Raspberry Pi

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

Full Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Setup / Imaging Guide

Published: August 2, 2021 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 18 Comments / , , ,
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

Published: June 21, 2021 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 120 Comments / ,
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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Minecraft 1.17 Caves and Cliffs Paper Server Update Available

Published: June 19, 2021 / Last Modified: March 16, 2022 / 46 Comments / , ,
Minecraft 1.17 - Caves and Cliffs Update

The 1.17 Caves and Cliffs Part 1 version of Minecraft came out for vanilla very recently but until now the Paper Minecraft server was not available for it. This means that my Raspberry Pi Minecraft script was unable to run this version until now.

Today I checked the Paper Minecraft API server available versions and sure enough 1.17 was finally in the version list so I updated the Raspberry Pi Minecraft server scripts and they are now available! Raspberry Pi not required, the script will work on most versions of Linux that have apt available.

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Upgrade Java Past apt’s OpenJDK on Raspberry Pi OS

Published: June 12, 2021 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 18 Comments / , ,
OpenJDK 16 on Raspberry Pi OS

The OpenJDK 11 version that comes in Raspberry Pi OS’s apt repositories is ancient. It’s so old that recently people using my Minecraft Java Server for Raspberry Pi script have started getting a warning that Minecraft 1.17 will *not* support anything below OpenJDK 16.

In this article I’m going to share a sneaky trick to update your Java to a newer version than is available in apt using snapd. Let’s begin!

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UPS Backup Battery for Raspberry Pi? PiSugar Solderless Setup

Published: June 9, 2021 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 6 Comments / ,
PiSugar - Top with LED Battery Indicator

I’ve had the original 900 mAh PiSugar UPS backup battery for the Raspberry Pi Zero for several years now and it’s an absolute game changer. With the wireless capabilities of the Raspberry Pi you have a completely portable and networked computer available that is extremely tiny. It’s much more capable than hooking it up to a power brick and is actually designed for the Raspberry Pi!

In this article I’ll cover how to set up a full UPS battery backup with several hours of available power using the the PiSugar as well as the PiSugar 2 and some of the shortcomings in the first version the 2nd revision fixes. Let’s get started!

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Where to get the 64 bit Raspberry Pi OS image for Pi 4 / 400

Published: April 13, 2021 / Last Modified: April 29, 2022 / 10 Comments / , ,
Pi 64bit OS - Forum Post

Last year a official 64 bit version of Raspberry Pi OS was released. There have been 3 versions of the image released with the latest one just having came out April 9th 2021.

It can be a little tricky to find and I’ve been asked in the comments here before on the site where to find it so I figured it was time to write a quick guide!

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Raspberry Pi 400 Overclocking / NVMe SSD Setup Guide

Published: March 8, 2021 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 8 Comments / , ,
Raspberry Pi 400 Setup w/ NVMe SSD

The Raspberry Pi 400 is the first offering from the Raspberry Pi lineup that is meant to approach desktop level performance. The official raspberrypi.org site lists the Pi 400 kit as the “Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit“. It comes in the very interesting form factor of a keyboard with all the ports right in the back!

Although the performance on stock clock speeds and with a SD card was really great, especially for a Raspberry Pi, I would not call it desktop class performance. Fortunately we *can* make it desktop class performance with a few tweaks! This guide will show how to overclock the Pi 400 as well as set it up with a NVMe SSD to get the maximum possible performance we can out of it!

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Raspberry Pi: Reclaim ~1% CPU Usage when SSD/USB Booting

Published: March 5, 2021 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 4 Comments / , ,
SSD Ubuntu 'Top' - Fixed

Native support for USB mass storage device booting has made it’s way to all of the Raspberry Pi 4’s firmware release channels! With that exciting development an old issue from the Pi 3 and earlier USB booting days has manifested itself once again in the form of a constant 1-2% CPU draw even with nothing running.

This guide will show you an easy config.txt parameter to eliminate this problem and optimize your mass storage boot setups!

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Fast Raspberry Pi 4 Storage Benchmarks

Published: July 17, 2020 / Last Modified: November 12, 2022 / 31 Comments / , , ,
Raspberry Pi Storage Benchmark 2020

We’ve now received over 20,000 benchmarks at Pi Benchmarks! These are submitted by regular people from all over the world.

In celebration of that milestone as well as the launch of the 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 take a closer look at which device you should choose for your Raspberry Pi 4 as determined by science and measurement!

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Raspberry Pi Minecraft Script 1.16.1 Update Released!

Published: July 4, 2020 / Last Modified: September 4, 2022 / 4 Comments / , ,
Minecraft Nether Update

Hello everyone! It has been a crazy 2020 so far and I’m way behind on articles, pull requests, issues, etc. But even in these crazy times I do have some good news: the 1.16 Minecraft update has been released and I have updated my Minecraft setup/server management script for Raspberry Pi!

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Raspberry Pi 4 Xubuntu 18.04 Image Released (Unofficial)

Published: February 24, 2020 / Last Modified: March 16, 2022 / 4 Comments / ,
Xubuntu 18.04 Desktop Screenshot

After receiving quite a few requests for a lightweight alternative to the default Ubuntu Desktop environment I have added Xubuntu Desktop to my Raspberry Pi 4 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS preinstalled image builds! The Xubuntu version feels much snappier and more responsive on the Pi. It also uses less overall memory freeing it up to do other things on your Pi.

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Raspberry Pi 4/400 Bootloader Firmware Update/Recovery Guide

Published: October 4, 2019 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 88 Comments /
Raspberry Pi 4

All of the previous generations of Raspberry Pi contained all of their firmware on the SD card. Starting with the Raspberry Pi 4 the device actually has onboard upgradable firmware stored on an EEPROM chip separate from your storage. Updating this firmware is very important as one of the first released updates reduces power usage of the Pi by 30% which also reduces how hot it gets.

In this guide I’ll show you how to update the bootloader firmware (no, it’s not apt-get upgrade, it’s a new utility called rpi-eeprom!) and also show you how to make a recovery SD card if your firmware gets corrupted and needs to be reflashed.

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