With a little practice you can quickly spot the "company spokesperson/salesperson" and just move on. OH8STN- one of the best channels I have ever watched.
I do not speak for the RPi people. But my deduction, after reading some articles, is that in order to get these custom manufactured chips at affordable prices, they had to commit to a certain volume. Once that is fullfilled, they can move to the next step. There was a lot of excitment when ASUS released the TinkerBoard, but it seems to have subsided.
The Beagleboard guys have had eMMC on their boards for years. I would think that if ANYONE had the volume it would be the Pi guys, but yeah, can't speak for them and I am definitely no engineer!
A former co-worker showed me a Beagleboard about 10 years ago. I did not follow developments, so I was not aware a version with eMMC. I think the Beagleboard provides the computing power for the KiwiSDR, so hams/SWLs are using it. Others that I think have eMMC are the Orange Pi, Odroid and Pine. Unfortunately none of the above are as popular as the RPi. The RPi certainly has the 'volume', but it still must be fulfilled, contractually speaking, before moving on to the next custom chip.
Thanks for another great video. I appreciate different perspectives and experience levels. We all have to start somewhere. Mahalo!
Nice video! t some point in time I'd like to build a similar setup. I really like the teeny weeny Pelican case! What I would do however, is build everything together inside a Pelican case, assembled and connected (except the rig of course). Each time I see a video like this, I see people fiddling around with an an almost bare and open RPi, a multitude of loose cables, sound interfaces and dongles. That's bound to go wrong some time out in the field. Why not spend a little more time and build and connect the entire setup inside that Pelican case, cover the internals without compromizing cooling and only have one solid weatherproof connector on the outside with matching cable to connect to your rig of choice. Or at least have one single connector on the cover of the internals, so you only need to open the Pelican case to pull that single cable out and plug it in the rig. My marine electronics background starts awakens/acts up seeing this
I can think of a few reasons a Pi has no eMMC: the original idea behind the Pi is education. Nothing is easier than plugging in various SD cards for different purposes. Also it is a no brainer to prepare an SD card for us in a Pi, wich any OS you like. And SD cards get corrupted when switching off Pi's sometimes. With an on board eMMC, you need some form of very reliable bootloader to install the OS of your choice. And what if the eMMC gets corrupted? Having an SD card in a slot is much more versatile for hobby projects IMO.
In addition to my post above, I found a Pi clone: the NanoPi. This has an SD slot and a connector that accepts an eMMC module.
I have an ODROID XU4 with eMMC. My issue is... at least on the 'Droid... is that the module is "pressed" onto the bottom of the PCB, not in a socket. So if your 'Droid is mobile or moved around the shack alot... that sucker pops out. I much rather have the µSD slot. Yes the 'Droid has that as well, if it worked. You can switch between the eMMC and µSD... but either my switch is bad or the µSD socket is. I gave up and got a PI4. ...DOUG KD4MOJ
Think I'll stick with my Win 10 Surface 3 with UAG case, 4 port USB hub, Signalink, and cheapo USB GPS dongle. Goes together quickly, runs on 5.25v from a solar panel with USB port, or power pack or both. It fits in a small Pelican and works with 817ND or 857D equally well. And no need for an extra laptop.
Great idea, I now only need a tablet and a raspi4 to move forward digital.... will definitely try this after I managed CW with my KX2. BTW, I would be interested on details of the knob, too! 73 de DH4FT
For portable use I use the Pi 3b and 4 but they can be a real pain sometimes. Took days to sort through an HDMI issue with the Pi4. Hundreds of pages and posts to multiple forums. Yuck. What I hate about rasbian and the pi. Most of the info out there is plain wrong or so vague as to be useless but you still have to sort through it. For my mobile set up I run a Latte panda alpha with win 10. Pricey as all get out but easy to use and setup, way more power, uses a laptop solid state drive and windows make set up a joy. If you have given up on the pi then take a look at the latte panda.
