After I replaced the cheap laptop I was using for logging and other shack type stuff with a refurb HP Elite desktop computer, I began using the laptop as an Arduino development system. Of course, the features that made it a pain to use for logging and running other ham apps, mostly being incredibly slow, made it kind of a pain for using to program Arduinos.
Well, a couple of months ago, I broke down and bought a Raspberry Pi 4 to use in the shack. I bought a “starter kit” that included a power supply, a case (with a fan), heatsinks that attach to the chips on the board, and an SD card. It was all pretty much plug and play.
The only real application that I had in mind for it at the time was to run HamClock, but I figured I’d find some other use for it eventually. Well, eventually was Monday. I replaced the cheap laptop Arduino development with the Raspberry Pi 4.
This system is great. It’s small—only 2.5-in. wide by 3.5-in. deep— and fits very nicely on my relatively small workbench. It’s much faster than the laptop.
Today, I added the small keyboard shown in the photo. When I took it out of the box, I thought to myself, “Man, this is too small.” It’s only six inches wide, but it works pretty well, and since it has a touchpad, it replaces the mouse as well. I’m not sure that I’d want to do a lot of typing on it, but to make small program changes, it’s fine.
I’m hoping that now that I have a better development system, I’ll actually do more development. We’ll see how that goes.
Dave, N8SBE says
Beware that the microSD will wear out much faster than the typical hard drive or SSD. The new Raspberry IV compute card (which really needs a host card to break out all the I/O, etc.) uses eMMC (like the Beagle Bone) which runs much longer.
I know a few repeater owners that changed out their Raspberry’s for Beagle Bones, due to having to go up to a remote site every few months to repair a broken microSD. They just weren’t designed to be used like a laptop hard drive. They don’t have the R/W cycle life.