Simple Raspberry Pi Rack | Hacker News Reader

Simple Raspberry Pi Rack

raspberrypi.org

105 pointsausjke24 comments

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And if you like to play with legos: http://i.imgur.com/75XSCWX.jpg

http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/9372/colocating-my-rasp...

ooh I remember seeing this Lego rack. IIRC it's from a professor's computing project, with the rack built by his son?

Original source: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~sjc/raspberrypi/pi_supercomput...

USB 3.0 7-Port Hub for power

That has to be the most expensive power supply workaround ever.

Oh and part 2: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=4...

I view it more as an novel solution. The Pi's power cable is Micro-USB, so buying things that interact with that standard rather than hacking up your own cables makes a bit of sense.

That hub is $50 USD: http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Power-Adapter-VL812-Chipset/d...

So it works out to around $7 for each Pi, probably closer to $10/each with cabling, which is quite reasonable for a slickly put together setup.

That hub also has a 4A power supply, which is probably needed for a few heavily loaded Pi's.

I like articles that put the hack back into Hacker News.

"Does not exist"

There's a link to this recent redesign at the bottom of the comments: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=4...

Very nice. However, do you have any ideas what can be accomplished with a multi-computer rack infrastructure that costs about $500?

It is probably too weak to run virtualization (which racks are used for these days). It is also not trivial to set up cluster computing wherein these multiple computers can meaningfully share memory and computing resources. Many of us can afford a 7 computer rack for less than $500, but how do we use it?

Dispy? http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q/87/35

Idea: each Pi could be placed in some carrying case (with power, external sensors, e.g. GPS), and individually taken out in the field.

Then, when the Pis are back home and networked together, they connect as a cluster and reconcile their individual data...

Erlang (or Elixir) runs really well on the Pi - and cross-node communication is brain-dead simple.

Its a shame they don't support PoE. It'd make the whole thing a lot easier and cheaper

AIUI, and you may know this, the reason they don't is it would make each Pi considerably more expensive.

That looks cool and all, but what does one do with a rack these things? How does it compare with a cluster of x86 CPUs on a processing/watt basis?

An example of use is for educational purposes, to initiate students to MPI programming etc.:

http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~sjc/raspberrypi/pi_supercomput...

I'm tempted to replace the 2-yr-old DreamPlug I use as backup server with a Pi. Does anybody know how long a Pi would last if left running 24/7 ?

I've been running a 512mb Model B for 8 months now as my home's server. I think it has been rebooted twice due to power failure.

Would anyone pay about $20/month to rent an RPi colocated somewhere in the states, along with a basic control panel (reboot, reinstall, virtual console access, etc.)? Something like a model B with a 16 GB SD card? Just curious if there is a market for this vs virtual servers.

$20/m is too high.

There was another posting recently where a guy co-located his RPi (or Beaglebone?) for less than $20 total over a period of 18 months.

$20 is what you would pay for a comparable Linode virtual server.

You can also colocate your RPi for free in Amsterdam, but would you host anything serious there?

A $20 Linode Server would totally outperform a Raspberry Pi... you've got access to 8 Xeon cores vs 1 700MHz ARM6 chip.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5649317

Seems like it's missing an opportunity for linking the speaker to mic plugs in a daisychain for a cyclic network(of admittedly limited functionality)

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