Pi 4 came out with power requirements of 5V@3A. In reality, using a 3rd party power supply will result in a low voltage warning even if the power supply can provide 3A. The reason lies in voltage drop. Pi 4 board sends a warning if voltage drops below a certain value (about 4.75V based on my measurements).

I’ve done measurements with a 100W laptop charger which is rated for 3A at 5V. Under load, voltage drops from 4.95V to 4.75V, which triggers the low voltage warning. That’s why the official 15W power supply is rated for 5.1V@3A, 0.1V higher than the USB specification. With Pi 4 you can just ignore the warnings, as even an overclocked board with 2 external HDDs fits into 15W.

With Pi 5 the situation turns around. An overclocked board alone draws 2.5 amps, leaving no space for USB devices. The new official power supply is now rated for 5.1V@5A, which you can’t replace with a charger from your junk box full of spaghetti cables and random chargers. So why not just buy an official RPi power supply? Even if it’s priced reasonably, I don’t like the idea of saving $2 on a PD chip and then spending $12 on a power supply and being tied to that specific power supply and that specific cable length.

So I checked my junk box and found a PD trigger board, an XL4015 DC-DC converter, and some wiring. I set the output voltage to 5.15V and soldered wires to the GPIO adapter that was bundled with the NVMe HAT. I used 2 pins for 5V and 2 pins for GND, as single pin couldn't handle 5 amps.

So now Pi has a Power Delivery–compatible power system (actually it works with almost any quick-charge protocol). This means it can be powered from basically any fast charger. The PD trigger board asks the power supply for 20V (or the highest voltage it supports if 20V isn’t available), then this voltage is converted down to 5.15V using the XL4015 module. The Pi itself is powered through the GPIO pins, bypassing the USB-C input entirely.

As a result: no warnings, one additional USB port, and additional voltage to power other accessories (e.g. 12V fan, monitors, 3.5" drives—you name it), all using a single Type-C cable.

I've found that my Pi 400's built in web browser is almost unusable with bloaty script-heavy sites, so I'm wondering if the Pi 5 or 500+ is any better. There would be an NVMe SSD present if that helps.

If someone has this setup, could they take a look at homedepot.com ? That's a very slow and obnoxious site that I use sometimes, as I do buy some from there when I can't avoid it. I'm ok if it's a bit sluggish but my Pi 400 was near incapable of navitation or loading the page in a reasonable amount of waiting.

Thanks!

Raspberry Pi’s Tom Dewey released today the first update to the major Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0 series of this cross-platform utility for installing Raspberry Pi OS and other operating systems to a microSD card.

You would think that Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0.2 is a small update that fixes some bugs and other issues discovered in the initial Raspberry Pi Imager 2.0 release, but, in fact, it’s a huge release adding lots of new features like direct I/O bypass to reduce memory pressure during writes.

This release also adds a zero-copy ring buffer for data transfer between download and write threads to reduce CPU overhead, an asynchronous cache file writer to overlap download and disk I/O operations, sequential read hints during verification for better prefetching, and a performance data analysis tool for debugging slow writes.

Less than two weeks after the November release, Raspberry Pi OS received its December update with a collection of usability improvements, desktop refinements, and important stability fixes.

The release introduces a safe-eject mechanism for USB-connected HDD and NVMe drives, allowing users to remove external storage without risking data corruption. The Labwc desktop also gains a new Alt-F2 shortcut for opening the run dialog, extending its keyboard-driven workflow.

Moreover, the update adjusts how the Screens control panel behaves by no longer generating a default kanshi configuration file on launch, ensuring that existing user configurations are not unintentionally overwritten.

"The current pressure on memory prices, driven by competition from the AI infrastructure roll-out, is painful but ultimately temporary," CEO Eben Upton wrote in a blog post. He also said that the company looks forward to "unwinding these price increases once it abates."

Raspberry Pi announced today a new variant of the latest Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer with 1GB RAM to provide the community with more flexibility for their Linux and Open Source projects.

Released two years ago, the Raspberry Pi 5 was initially launched in 4GB and 8GB RAM variants, with a 2GB RAM variant released in August 2024, and a 16GB RAM model arriving in January 2025 thanks to the optimized D0 stepping of the Broadcom BCM2712 application processor in the Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer.

As of today, you can buy the Raspberry Pi 5 with 1GB RAM. Apart from the 1GB RAM, the new Raspberry Pi 5 features the same specs as the rest of the Raspberry Pi 5 variants, including a quad-core 2.4GHz Arm Cortex-A76 processor with cryptography extensions, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and a PCI Express port.

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/38253307

Raspberry Pi Imager, a tool that helps users easily write OS images onto an SD card, which can then be used to boot the Raspberry Pi, has just released version 2.0, now available for download.

The new version marks the most substantial change since the tool debuted five years ago, by introducing a redesigned interface, a guided setup wizard, and built-in support for configuring Raspberry Pi Connect before the first boot.

Imager 2.0 reorganizes the entire workflow into a clear, step-by-step sequence. Each stage now occupies the full window, giving more room for explanations, validation messages, and contextual links. The new wizard guides users through selecting their device, choosing an operating system, picking a storage medium, configuring system settings, and writing the image.

After debuting its Debian 13-based release at the start of last month, Raspberry Pi OS—the recommended, freely distributed operating system for all Raspberry Pi devices—has received a new November update that brings desktop improvements, HiDPI enhancements, and upgrades across key system components.

The update introduces HiDPI scaling controls directly in the Screens panel, making it easier for users to tune display clarity on high-resolution monitors. HiDPI icons have also been added across the panel, file manager, and several applications, improving sharpness and visual consistency. Additionally, the Wayland task switcher now includes icons.

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/36822323

I just got my second RPi5, put LibreElec on it via microSD, and for some reason the boot menu appears and goes through it's thing first before booting LibreElec. Is there a reason it doesn't boot straight into LibreElec? How can I have it skip the boot menu screen?

Title!

The built-in keyboard on my Pi 500 is acting up and, while I found a way online to fix it that looks simple enough, it'll be a few days before I have a chance to do it. In the meantime I've got another keyboard plugged into a USB port as a substitute.

The trouble is that after a couple hours the built-in keyboard starts repeatedly spamming the letter N on its own and I have to reboot to make it stop. Is there any way to tell the Pi to ignore its own keyboard inputs and only listen to the other keyboard for now, then reverse that when I get the main keyboard straightened out again?

I realize this is Raspberry Pi community, but considering the overlap, I hope Pi-adjacent is acceptable.

Looking at the Orange Pi Zero W2 for a project since it's available with a lot more RAM than the Pi ZeroW2 (1-4 GB vs 512 MB). I'm not doing anything complex with it (no GPIO, USB gadget, etc), and it'll basically just be a tiny server running Kiwix and possibly some light groupware and/or file share. Maybe even CodeServer if I go with the 4 GB model.

Essentially my requirements for it are:

• Wifi AP support so devices can connect to it. Preferably AP+STA so it can also provide internet and PiHole services.
• Runs a supported distro (e.g. not the one-and-done version from the manufacturer that's never updated)
• Fairly stable
• Supports 256 to 512 GB SD card

According to what I've read, Armbian seems to be the go-to distro for these boards. It also seems to be supported by DietPi.

I've got a handful of Pi Zero's (both 1 and 2) and they work well, but even with zram enabled, I'm limited by the 512 MB of memory, so these "fruit clone" ones are tempting. Anyone have hands-on experience with them? Is there a better distro besides Armbian? Should I just stick with Raspberry Pi and manage with the limited RAM?