconfigure the DNS etc. to find out if I don't have to.)

I can get on it fine.

https://hackaday.com/2019/08/07/new-teensy-4-0-blows-away-benchmarks-implements-self-recovery-returns-to-smaller-form/

For fellow electronics nerds. This this is incredible, $20 too.

Before winter I wanted to build a thermostat thing to control my heating mainly in the interests of efficiency.

I was looking at this which uses an Arduino:

https://www.hackster.io/filipmu/wifi-thermostat-esp32-and-arduino-a8325c

However I see @lynx did the same with a Raspberry Pi, did that work out? Or I could use the teensy thing posted above...

Would be nice if I could interact with it from outside my house but I don't have a static IP, maybe a Twitter robot or something?

Anyone done anything like this?

Static IP is easy. Plenty of free providers if it's just one.
I use noip.com

Oh, awesome, I'm signed up. I thought you had to pay for like a business ISP to get that. Pretty cool!

The other thing with Twitter is I wouldn't have to figure out any of the security stuff. Suppose I'm overthinking it a bit though, ought to just get something running first