Last week in our continuing series of balena webinars, we welcomed Simon Burgess and James Hughes of Raspberry Pi. They fielded questions from our attendees regarding transitioning from the Raspberry Pi 4 (and earlier versions) to the Raspberry Pi 5 and all of its new capabilities.
In case you missed it, you can watch the recording here. However, if you’re looking for a summary of the webinar, or for the additional links and information mentioned during the webinar please read on…
Q & A Summary
DISCLAIMER: We’ve paraphrased the Q&A among Raspberry Pi and balena below. This was done by an actual human and not a bot!
What applications benefit from the new features of the Raspberry Pi 5?
The more powerful features of the Raspberry Pi 5 benefits everyone using an SBC. The Raspberry Pi 5 is conservatively 2.5x faster than the Raspberry Pi 4. To make a well-priced product like the Pi 5, you have to avoid adding things that people don’t use most of the time. That’s why we have the HAT system – “hardware on top” – and now with the Raspberry Pi 5 you can connect to a HAT with the final 5th PCI channel…
What are the main implications, benefits or challenges for users when upgrading to the Raspberry Pi 5 in regards to the new Southbridge chip, the custom RP1?
One of our goals over the years has been to move away from proprietary APIs, so we’ve moved towards getting software out of the closed-source firmware so it’s handled by the Linux kernel. So that means if you’re adhering to the Linux APIs, you shouldn’t see any difference…
When should developers consider choosing a Compute Module over a standard Raspberry Pi for a project?
Compute Modules are targeted specifically for developers building their own products and systems. It can be quite awkward to just slap a Raspberry Pi 5 into a box since it has connectors on all sides. The choice is: are you going to be building it into your own product and do you have the skills to build your own baseboard? There are also a good selection of third party baseboards. A Raspberry Pi CM 5 is on the way though…
You also can access the Raspberry Pi Product Information Portal here.
What kinds of codecs are supported on the Raspberry Pi 5 (hardware decoding/encoding of video)?
There is no longer an H264 hardware encoder or decoder. There is a hardware decoder aboard for H265…
When does it make sense to use eMMC/SSD storage vs. microSD?
The choice of whether you want an SD card or eMMC usually comes down to whether or not you need removable storage, because you can’t easily have both on a Raspberry Pi CM4. If you don’t need removeable storage, an eMMC is recommended over an SD card…
Also see the Raspberry Pi whitepaper “Making a more resilient file system”
Any chance of AV1 hardware decoding being supported in the future?
You can’t just add a codec to an existing chip; it’s a very expensive process and has to be designed some years in advance…
How to use Raspberry Pis for a 24×7 operation in non-temperature controlled environments?
Different Raspberry Pi products have different temperature ranges. The CM4 has a fairly broad temperature range. It’s worth noting that the devices can get very hot without failing, though they will throttle themselves. Raspberry Pi have official temperature ranges and we don’t advise you to go outside those ranges…
Will the transition from Raspberry Pi4 to Raspberry Pi5 be plug and play? If not, what should we expect?
If you’re using a standard Linux application, it should just work. It’s when you’re starting to use some of the firmware-based APIs that modifications need to be made. The plug and play ability will depend on what your application actually does…
Is the Raspberry Pi form factor a burden? What would you change if you had to design it from scratch? The header lacks USB or PCIe signals. The mini HDMI connectors always require adapters. There is little room for proper heat dissipation…
Effectively, Raspberry Pi is locked into this form factor. If you’re going to put one in a product the Raspberry Pi CM range is really what you should be looking at. Backwards compatibility is extremely important to us. We want you to be able to plug it into most situations and have to make as few changes as possible…
Can you provide a comparison of the Raspberry Pi 5 to the Raspberry Pi 4, especially in terms of energy consumption, longevity and stability?
Developers are getting a lot more performance with the Raspberry Pi 5 and you have to pay for that somehow and that payment is more electricity requirements. If you run a Raspberry Pi 5 at idle all the time, it actually uses less power than a Raspberry Pi 4 at full speed but it actually has more performance. So the work per watt is actually improved on the Pi 5. As far as longevity, the Raspberry Pi 4 is going to be in production until January 2034 at the earliest, just like the CM4. At the moment we are able to commit the Raspberry Pi 5 until 2036…
Do you foresee ever having eMMC on a standard Raspberry Pi form factor?
It’s unlikely… If you just have eMMC on the board, then you’re limited to the capacity of that eMMC. If you want to have a range of eMMCs, then your production goes through the roof with the number of options you have to have…
We experienced with the Raspberry Pi 4 that it is pretty picky on voltage which sometimes leads to issues with certain battery boost converters. Are there any “improvements” to be expected with the Raspberry Pi 5?
All SBCs like a solid power supply… The Raspberry Pi5 has the same power management IC as the Raspberry Pi 4. The Raspberry Pi 5 has some extra circuitry around it to make it more robust in that respect…
Balena digital signage demo
We demonstrated a digital signage solution using a fleet of Raspberry Pis on the balena platform for a group of imaginary resorts located around the world. You can view the demo here.
The GitHub repository has all the code used in the demo and is located here: https://github.com/alanb128/pi-digital-signage-demo
The demo mainly uses the browser block, a hardware accelerated web browser to present internal and external URLs on a connected display.
Screenshot of running services in the demo:
Clik here to view.
Using variables in balena: https://docs.balena.io/learn/manage/variables/
If you would like more details about anything mentioned in the webinar please get in touch at hello@balena.io
Also take a look at our upcoming webinars here: https://www.balena.io/webinars
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