[HN Gopher] I bought 200 Raspberry Pi Model B's and I'm going to...
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I bought 200 Raspberry Pi Model B's and I'm going to fix them
Author : stedaniels
Score : 184 points
Date : 2021-01-23 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.jmdawson.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.jmdawson.co.uk)
| gorgoiler wrote:
| _This is a story about an ordinary computer_
|
| _When it was made they found something wrong with it_
|
| _They threw it away like a piece of rubbish into an old dark
| storeroom_
|
| _Then, from outer space, a Clever Man brought it to life with
| his cosmic dust!_
|
| --
|
| ...adapted from an ancient piece of welsh folklore:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ouLJ-dP1Wps
| laumars wrote:
| I used to love that show as a kid. But what surprised me was
| that despite not watching that show in more than 30 years, I
| still recognised that quote.
| teodorlu wrote:
| Interesting that the video uses _space alien technology_ as a
| name for magic. Just look at that magic, _cosmic_ powder, as it
| 's sprinkled on the teddybear. Is it a coincidence that in Land
| of Lisp, space aliens help humans, and in SICM, the programmer
| is a wizard?
| avipars wrote:
| Mine some bitcoin with them :)
| stelf wrote:
| Kudos for bringing back to life dead electronics. This is an
| example for the world. Hold on - back in 1996 the world was still
| spinning and doing business with simpler devices. So many uses
| that these can be put to. No matter whether selling or donating,
| that's not the point here really.
| simplecto wrote:
| I like the idea of doing something a little nutty just so you
| have something interesting to write about.
|
| Very niche, but hey -- this is HN.
| [deleted]
| jamesmd wrote:
| Thanks for the share!
| rmoriz wrote:
| I wish there would be more of this offerings for broken single
| board computers out there. They are ideal learning projects for
| getting used to hot air stations, microsoldering and debugging
| circuits.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I think this guy would enjoy seeing some of the very low end of
| the used computer market in places like Pakistan - where they
| receive 20' container loads full of 5 year old Dell, HP office
| PCs and mix/match pieces into fully working systems that people
| can enjoy for more years to come. There's a whole street with at
| least ten different retail vendors/repair shops in Rawalpindi.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| I did exactly this as a job about three years ago in Nothern
| Kentucky.
|
| We would get semi trailers full of pallets of 5-10 year old
| laptops and PCs. Mostly from businesses upgrading. Then we
| would wipe them, fix anything that needed fixing (always with
| repaired/recycled parts), and sell them.
|
| Not the most reliable machines for the end users, but super
| cheap!
|
| It was kind of interesting, we would use RAM that had been sent
| back through a solder reflow oven to fix bad solder joints,
| figure out ways to repair dented and broken machines, etc.
|
| I hated the job since it was super monotonous, but it paid.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| 10th grade computer engineering involved doing this. So much
| fun. So educational. And the computers were all a write off so
| there was plenty of learning to be done.
| joshxyz wrote:
| Haha, on our country we get things like this from japan. It's
| FUN mixing and matching parts that work. Some are hard to find
| drivers (LOOKING AT YOU NEC) but a good positive is most parts
| are durable / quality parts.
| MayeulC wrote:
| > a good positive is most parts are durable / quality parts
|
| Exactly. Surviving parts are often high quality, due to that
| process of "natural" selection, and are just in the middle of
| their bathub curve.
|
| On the other side, you also do get a lot of parts with
| idiosyncratic or hard to diagnose deficiencies (like, RAM
| with a few bad bytes that you need to ignore, harddisks with
| bad sectors (same), CPUs and GPUs that randomly lock up,
| parts that work only in a certain temperature range, etc).
| grinich wrote:
| How can I learn more about this? Anything you can point me to
| online?
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Look up R2 or RIOS recyclers on youtube to get an idea of
| what it looks like in the US. Same concept, doing basically
| the same thing.
| walrus01 wrote:
| You'd have to go there in person, they don't care much about
| having an internet or social media presence in my experience.
| Or know one of the electronics recyclers in the US/Canada
| that collect and ship the products overseas.
|
| There's a whole street approximately here, if you were going
| there in a taxi you would ask for "bank road, saddar,
| rawalpindi" and then look around for the computer store.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bank+Rd,+Saddar,+Rawalpind.
| ..
|
| or this side-street which is perpendicular to bank road,
| centered on approximately this latitude/longitude
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bank+Rd,+Saddar,+Rawalpind.
| ..
|
| at those google maps URLs, if you turn on satellite view so
| you can see the shape/size of the narrow side streets, scroll
| around a bit within a 500 metre radius and you should find at
| least a dozen things that are some variety of computer store.
| mopsi wrote:
| And I must say that working with business PCs from vendors like
| HP is a joy, because they are optimized for quick and tool-less
| maintenance. I can open the PC and swap out power supply,
| HDD/SSD, 5.25 inch devices and expansion cards without any
| tools. Only the motherboard, CPU (depending on heat sink
| design) and cooling fans are screwed in. And there are even
| spare screws inside the case for unused slots/devices. And
| while somewhat unpopular, they use custom connectors that
| reduce the number of cables (modern PCs don't really need the
| fat ATX bundle), and cables are cut to length, and the case has
| holders for each cable - virtually no cable management needed.
|
| I wish consumer devices were that easy to maintain and upgrade.
| jamesmd wrote:
| I'd love too! Maybe one day once the pandemic is over.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| Free Geek is Vancouver does similar, minus the containers. They
| do a very thorough QA of every part.
|
| I used to volunteer there, it's a great place!
| kaonwarb wrote:
| This was essentially my first job. As a 17-year-old I was hired
| for the summer by a large office to see how many working PCs I
| could get out of a large walk-in closet full of broken ones.
| Great work for a 17-year-old computer nerd: figure out what was
| wrong with each one (typically RAM or hard drive), decide which
| ones to keep as hosts and which ones to strip for donor parts,
| then mix and match and set them all up. Didn't get paid much
| but I enjoyed it and learned a lot, and it was a great deal for
| the office, who ended up with about 20 extra working computers.
| derwiki wrote:
| This was close to my Eagle Scout project. Around y2k
| companies were throwing out machines, so we collected them,
| made Frankenstein machines, and distributed them to local
| schools.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Funny, I did that, too. This was right about when the IBM XT
| came out, and the company's spares room was a mixture of
| original IBM PC's, IBM minicomputers of various vintages,
| dumb terminals, and teletype machines.
|
| I remember putting together a bunch of IBM PC systems, loaded
| up with all kinds of things they didn't need like SDLC
| (Synchronous Data Link Communicator) cards "just in case."
| drannex wrote:
| This one was one of my first "jobs" as well, I would mix and
| match parts from donated broken computers and tech and splice
| them all together (again, usually ram, hard drives, or fan
| related issues) and then we would donate them to families or
| organizations in need (we would also sell some of them to
| keep the non-profit afloat). It was mainly volunteer work,
| but we were paid in parts. I would spend hours after school
| tearing things down, scouting through rooms full of old tech
| graveyards and just build.
|
| FreeGeek is one of more popular organizations for doing
| things like this. They have a few locations around North
| America: Portland, Vancouver, NYC, Seattle, Fayetteville
| (AR).
|
| I would do the same thing in grades 8-11 and do this for the
| local school district as well.
| franga2000 wrote:
| We have a nonprofit here in Slovenia that does exactly that,
| but puts Linux on them and gives them away to those who can't
| afford a computer. They've been invaluable during the pandemic
| when everyone was suddenly sent home and many households didn't
| have enough (or any) computers to support online schooling.
| imtringued wrote:
| I never understood why anyone would want a Raspberry Pi as a
| low cost replacement for a computer. You still have to get
| potentially expensive peripherals and the overall experience is
| worse. Especially when you consider the risk of corrupting the
| SD card. That's negative value right there.
|
| If you are desperate you just get an old Thinkpad on ebay for
| $200.
|
| Beyond a certain point you lose more in value than you save in
| money.
|
| So you should embrace that and choose a completely different
| computing experience for sub $200. At that point you are better
| off with a cheap tablet. They do not cost significantly more
| than a Raspberry Pi 4.
| II2II wrote:
| While your point is valid when thinking of the Raspberry Pi
| as a replacement computer, they do have a few advantages when
| it comes to projects.
|
| The size and I/O capabilities are desirable for anything from
| a plug-and-play media centre to building electronics
| projects. While there are disadvantages with respect to the
| latter, being able to write code on the Pi vastly simplifies
| things compared to microcontrollers.
|
| It is also worth noting that a fully equipped Pi can cost
| significantly less than $200. Everything that you need to add
| to it can be salvaged e-waste: discarded USB power adapter,
| old keyboards and mice, lower capacity SD cards, as well as
| televisions are things that are often discarded in working
| order.
|
| Edit: for clarification.
| teh_klev wrote:
| I kinda think you're missing the point of the Pi. It wasn't
| marketed as a low cost replacement for a computer, it was
| marketed as a low cost computer to learn and experiment with.
| In particular, having a raft of IO that you can hang cheap
| sensors, motors and all sorts of things off of and play with.
| Attempting that with a ThinkPad or any regular computer isn't
| quite as straight forward, and is a bit of a non-starter
| because out of the box they don't have these IO ports unless
| you go and find some external "box", which adds to your $200
| cost, and is likely not inexpensive.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Heck. I got an old iMac from Microcenter for $400 a few years
| ago. Still runs great.
| aj7 wrote:
| Had a nine-year-old show me a proposal his mom made him write
| for buying a somewhat elaborate Raspberry Pi system. He
| asserted it would do everything a Mac does at 1/10 the cost.
| Right before me, almost by chance, I saw the future of the PC
| industry.
| xmichael99 wrote:
| so dumb...
|
| "I'm sorry to disappoint but I won't be building a cluster or
| decorating my walls with them! In fact I don't have a project
| planned for these instead they will be sold on starting at PS4
| for a "Model A" and up to PS9 for a fully boxed un-repaired Model
| B. I'm not doing this to make a quick buck I'm doing it for the
| blog content and the experience and to hopefully provide you guys
| with some very cheap Raspberry Pi's for your projects!"
| imtringued wrote:
| He only has to sell 7 units to break even.
| aphrax wrote:
| Seems reasonable to me...
| 14u2c wrote:
| The odd part is this:
|
| > PS9 for a fully boxed un-repaired Model B.
|
| Why is he selling them un-repaired if the whole point is
| repairing them?
| pottertheotter wrote:
| I think that he means there was nothing broken so it didn't
| require repairs.
| stopChanging wrote:
| "not doing this to make a quick buck"
|
| yet its a blog site absolutely new-years-eve-plastered with ads
| and user hostile content
| jamesmd wrote:
| Whilst the ad revenue normally doesn't even cover the hosting
| costs of the site - which isn't even expensive! It does give
| me the motivation to write more content.
|
| If you don't like ads feel free to use an Adblock - I use
| https://adblockplus.org/
|
| If you want to buy a Pi for a very low price you could even
| setup pihole: https://pi-hole.net/
|
| There's nothing misleading when I say I'm not doing this to
| make a quick buck. I'm really not it's just a lockdown
| project as there really isn't much else to do in my spare
| time.
| k12sosse wrote:
| Instant "I'm outta here" design. Thanks for speaking up,
| sometimes I just feel like an old man yelling at kids to get
| off my web, but this person is managing to nail every one of
| my pet peeves.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I think it would be nice exercise to go through a couple hundred
| failed units and repair them just to learn what exactly happened.
| If I was somebody who created a product like that I would
| probably want to do this.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| 200+ for just ~$84 (current rate is 1/1.34), that's 42 cents
| each. This is worth if only to get out the parts, not to mention
| once you repair 10 of them you're already turning a profit. Where
| can I get such a deal? eBay doesn't anymore, I looked.
| canofbars wrote:
| These must have come from some school or other educational
| organisation. Would explain why so many of them are physically
| destroyed.
| avipars wrote:
| This would make a great vlog...
|
| how did he source them? and what is the script to diagnose each
| PI?
| buryat wrote:
| > how did he source them?
|
| it says right in the first sentence: > the 200+ Raspberry Pi
| Model B's I purchased on ebay
| umvi wrote:
| If you like this type of stuff, I highly recommend the YouTube
| channel "TronicsFix"[0][1].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/Tronicsfix/featured
|
| [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/c/Tronicsfix/videos?view=0&sort=p&fl...
| djmips wrote:
| I prefer my mate Vince.
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChY9Cgv-iyPDvf1Bkyx20OQ
|
| There's probably other better channels. Anyone?
| shimonabi wrote:
| I just retired my Raspberry Pi 1 B (2011) last week. I had
| OpenVPN installed on it for accessing my home network, but since
| my new router has OpenVPN integrated, I don't need it anymore. I
| played with installing RetroPie on it, but it is far too slow to
| be usable.
|
| If you have it running still, what do you use it for?
| geek_at wrote:
| I use one of the first batches to control a few sensors around
| my front door. Movement detection, reed switch door opening
| sensor and it controls the siren and the light at the front
| door.
|
| I burnt through sooo many SD cards until I started using Alpine
| Linux which runs perfectly on the Pi and runs from a RAM disk.
| No more dead SD cards for me
| elaus wrote:
| That's interesting. I have a Pi 1B running non-stop since
| 2013 with the default Raspian image and the SD card still
| seems to be fine. Maybe I've just been lucky till now...
| ptrincr wrote:
| I use one for driving a ILI9341 TFT display.
|
| It uses a 433mhz receiver and picks up temperatures from a
| couple of commercial temperature sensors, uses pygame to
| display them to the screen, plus a few bits of other info.
|
| Pretty basic, but it works. It struggles with timings though,
| which I've discovered is pretty important when receiving and
| decoding 433 signals. Looking to use a Rasberry Pico instead
| shortly.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I'm still running the 512mb model with kodi. I don't really
| watch movies or shows that often and don't even have a TV
| capable of 4k, so it's still doing well.
| unfocused wrote:
| I have 3 Pi running, including the original Pi 1.
| Unfortunately, the Pi 1 is just sucking up electricity. It used
| to be my main OSMC (Kodi), but that is my Pi 3's job now, and
| my older Pi (2014) is running PiHole.
| otterpro wrote:
| I have 2 original Raspberry Pi model B. I used it for a short
| time as a Synergy server (keyboard/mice). My future plans for
| these are:
|
| * PiHole (original model should be enough) * Home automation,
| ie Garage door opener / automation * CCTV monitoring using old
| webcam (not fast though, perhaps less than 5 fps but that's
| good enough for what I need) * CCTV recorder (not video, but
| just capturing photo every second, which is good enough for me)
| * file server for low throughput device (or TimeMachine server)
| * Server/PC status display (displays server status) on TV *
| Prometheus, htop, GoAccess, etc... * Lo-fi player * pivpn
| johndoe0815 wrote:
| The Raspberry Pi 1 is still a great device to experiment with
| alternative operating systems, most of which are far less
| resource hungry than Linux:
|
| - Plan 9 (http://9p.io/sources/contrib/miller/)
|
| - Inferno (http://lynxline.com/projects/labs-portintg-inferno-
| os-to-ras...)
|
| - RISC OS
| (https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi)
|
| - NetBSD (https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/raspberry_pi/)
|
| - FreeBSD (https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi)
|
| - Interim Lisp OS (http://interim-os.com - this runs on Raspi 2
| only, so porting to the ARM v6 in the Raspi 1 would be a nice
| project) - btw., this is a project by Lukas Hartmann, who is
| also the creator of the open MNT Reform ARM laptop
| (https://mntre.com)
|
| - (shameless plug) my bare metal "crosstalk" Smalltalk-80
| (https://github.com/michaelengel/crosstalk)
|
| I'm pretty sure this list isn't complete...
|
| Some operating systems are not supported at the moment:
|
| - OpenBSD only seems to support the Aarch64-based models 3 and
| 4
|
| - Haiku seems to be looking for a maintainer for the Raspberry
| port
| sagarm wrote:
| Isn't a VM just as good and more convenient, though?
| smorrow wrote:
| Let me just add 9front even though you already said Plan 9.
| perfmode wrote:
| which router do you have?
| shimonabi wrote:
| Linksys WRT3200 ACM. My Linksys 4200E started dropping
| connections after 10 years of use because of overheating.
| Beforehand, I had a Linksys WRT54G v2.2, so I'm also
| emotionally attached to the design. :)
| hyperman1 wrote:
| I'm using one right now to build a Fireman Sam dispatch console
| for my son. Lots of leds and buttons. An arduino would be
| better, except I want it to play MP3s so the computer voice can
| tell where the fire is, beep the right beeps, etc
| solution-finder wrote:
| That's an excellent idea. Will you be writing a blogpost
| about it (please please)!
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Neat project! There is a small, inexpensive MP3 player board
| called DFPlayer that can be controlled from an Arduino and
| probably would work well for similar use cases, if using a
| full Pi isn't an option.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I've used them for Pihole, Home Assistant, ESPHome (a thing for
| getting ESP8266 and ESP32 chips semi-magically flashes for your
| particular needs).
|
| Edit: somehow missed the model you have, these may not be
| options.
| Tepix wrote:
| Pi-Hole runs great on a 256MB Pi with a 2GB SD card.
| dgellow wrote:
| Not an RPi 1, but a v2.
|
| - pihole
|
| - custom media player based on VLC, with a web UI
|
| - a weather service that aggregates and displays info of small
| weather stations around the house (ESP8266 + a bunch of
| sensors)
|
| We are thinking about moving to a v4 to have more RAM
| kkielhofner wrote:
| In my experience NES, SNES, and Sega Masterdrive/Genesis are
| perfectly playable on a model B (especially when moderately
| overclocked).
| newman314 wrote:
| It works great as a backup Pihole. I have the compressed ram
| config installed due to a large blocklist and rsync the DB over
| from my primary instance.
|
| Works great in the times that I have the primary Pihole
| (containerized) down for maintenance/upgrades.
| christiansakai wrote:
| My macbook pro 2015 is getting slower. Its already SSD. I wonder
| why. Is it the OS? Maybe its the fan that I need to clean? If it
| is both I'm going to just make this into a Linux laptop.
| beezechurger wrote:
| Do a clean reinstall of the OS and give it a week to cache
| files from regular use. I have a 2015 mbp too
| mcbridematt wrote:
| I cleaned out a MBP of similar age while replacing the battery.
| There was quite a bit of dust trapped in the CPU fan, as well
| dried out thermal paste. Between new battery + cleaned fan +
| new paste it runs 'like new'.
|
| (Unfortunately the dGPU on the machine appears to have
| developed a fault which might put it into retirement for good)
| _arvin wrote:
| +1 for turning it into a Linux laptop. Although I'd understand
| if you kept it Mac (probably best if it's still supported).
|
| For my 2010 MBP, I'm running Linux on it and it's really
| brought it back to life. Especially with the 5.4 LTS kernel and
| Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, both with support until 2025. I say go for
| it, you'll have a ton of fun on it.
|
| And if making it look like macOS is your thing, here's how I
| got mine looking: https://i.imgur.com/QgyRvrD.png
| mrweasel wrote:
| I have the same issue with a 2013 model. It was perfectly fine
| until earlier this year. Running Xcode was a bit sluggish, but
| otherwise it was fine. Now ever webbrowsing is slow. The OS
| hasn't been upgrade in that period though, so I'm unsure what
| might be the cause.
| MH15 wrote:
| 2017 model but I factory reset my Macbook to clean up clutter
| and free up disk space and it runs notably faster now that I
| have 200 free gigabytes.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Pretty neat. Definitely recycles a lot of electronics in a good
| way. On the GPIO pins I would definitely replace the connector! I
| can tell you from experience that even if the pins straighten
| out, some random plugging/unplugging later and the pin will break
| off and the next person will end up replacing the connector. This
| is much easier if you have a setup already for doing the work.
|
| This is also a really great way to "pay yourself" to learn to do
| rework. Buying 200 at PS61 and selling the fully restored ones
| (which appears to > 100) at PS9 is at least PS900 revenue from
| the experience. Granted, since you are "learning" that would be
| slow work at first, but later it would become fairly routine. So
| something someone in high school could easily do.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| I was using an original Pi as an ssh client to talk the the
| serial ports of a couple of systems at work. They're fine for any
| non-graphical that runs tmux and serial software. It could
| probably run VNC server with TWM or some other retro WM.
| vmception wrote:
| I'm sure my pc experience would be different and block
| everything, but that site has way too many ads, subscription,
| cookie notification stuff on mobile
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