My Pi 4B TIMELINE from September 2019 Purchase to late November

2019 Tue Nov 19th – Pi 4B
I found an annoying problem with the Pi 4B when using external USB Hard Drives with the splitter cable to an external power supply.  Reboot fails.  So rebooting involves cycling the power switch after checking that there is no LED activity.

Got around that by running the power end of the splitter into the second USB 2 port, and the only drive that doesn’t like it is the 3TB Toshiba.  But it just has the occasional head click.  It goes a bit crazy if it is plugged into the un-powered hub though and anything else is plugged in – even a microSD card in an adapter.

I also got curious about Manjaro Linux Raspberry Pi XFCE edition.  It is really nice – BUT – it only finds the 2.4GHz WiFi.  I can manually add the 5GHz connecton, but it only shows in Hidden connections, and it FAILS to connect.

If this is ever fixed though, it will be worth watching, because while web browser video is pretty crappy in it, (possibly because of the slow connection) the audio from the Analog jack is far superior to that from Raspbian.

For now, I am back with booting from microSD and running Raspbian on the SSD, with some XFCE stuff installed from the Raspbian repo.  Included in that ‘stuff’ is a rather nice XFCE4 ‘Curves’ theme for window decorations, menus etc.

Something else running from the SSD has achieved is that at last there are no lockups on Chromium etc., and no freezing windows on the desktop where access to all tittie bar functions and dragging/resizing is lost.

2019 Mon Nov 4th – Pi 4B   
The Pi 4B is running perfecty at the moment with the SSD, but booting from the microSD.  Once I had edited fstab to set the /boot on the microsd card, I think the system should have no real problems.  Power is coming nicely via the LASER dual USB adapter and using the splitter cable plugged into both ports, which, I hope is providing a good 3Amps from combining the 2 x 2.4Amp USB ports.
I also have a splitter cable on the 3YB external drive when I use it, but so far the other available external drives seem ok getting power from the Pi 4 USB ports and a non-powered hub, albeit only one drive at a time.
The biggest annoyance is the Logitech k400r keyboard, which has become very, very sensitive to positioning, and if I use it on the aluminium framed collapsible table, shielding.

Other than that, the Pi4B is a perfect little desktop computer, except for, as usual, the not beng able to print problem.


2019 Sun Oct 27th – Pi 4B   
I had some issues with running the Pi 4 on SSD.  I found I had forgotten to edit etcfstab to point /boot to the microSD card.  That is necessary to make sure firmware and kernel updates are applied to the ‘active’ /boot partition, which until the Pi 4 firmware is updated to allow boot from SSD, is on the microSD.

When I had edited fstab and tried to reboot, it failed to boot again.  I tried it a number of times with command line and with GUI, but all failed.

It turned out that I had swapped the SSD directly into the USB 3 port where the USB 3 hub had been previously (origiinally the SSD was plugged into the hub).  After much messing around I had a lightbulb moment and plugged the hub back in, then the SSD into the hub and away we went, everything normal.
I can;t see any logical reason for this.  And there are issues with having some other drives accessing the hub.  But as long as it is working I can live with work-arounds.  For now, all that matters is that the Pi 4 has been turbo charged.  Everything is smoother and faster running on SSD :-)

No more freezes when scrolling Chromium pages.  Lots of other ‘lag’ annoyances are gone.

Another noticeable experience was overclocking the Pi 4.  As mentioned earlier, I tried various combinations of overclock settings, but for day to day use, including editing in GIMP and other programs, it was simply not worth the extra heat generated nor the glitches that happened.
Setting up a decent swap file seems to alleviate some processor and RAM intense situations, but the big performance difference did not come from overclocking.  It came from setting up the SSD.

As I write this I have the SSD plugged into the USB 3 hub and power only from the USB 3 port on the Pi, plus a 3TB external HDD also plugged into the USB 3 hub.  However the 3TB drive is powered via a USB splitter cable with the red end going to a 2A phone charger.  This is currently working nicely.
The only problem is that the k400r Logiteck keyboard/trackpad doesn;t quite get enough signal unless fairly precisely positioned in relation to the donger.

2019 Fri Oct 25th – Pi 4B   
The I finally got around to setting up the Pi 4 to boot from a microSD to the SSD.
It was a little fiddly, because I decided not to mess with cmdline.txt on the 128GB Samsung EVO Plus, and just keep that for a backup.  I copied my home/pi folder to a spare drive justin case.  And tried a few ways to setup the SSD and a 16GB microSD to boot it.  All failed.  Eventually I used this bloke’s method, which worked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rglzPdsvYg

And this link for text instructions – but it does NOT like the PIA VPN turned ON  in Chromium.

https://www.youtube.com/redirect?v=2rglzPdsvYg&event=video_description&redir_token=lXNFyDl4_UKAMTynzlazQzS1MOx8MTU3MjA3NDI0NUAxNTcxOTg3ODQ1&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.element14.com%2Fcommunity%2Fcommunity%2Fraspberry-pi%2Fblog%2F2019%2F08%2F30%2Fquick-sd-to-ssd-on-the-pi-4

For now at least, the Pi 4 is booting form the microSD and running on the SSD and seems to be satisfactory.


2019 Wed Oct 23th – Pi 4B 
The Pi 4 sometimes gets a little laggy with the 128GB Samsung EVO Plus microSD card.  I scrounged an old 16GB Sandisk card and am considering setting it up to boot and run the SSD again.  Just haven’t got around to it yet.  Other than that, the Pi 4 overall is great and it still feels nicer to use as a day to day computer than the Brix or any of the bigger systems.


2019 Sun Oct 12th – Pi 4B   
The Pi 4 is still running nicely with the LASER charger using the splitter cable in both USB outlets for 5V 4.8A total.
I also ran overclocked again for a while, but a few things seemed a little flaky., so I dropped back to standard speed, then I re-enabled the 64bit kernel again, just for the hell of it.
The only thing that ‘seems’ to be different is an occasional glitch where Chromium seems to lock for a few seconds sometimes before allowing scrolling.  This could be due to th placement of the Logitech receiver for the wireless K400 keyboard, but it only seems to happen with Chromium so far.  For example it is not happening in LibreOffice.
There is a 64 bit version of Chromium for the Pi, but I think I will stick with things as they are for now.

In other news, I did eventually get around to trying two power banks hooked up with the splitter cable to power the Pi 4.  It booted, but the power banks had been sitting for a long, long time in the van and were not fully charged.  So one dropped pretty low and I swapped back to powering the Pi form the LASER charger.
The other thing I have done is added reboot to my script (and menu item) for doing a dist-upgrade on the Pi.  Just have to remember to sut down any programs before running it.  Although usually I run it before I start ‘doing stuff’.

I tweaked some stuff in Smplayer, and rediscovered Ctrl+u (opens a dialog to paste a URL and play from there).  It is nicer to use than SMtube and is playing stuff very well.



2019 Tue Oct 8th – Pi 4B   
This morning I had a ‘why didn;t I think if this before?’ moment.  I was thinking back over the boot/reboot problem when a Pi 4 USB 3 port has an attached  powered USB 3 hub, or an externally powered (through a Y-cable) USB 3 hard drive plugged into a non-powered USB 3 hub.

And I picked up one of the old LASER brand adapters I was using on the Pi 3B+.  It has 2 x 2.4A USB sockets.  BUT !!  I notived the ‘total output’ is 4.8A and 5V.

So in went one of the Y-cables, with both the male ends into sockets on the LASER adapter.  And I plugged a USB-C charging cable into the female socket of the Y-cable and booted the Pi.

So my Pi 4 is running off a 4.8A adapter.  The possible problem is that if I run a couple of power hungry USB 3 external drives in the Pi USB ports, I might pull more than the 3 Amps the Pi 4 is probably rated for.  Which should fry the Pi 4 power circuit.

Oh well, it will be interesting to see.  But for now, all is working well.


2019 Mon Oct 7th – Pi 4B   
I got a bit more stuff sorted on the Pi 4.  I installed pulseaudio and pavucontrol, so now I have an easy way to get some decent volume from the stereo system when in is plugged in to the Anal Log socket.  I’m still messing with Network Settings because my firewall on the BRIX is preventing me accessing it as usual.  I had hoped to allow printing from the Pi throught he BRIX to the Brother printer.  The Pi sees Lesley’s HP WiFi printer upstairs.  I’ll have to print a test page to that and if it works, I might consider spending the $40 or so just to have one for the Pi that doesn’t need configuring.

Most other stuff is working nicely now and I am finding I rarely turn the BRIX on excet to print a test page for keeping the inkjet nozzles clear.

The Pi, for now, is working perfectly well as a day to day computer.

2019 Sat Oct 5th – Pi 4B   
The Pi 4 is working nicely with the 128GB Samsung EVO Plus microSD.  It feels at least as good as the Pi 3B+with the SSD.  I also got the 3TB Toshiba external drive working nicely on the non-powered USN 3 hub plugged into a USB 3 port.  The other USB 3 port is powering the wireless receiver for the Logitech keyboard/trackpad.

Since the 3TB drive is now working (previously it didn’t seem to get enough power to boot from the USB 3 port) I have enabled sound to the Analog socket and plugged in the amplified speakers so I can use the Pi 4 as my main media centres instead of the BRIX.

At this point it is performing most tasks better than the BRIX, even though I have removed the overclock settings.

2019 Thurs Oct 3trd – Pi 4B  -   
It has been an interesting week.  I tried all sorts of overclock settings and lots of other stuff.  I even had the Pi running on the experimental 64 bit kernel.  And I wrote and modified more bash scripts and desktop files.  Thereare still glitches, like one of my Panels disappearing regularly, but for the most part I am getting the wrinkles ironed out.

The biggest change is that Samsung 128GB EVO plus microSD cards have dropped to $36.75, so I am now running that instead of the 64GB Sandisk Extreme.  With heaps of programs installed and quite a lot of files, I have over 90GB of free space still.

2019 Thurs Sept 26th – Pi 4B  -  UPDATE  HDMI SETTINGS
After much stuffing around with config.txt and other stuff, I finally got the 55inch EKO TV and the Pi 4B screen co-operating :-)
The setting was not in the TV menu under Picture (where all the other display settings seem to be).
It was in the TV Menu under    System > Aspect Mode
I changed it from 16:9  to  ‘Just Scan’
Problem fixed !!!

2019 Thurs Sept 26th – Pi 4B
The Pi 4 was running very well with the overclock settings until I tried to use GIMP to Unsharp a 6MB jpeg.  It just did a reboot as soon as I selected Filters > Enhance > Sharpen (Unsharp).  So I tried a 1MB jpeg, and the same thing happened.  I mentioned it on the Raspberry Pi forum and several others tried it for the same result.  We tested a heap of overclock settings and eventually one of the members worked out that it was a combination of voltage and frequency.  Today I’ve got it working perfectly at a CPU frequency of 1800MHz and GPU of 600MHZ, with the over_voltage dropped from 4 to 2.

I also have a folder on the desktop containing shell scripts to start Chromium using the ytdl_server to open with either VLC or omxplayer to extract an play YouTube PLUS one to start Chromium behind the TOR network.

2019 Mon Sept 17th – Pi 4B-UPDATE
The Bluetooth Keyboard works – sort of, but does not pair automatically, so this is something to investigate.  For the moment though, the WiFi keyboard is working ok.
I wonder if it will get a bit dodgy again later.
If it does, maybe I should drop the Overclock speed from 2GHz to 1750GHz ?

.
2019 Mon Sept 17th – Pi 4B
I might have an alternative solution to the problem I was having with the WiFi keyboard and trackpad.  I realised I have an old Bluetooth keyboard with a built in Track Pad,, that I bought once on ebay.  It had a Lithium Polymer battery in it, that expanded and swelled the case of the keyboard, so I removed the LiPo and hot glued a holder for a 3.7V Li-Ion salvaged from a laptop battery pack.  I have quite a few of these batteries so it makes sense to use one.  Te big battery hanging off the bottom of the little 10 inch tablet sized keyboard makes it a bit difficult to use with a tablet, but for sitting in a chair and controlling the Pi 4B, it should work well.
I typed all the paragraph above on it, so that looks like a win.  Now I need to see if the thing pairs automagically when I turn on the Pi and the keyboard.

Something to remember - :
Fn + c  =  Pair Bluetooth
Trackpad Single Finfer TAP = LEFT Click
Trackpad TWO Finger Tap = RIGHT Click
VLC Player – USE Ctrl + h to toggle to Minimal Interface INSTEAD of Full Screen
Double TAP Speed is set at 550ms = Count ONE ONE  (out of One One Thousand)


Testing the Pi 4B – from 2019 Sept 15th

2019 Mon Sept 16th – Pi 4B
I was impressed yesterday by being able to edit video in Openshot on the Pi 4B and export the file, and to have the playback in VLS in very high resolution (for what was supposed to be a 720p video).  Playback had no ‘apparent’ frame drop, although I imagine there was some.

I also noticed a lot of annoying wireless keyboard and trackpad lag on the Logitech K400r that I use.  I tracked it down to the position of the receiver dongle being out of line of sight from the keyboard, so I plugged it into the unpowered USB 3 Hub that I use for my data storage drives.
That didn’t help much, so I dug around in a parts box and found a 200mm male to female USB cable and ran that from one of the USB 2 ports and hung it somewhere convenient.  That seems to have fixed the problem.

After yesterday’s post I watched a 1080p video that I have watched several times on the Brix.  The resolution was startling, so I watched some other 1080p and supposedly 4k UHD videos (downloaded from YouTube, so converted I think to 1080p.

All were remarkable resolution and although I cannot get quite enough steady bandwidth on the Pi to watch 4k YouTube directly in the browser, I am still surprised.  I might try downloading a native 4k video to an external drive just for testing.


2019 Sun Sept 15th – Pi 4B
I actually wrote up the first experiences with the Pi 4B and Vilross kit on Friday and yesterday – then I stuffed up something trying to get the display to fit my 55 inch UHD Smart TV, and had to burn the Micro SD card after the Pi failed to boot.

Of course re-flashing the Micro SD card deleted the document with all my results from yesterday and I will have to try to make a note here of what I had discovered.

However, I’ve just managed to do an interesting test just now and I’ll write about that before I forget it.
I installed Openshot video editor, and imported a 720p 3 minute  mp4 video, about 30MB in size. I sliced it in a number of places, then exported it, as an mp4 in h264 high res to an external drive on USB3, and the output was saved at about 300MB.  It took 12 minutes, and with the CPU running at 2GHz, the temperature peaked at about 75 deg C a couple of times towards the end, but mostly it hovered around 70 deg C.  Immediately the job finished, the CPU frequency dropped  to 600Mhz and within a minute after finishing, the CPU temp had dropped to 52 deg C and during the next minute it was back idling at 47-50 deg C.

It will be interesting to see if it gets much hotter.  I’m wondering if there’s a simple way to switch the fan between 3.3V where it is running now, and 5V for more cooling, if needed.  For now though, I’m pretty pleased with the result.

Today I also installer Tor and a script to allow me to start Chromium browser with Tor, and I can still start Chromium from the Menu without Tor.  I don’t need Tor, but I like to know I ‘could’ use it if I wanted to.

I also found instructions to set up the Pi to run PIA using OpenVPN – something to do in the near future.  But I couldn’t get it working.
Fortunately PIA has a Browser Extension that works.

I adjusted my GPU/CPU ram split to 364MB and it doesn’t seem to have any adverse effect on the system.  Openshot worked nicely and sat in about 1200MB ram after the split, so I think I will leave it there for now.

2019 Sept 14th – Pi 4B
I got the case installed and Raspbian installed and running.  After messing about a little, the noise from the fan was obvious, so before going further I shut down, swapped the fan power from 5V to 3.3V, then ran some tests including vcgencmd measure_temp under various conditions, then sysbench tests, and I installed stress, and ran that several times.  The results are in another file.  The fan was much quieter but even under stress the yrmp rarely got over 71 deg C.

I also found a CPU temperature applet and a CPU frequency applet, so I can monitor those without constantly running commands.

I also copied over my scripts for changing the Desktop Wallpaper so now I don’t have to fumble through the Right Click > Desktop Preferences stuff.  I just click an icon on the desktop and cycle through the wallpapers until I stop at the one I want.

RASPBERRY Pi 4 - ( or Why I stopped updating this blog :-)

Seriously, I can't really blame the release of the raspberry Pi 4 for me being slack.  But it does have some bearing on things simply because I have almost stopped using my other computers since the Pi 4 was released.

First, there was a lot of learning to do, because this latest Pi is so much more capable on a day to day level, than any Pi before it.  And then, there was the level of experimenting with stuff to find out just how handy it is, and to try to solve a few little glitches in the way I use the Pi.

I won;t go into the specs and changes that make the Pi 4 what it is, because just about every tech site and blog has covered them.  I ordered the Pi 4 with 4GB RAM, and although that means my Pi was much more expensive than previous Pi models, I could have got the base model for about the same actual dollar price as the earlier ones had I wanted to.

But all up, with the Pi 4 board with 4GB RAM, a decent case with fan and heat sinks, and a 3 Amp power supply, I paid about double what the Pi 3B+ had cost me.  Initially I ran the Pi 4 off a Sandisk 64GB microSD card, then changed to a Samsung EVO Plus 128GB card because it came up on special somewhere very cheap.  But there were a few things that were annoying, and eventually I changed the set up to booting from an old Sandisk Ultra 16GB card that was lying around, and running on my WD 240GB SSD(from the Pi 3B+)  plugged into a USB 3 port.

That works great, does not have the brief lag problems the Pi suffered running off the microSD, and seems faster in some ways than the BRIX that I normall use for day to day stuff.

The UP sides of using the Pi 4 are that at last I have an affordable way to watch 4k video on my 55 inch UHD TV.  And the thing boots up so quickly that I don;t have to wait to start reading news, checking emails etc.

The DOWN sides include the lack of ability to print anything, meaning every time I want to print, I have to boot another computer.  And Audio Volume was so low that I had to install pulseaudio so I could drive the sound from the Analog jack over 100%.  And now I only have Mono audio.  I am not sure it was ever stereo, but I 'think' it was before I installed pulseaudio.

There are a few other little dislikes, but overall, the Pi is my day to day computer until I need to do something serious.

I kept a bit of a diary of my experiences with the Pi 4 from the time I got it, so I will add some of those in the next posts.