So they just released the Raspberry Pi 4

As I was building my Raspberry Pi 3B/+ cluster, I was thinking “wait, soon there should be a Raspberry Pi 4, shouldn’t there?”. So I looked up all rumors, official statements, etc. Long story short, nothing was officially decided, yet. This was a couple of months ago.
About 1 month ago, I saw that a blog entry from the official Raspberry Pi homepage stated, that the Raspberry Pi 4 certainly won’t be released before 2020. I was disappointed, but at least this would give me some time for plans.
Just now, I casually looked up my new mail, and here we go, a newsletter from an approved Raspberry Pi reseller in my country just announced immediate availability of the brand new Raspberry Pi.
Thanks for not giving me preparation time, you guys.

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Just ordered one - 4 GB model - with USB-C -> Micro-USB adaptor, USB-C charger, red/white case, 2 x mini HDMI -> HDMI cables…
Can’t wait!
I’ll be running Debian Buster (it won’t arrive till after 5th July anyway) and probably XFCE ('cause I kinda hate “pixel” desktop). Probably just go to an “office supplies” store for a 256 GB sd card…

Planning to sit it on my desk at work and use that as my “daily driver” - hooked up to 2 x HDMI monitors… pretty much all I do on my current Ubuntu laptop (personal) - Chromium browser, bunch of terminal sessions, and rdesktop or remmina to remote customers (who don’t let me SSH to their stuff) - thankfully Synergy have RPi binaries for my software KVM - so I can drive the cruddy work supplied Win10 laptop (which I only use for Skype4Business and Cherwell service desk client).

If that works okay - I might shell out for another one for home… just a shame RPi still don’t have a decent LiPo charging circuit/charging doohickey…

I see Abishek’s posted about RPi4 on Facebook ItsFOSS group.

Anybody else going to buy RPi4?

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Tempted to order one. Looks like it’s finally powerful enough to use for everyday tasks now.

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It’s out of stock :frowning:

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My order’s got a 6 days lead time till they can even ship (Core Electronics in Australia )…

cr@p!

my vendor won’t actually get the RPi4 I ordered until early August!!! :frowning_face:

then I gotta wait till they ship it 3000km from east coast oz to west coast oz…

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It’s kind of a preorder and I hate that.

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With this kinda lead time - I’m seriously thinking about ordering a 2nd one from someone else (will probably have a use for two of them anyway)…

Going to get “ready” for Debian Buster in the meantime too… with uncertainty about i386 libs in Ubuntu from 19.10 onwards (especially wine compatibility - which affects a bunch of Windows games I run through Proton) I reckon it might be time to jump overboard from the SS Canonical…

Maybe even opt for the x64_64 version of Raspbian???

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I think no one is delivering it at present. The availability date is August. RPi are manufactured in the UK so it may take some time to meet the high demand.

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Alright! Good news is that Raspberry Pi is sending a sample device all the way from the UK so that It’s FOSS could review it. It’s clearing the customs as I write this message :man_dancing:

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This is great. Can’t wait for the review.

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Nice! Looking forward to reading about it. :slight_smile:

Just saw this yesterday. Something to be aware of: https://bgr.com/2019/07/10/raspberry-pi-4-usb-c-charging-issue-how-to-fix-the-power-problem/

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Quick impression after 48+ hours with it…

Quick? No - this is a long multiparagraph series of anecdotes…

Friday:
So - got confrmation Friday afternoon that my Pi4 (4GB RAM) had arrived, thanks Core Electronics in Newcastle (my home town) : https://core-electronics.com.au/ !

Went to OfficeWorks and bought a 128 GB sdcard on the way home from work (as well as a couple of sixpacks of my favourite cider from nearby bottleshop).

So - my delivery also included a new case for one of my Pi3B boards …

Step 1 - rehouse my Pi3 (it was living inside a case made of Lego blocks)… but it won’t boot! Then I take a look at the at the new case, and the sdcard - there’s a bulge in the new case where the sdcard is/was… Doh! I’d bent the sdcard and cracked it! Some consolation was that it was only a 32 GB card and not a 64!

So “first cab off the rank” is to get get the 3B back online, as it’s my SSH gateway to my LAN from the interwebs, and my add blocker (pi-hole)… things weren’t going to plan! Used “dd” to write Raspbian Buster images (“lite” for headless on the 3B) - and I kept letting zsh cli completion finish /dev/mmcblk… as /dev/mmcblk0p1 !!! And then unable to read or mount the sdcard so I can force enable ssh on boot (i.e. create empty file “ssh” on the “boot” partition). After several attempts of this it dawned on me! I needed to use /dev/mmcblk0!!!

Despite having consumed 1/2 dozen of the ciders - got my pi-hole back and running and fail2ban with raspbian buster (it was running stretch previously) by around 9pm… sweet… no more work on the Pi4 tonight after writing Raspbian Buster Desktop image to 128 GB sdcard, drink a few more ciders and thrash the new Tool song “Fear Inoculum” @ eleven on the volume knob on my headphones!

Saturday:
Boot the Pi4 up Saturday morning - get it running everything I will need via SSH session : e.g. mounting 256 GB USB3 card for subset of my music collection : syncing stuff I need (like music) via Resilio Sync : compiling Sayonara Player from source code(took around 30 mins using all 4 cores) : installing XFCE4 (kinda hate Pixel/LXDE)…

Hook it up to a monitor… seems okay… but Chromium is so sluggish!!

Sunday:
Anyway left it like that Saturday night - and hooked up again Sunday… what? RSL sync has crashed and the USB3 256 drive is unmounted/panicking! I suspect it was probably a power issue… but I’m using an official Pi foundation USB C brick that I ordered with the board!!!

So I disable autostart of rsl sync and remove the USB3 drive from /etc/fstab - and write a script to do those things manually (or undo them)…

Decided to give Sayonara (built from source) a try - so far so good, connect to my music folders, queue up some tracks, and bang! Crash! Doh!

Monday:
Brought it to work, tried it out on two monitors - lost my wallpaper settings in XFCE4, looks kinda ugly… fire up Chromium - runs slow as a wet week! Then checked the case (official Pi foundation RPi4 case) almost too hot to touch!

Current : I’ve abandoned plans to use this as a desktop replacement for the interim

I kinda suspect it’s 'cause this is a “hamstrung” 32 bit O/S running on 64 bit capable hardware… Might revisit my plans for a RISC based NIX box as a desktop replacement when there’s a reliable (and easy) way to get my Pi4 running a 64 bit operating system… Sure - my 2 x RPi3B are also running 32 bit on 64 bit capable hardware, but I’m not trying to run full desktops with hi-res hidpi on them, nor Chrome/Chromium with more than 6 tabs open (on my work based Ubuntu 19.04 laptop [core2duo+HT w/ 16 GB RAM] - I’ve got 30+ tabs open in Chromium - and most of them work related). Also probably pay me to invest in a couple of heatsinks/case ventilation…

I have RP4 working only with an ADS-B receiver, flightRadar24 and FlightAware to share data with their sites, without monitor and RP4 “burns”. The temperature was > 60ºC
I installed a cooler and heatsinks to keep it running 24/7 and the cooler is controlled by software to keep RP4’s temperature at 45ºC (my settings)

I used to work with RP3 for the same project and realized that RP4 is more stable: I needed to reboot RP3 every 2/3 weeks and never found the cause. With RP4 this doesn’t happen (so far)

This is my only experience with RP4

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My two RPi3B (not +) running Raspbian Buster :

> ╰─➤  sudo vcgencmd measure_temp
> temp=45.6'C
> ╰─➤  sudo vcgencmd measure_temp 
> temp=51.0'C

(bottom one is not housed in an official RPi case - an aftermarket one - the one that caused me to bend/crack an SDcard)

My RPi4 running Raspbian Buster :

> ╰─➤  sudo vcgencmd measure_temp
> temp=67.0'C

(housed in official RPi 4 case)

I’ve read there are some problems with that. I personally think that mostly this “problem” arises, because people forgot to read the specs. It is obvious that such a comparatively strong device (needing at least 3A over USB-C!) needs some more serious cooling.
So what I am basically trying to say, you should not worry, as this is normal.

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@Akito, I read the specs when I bought it and I know it needs a power supply with at least 15W, but in my opinion it is wrong to sell RP4 without heatsinks - it’s the least you can have to dissipate the heat of ICs.

You know the faults of BGA ICs with broken solders, for example on graphics cards, and they have heatsinks and coolers.

The RP4 also uses BGAs. In my opinion, if you don’t reduce the heat on these RP4 ICs, you will shorten its life, but as you said, it’s normal for RPI4 to reach temperatures > 60ºC

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Pulled the top off the official RPi4 case this morning, checked it a couple of times from work today - dropped by 10 degrees celsius!!!

> ╰─➤  sudo vcgencmd measure_temp
> temp=57.0'C

I was going to order another one - but might hold off for now - with Sayonara Player (built from source) crashing on play, sluggish response in Chromium - not quite ready for primetime as a desktop replacement…

Might head over to Jaycar one lunch break and grab some heatsinks for it… maybe with some better cooling it might run Chromium better (i.e. won’t need to throttle CPU to keep temps down)…

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My RP4 with heatsinks and cooler controlled by software for 45ºC (room temp =24ºC):
(uptime only 3 day because I had a power failure in the house)

$ uptime -p
$ up 3 days, 14 hours, 15 minutes
$ vcgencmd measure_temp
$ temp=44.5'C
With heatsinks and with cooler without control (speed@100%):
$ vcgencmd measure_temp
$ temp=35.9'C
With heatsinks and without cooler (~30 minutes after stopping the cooler):
$ vcgencmd measure_temp
$ temp=59.1'C

@daniel.m.tripp,
You can read a discussion about RP4 temperature here

Yesterday, an RPI engineer announced that they will launch a software to reduce the temperature during idle

Your problem with Chromium could be the throttling like you said

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I just installed a small fan above 2 aluminium and 1 copper heatsink on my Raspberry Pi 4 B - 4GB and I am very satisfied with the results:

Idle:

Temperature  |     38'C : 100'F (Cool runnings)

Full CPU stress test:

Temperature  |     49'C : 120'F (Optimal temperature)
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