Raspberry Pi

Category page of all posts on the web site that are tagged as related to the Raspberry Pi including guides / walkthroughs / projects

Best 2023 Raspberry Pi Alternatives

Radxa Rock 5B Review

The Raspberry Pi continues to suffer from supply chain issues. They have promised there are a lot of their very old models that should be coming up for purchase within the next 6 months. I’ve been hearing that for years though to be honest with you.

Fortunately you don’t need to wait. There are more and better alternatives to the Raspberry Pi in 2023 than there have ever been before. In this article I’ll cover the best Raspberry Pi alternatives in 2023.

Let’s get started!

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Enable Raspbian Images to Boot on Libre Computers Boards

Enable Raspbian Images to Boot on Libre Computers Boards Guide

Libre Computers is a company making single board computers that are much more open-sourced than the Raspberry Pi (especially when it comes to hardware). They are offering a USB 2.0 model (the “Le Potato”) for $40 and a USB 3.0 model (the “Renegade”) for $50. Those are not theoretical MSRP prices that are impossible to find either. Those are the listed prices available today!

When I first covered these boards the Libre reddit account let me know about a utility they had available that could enable most Raspberry Pi images to boot on Libre Computers boards such as the “Le Potato” and “Renegade”. I tried out the tool and it worked great! In this guide I will show you where to get the tool and how to use it.

Let’s begin!

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Raspberry Pi Zero 2 Review (It Sucks)

This is what not giving a shit about your product looks like

It’s no secret that there’s a massive Raspberry Pi shortage right now for consumers due to the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s strategy of allocating boards to business and IoT projects first and then official resellers get whatever is left. Since I own one of every Raspberry Pi that has ever been made I ended up buying one of these scalped from eBay for about $57 (all the way from Europe) which is much better than the street price of $80-$90+ I can get it in the United States.

In other words I payed the scalpers to get my hands on this board so you don’t have to and let me tell you folks, it is honestly garbage and literally the dumbest purchase I’ve ever made. Today I will show and explain why the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 is the lamest and most disappointing product release that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has ever done. Let’s get started!

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eMMC to SD Card Adapters Explained

UUGear eMMC to SD Adapter

The eMMC to SD card adapter shows up a lot in IoT devices. I have owned one for my Raspberry Pi for a while and they are fantastic.

In this article I will explain what these devices are, the main advantages of them (speed/performance) and benchmark some eMMCs to show performance differences. By the end of this article this should give you an idea if this is a type of device you’d want to work with / use.

Let’s begin!

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Different Shapes / Sizes / Features of Compute Module 4 Boards

Waveshare PoE CM4 IO Board - Standalone

One of my favorite things about the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 is that you basically get to choose your own IO board that the Compute Module 4 plugs into.

For illustration purposes imagine that the IO board is the “motherboard” and the Compute Module 4 is the CPU that you plug into the CPU socket. That’s essentially the relationship between the two!

They come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them even have PCIe and I’ve covered before how to take advantage of true NVMe on the CM4. Today I wanted to show you some of the different IO boards for the Compute Module 4 I have and what features / traits led me to want to try them. Let’s get started!

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Getting Started Guide – Raspberry Pi Pico

Pico SDK - Hello World

This guide is meant to help get an environment configured to work with the Raspberry Pi Pico. It’s intended for Linux as even if you don’t use Linux as your main OS you presumably have a Pi that does run Linux and the Pi is a perfectly fine development environment for the Pico!

If you aren’t familiar with the Pico make sure you check out my Raspberry Pi Pico W Explained article as this guide is intended for people who already have the board.

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Raspberry Pi Pico W Explained

Raspberry Pi Pico W

The Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W boards are quite different from other Raspberry Pis. The price tag is very alluring at $6 but you will want to make sure you understand what it is and how it is different from a Raspberry Pi.

This will be a brief article I’ll explain these differences and give you an idea of what kind of uses a Pico is meant for so you can decide if it’s right for you and your project. Let’s get started!

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2022 Raspberry Pi Storage Benchmarks

Storage Benchmark #48648

It has been a while since I covered storage benchmarks on the Raspberry Pi because every time I sat down to write it I ended up adding new features to the SBC storage benchmarks web site and it never got finished. Definitely make sure you check out the web site frontend as it will always give you up to date benchmarks!

There definitely have been some changes since my last coverage of this with the Compute Module 4 now dominating the charts by taking advantage of real NVMe via PCIe adapters to achieve speeds never seen before on the Pi. Let’s get right into it!

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Pwnagotchi WiFi Audit Tool Build / Guide

Pwnagotchi Raspberry Pi Zero W Build

A “pwnagotchi” is a device used for wireless security auditing / hacking that captures the handshakes of any WiFi access points in range of the device. These handshakes can later be cracked. How difficult these are to crack depends on how secure the wireless network is. If the network is set up with the latest encryption standards and an extremely secure password (or is using WPA encryption) it can be nearly/essentially impossible. If the password is a common dictionary word it may crack within seconds.

It’s common and smart security practice for both enterprises and home users to check what kind of networks are operating within range. It’s common to find devices that are “broadcasting” a wireless access point used to share internet but this is often not intended / authorized. It’s also very common to find devices using extremely insecure passwords that will crack in seconds that are authorized to be on the network but need a more secure password. These are basically backdoors into your home / company and they can go for a long time without being caught when this is never checked for.

The “pwnagotchi” tool automates this process. It will capture anything in range to be easily checked later for extremely insecure hashes (typically using hashcat or there are even online tools to find common hashes which we will cover). This saves a ton of time and can greatly improve your security. Today I’ll cover how to build a pwnagotchi setup as well as the steps to use it. Let’s begin!

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Modern Headless Raspberry Pi Configuration Guide (Pi Imager)

Raspberry Pi Imager - Headless Configuration Menu

For many years configuring a headless Raspberry Pi usually involved creating a bunch of text files on the SD card. Some of these were more commonly known (such as creating the “ssh” file to enable SSH) but there are many lesser known methods to configure many different options headlessly.

These days we have a much better option available. We can use the Raspberry Pi imager’s headless configuration options to create a preconfigured SD card for headless use without touching any obscure text files!

Today in this guide we’ll cover the more well known options as well as the options that you may have not heard of (but are quite useful) that are available in the Raspberry Pi Imager. Let’s get started!

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Raspberry Pi Shortage Survival Guide

rpilocator - Raspberry Pi Stock Locator Tool

The Raspberry Pi shortage is extremely bad. As a site that covers a lot of topics related to the Raspberry Pi I’ve actually seen a major decline in traffic because people are having such a hard time getting these.

Stock on Amazon is limited and it’s being scalped with prices such as $99 for a Zero 2 W and $187 for a Pi 4 8GB. Those are absurd prices.

There are some Pis that are smarter to buy right now than others that you may not be thinking about. Today I’d like to cover additional places to get your Raspberry Pis during the shortage as well as recommend an alternative Pi (a more powerful one actually) you may not necessarily be thinking of!

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Fix Home Assistant / HAOS Raspberry Pi USB/SSD Boot Freeze

Home Assistant / HAOS

There are few things I dislike more in this world than getting questions on my setup guides that I don’t know the answer to, but thanks to an investigation by Bill Schatzow we can strike one of those issues off the list!

We’ve had a few comments of people who have encountered this issue over the years. Given that at best only 1% of people who visit the site leave a comment I think it’s safe to say that this issue has plagued thousands of people over the past 10-12 months.

Let’s take a look!

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PCIe 1x NVMe on Raspberry Pi?! Compute Module 4 Guide

CableCC Vertical Adapter in Compute Module 4 IO Board

I recently covered all the pieces you need for a complete setup to work with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. Today I want to cover the whole reason I wanted to investigate the Compute Module 4: The PCI express capabilities!

In this guide I’ll cover a couple of 1x PCIe to NVMe adapters I picked up to try doing this with as well as full configuration and setup instructions. Let us begin!

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Full Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Setup / Imaging Guide

Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 mounted in IO Board

The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 is primarily meant for embedded projects and didn’t catch my interest at first. That was until people started absolutely smashing previous records on my Pi storage benchmarking site pibenchmarks.com.

Upon further investigation it turns out that people are breaking these records using the Compute Module 4 since it allows running a NVMe drive through PCI express instead of having to use a USB adapter (the current bottleneck in other Pis).

Wanting to investigate these new capabilities for myself I got a hold of some gear and wanted to write a setup and configuration guide on everything you need for a full CM4 (Compute Module 4) setup and how to get it imaged and configured. Let’s get started!

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Fixing Storage Adapters for Raspberry Pi via Firmware Updates

StarTech USB312SAT3CB

I’ve covered how to get the right type of storage adapter for your Raspberry Pi for years on this site and cataloged storage adapters that both work and don’t work with the Raspberry Pi. Over the years we’ve learned that many of these adapters can be “fixed” with a firmware update to work with the Raspberry Pi.

In this article I’ll put together an evolving list of firmware adapters that can be fixed with these updates from my own experience as well as comments people have left over the years!

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