New Buildbotics controller or raspberry pi upgrade

[Aiph5u (Aiph5u (not affiliated with Onefinity))]

Hey JFab,

the current Raspberry Pi 3B is already 64-bit capable, however Buildbotics and Onefinity run a 32-bit Raspbian of 2017 on it.

Onefinity said to work on a 2.0 firmware that will run on Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi 4.

@Aiph5u

the Raspberry Pi 4 is for the first time is a major redesign. In comparison to the Raspberry Pi 3 and older, it mainly brings advantages to the desktop computer user, as the USB, Ethernet and all other peripheral chips are now connected more directly to the CPU so are all much faster (Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3, etc.). The Pi 4 is able to run much better graphics standards, i.e. OpenGL-ES 3.0, Vulkan 1.0 and 4K resolution (over two mini-HDMI outputs). Also the CPU is a little more powerful type (ARM Cortex A72-based instead of A53 on older Raspberry Pis). Also you can now attach much more, more fast, and more recent memory (LPDDR4 instead of LPDDR2, and up to 8 GB), which makes it run faster. High amounts of RAM are necessary to run powerful desktop applications. Of course, it also consumes more power. If you want to know what is the main difference in internal redesign between the Pi <=3 and the new Raspberry Pi 4, see here.

It is the first time that a Raspberry Pi is marketed as a desktop computer (while Raspberry Pi 3 and the others are offered as single-board computers , mainly intended for embedded use or as experimental board). You can even get a Pi 4 as complete personal computer, built into a compact keyboard (or as desktop kit to assemble it yourself ).

But regarding its use in a small universal 4-axis CNC controller, …

… RPi 3’s seem to have more than enough compute power for our application.

– Doug Coffland

@Aiph5u

@Hermsen.BJ

Based on threads on the buildbotics forum a year or more ago there were issues which prevented upgrading the rpi to a later version. Don’t recall specifics though…

this interested me and I searched for it, but as far as I can see on the Buildbotics Forum, they mainly see the problem that Raspberry Pi altered the connectors positions on the Raspberry Pi 4, so that Pi 4 would no longer fit into the Controller’s case backplate (compare yourself: Raspberry Pi 3B vs. Raspberry Pi 4B ). The Ethernet port is now on the right of the USB ports. Also Buildbotics sees increased heat implications with Pi 4 with their current casing.

Other than that, one user reports that he was able to successfully build the Buildbotics-firmware sources on the Raspberry Pi 400 (Pi 4 based). So I would see no reason why it wouldn’t work with Onefinity-firmware sources too – both upgrading the hardware to a Raspberry Pi 4 and upgrading the Raspberry Pi OS to a recent version as well (usually recommended in order not to have a device with a lot of old security issues in your home network).

So, you could build a Onefinity Controller from the sources on a recent Raspberry Pi 4 board and use a recent Raspberry Pi OS SD card image as base. Such a recent Raspberry Pi OS SD card image also boots fine on the original Raspberry Pi 3B inside your Onefinity Controller (I tested that). So if you build the onefinity-firmware from the souces, as it would be a switch to a 64-bit operating system, you would already have a faster system, even without exchanging the Raspberry Pi.

By the way, I don’t think that you would be able to mill your toolpaths faster with a faster Raspberry Pi or a faster Raspberry Pi OS installed, as it is the bit, the spindle and the workpiece material that limits the speed of operation. If you want to mill projects faster, you would rather buy a more powerful spindle.

@Aiph5u

As for the Onefinity Controller’s current operating system, a frozen and totally outdated Raspbian OS from 2017, updating this OS on the Onefinity SD card image brings many problems and will not work, as explained in the following below. So what would work instead, is take a recent Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit) , flash it on a SD card, boot it, and build (=compile and install) the Onefinity System from its sources.

@JFab

@Aiph5u

@JFab

It is getting older now and is obviously slow.

in what respect is it slow?

Its an old raspberry pi now and as with all computers run slow as compared to brand new. I build PC’s and just waiting for them to give us old customers an upgrade route, Make sense now?

You did not really answer my question. I think the parsing step of the uploaded g-code could run faster with a faster hardware or faster operating system, but I don’t know if this really does matter to everyone.