AmateurLogic.TV 152 This month we’ve got three great topics to start 2021 out right. George give his first impressions of the Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit and it’s a keeper. Mike introduces the ADALM-PLUTO SDR & Satsagen Spectrum Analyzer software. Emile begins building the K5OZ Lightning Rig Saver. 1:26:31
Pi 400 is just ok, If your doing just digital radio ok but tasking it it will overheat. Another strike is if you add on to the board your really out of luck for options there or if by chance what extras your running will work its even more of aa mess than the pi4.
What was the task which lead to overheating? What did you do in order to try and mitigate the heating? How hot? I have noticed that some people find any level of warmth worrisome. It isn't. Can you quantify for us a bit?
You can use a ribbon cable or extender boards with the Pi 400 to add on hardware. If you want to use add on boards full time you are probably best to go with a Pi 4B. As far as heat, I have not really tasked it very hard yet. During normal desktop operation you can hardly feel any heat at all. Not needing a fan is pretty nice.
My Pi 400 is now running 24/7. Doesn't get warm. Got it for Christmas & loving it. Neat, clean, very good performance. Great 2nd or 3rd computer.
As soon as I saw one I ordered from Virlos.com (highly recommended) 4-5 years ago I started playing with the first RPI (Raspberry PI) and a lot of people were over clocking them. I have had 6-10 RPI's of various flavors, but this is my 1st RPI400.. I have it loaded with HAMpi, and plan on dedicating it to a pair of Yaesu FT-718's of which I bought the second to help a friends widow. The minute I saw the RPI400 I was reminded of the VIC20- Commodore 64 days. I used to sell a morse code decoder for the VIC20 in 73 Mag... A hell of a lot of VIC20's & C64's ended up in ham shacks. These RPI400's will as well. Why wait for the RPI800? 4gigs of memory is certainly enough. I'm sure the RPI800 will be out for next Christmas. Most of my RPI's are in service as ALLSTAR NODES... Actually a RPI4 is over kill as I can run 2 repeater nodes on a RPI2 and have overhead left over. Plus there is the introduction to the RPI PICO for $4. I understand Micro Center has them for $2 -1st one only and it's free with some magazine.. It's just out. It's going to be a winner as well.. Regarding overheating The RPI4's seem to get warm, but never "melt down" I have not seen any specifications on maximum CPU temperature, but if it can boil water, we can make tea. Plus on the other hand, under no circumstances can you run an Intel chip without massive heat exchanging..
The Raspberry Pi and other similar CPU's go into a quiescent state when not used. Even with a cell phone, entering alpha characters, much of it's circuitry shuts down even between key strokes. This is why I asked about the task. A tight loop with no IO will definitely drive this type of device to overheat, reduce clock time or other consequences. To be sure there are apps which need more cooling but most of them need little or none. The Pi400 features substantial passive cooling compared to Pi4 schemes. Digital Radio work, to me, is light duty. I think vendors are over selling cooling contraptions - why not? It's profitable. People who get such things have no baseline of operation so - naturally they don't want to consider that they wasted their money.
