The Raspberry Pi Thread [4]

Yes, heatsink on the SOC / CPU. I wasn't streaming from it this time, I was watching a stream from one of the other motion eye cameras. Was wanting to see if it lost Internet / WIFI. When it was running Motion Eye headless I never really knew if it just lost WIFI or totally locked up? Usually the status light was off, not on solid like this time. This time I had a monitor and keyboard hoked up running full Raspbian. Total lock up.
I swapped out the 3B+ for one of my other 3B's. Took one of my other Motion Eye setups apart and swapped just the Pi. Same case , same camera, same SD card the 3B+ was using. Put it in the same location too. Going to leave it running 24/7 and see what happens. I'm leaning towards it being an issue with the Micro SD card slot or card slot electronics.
I mulling over doing up a USB thumb drive and booting / running the 3B+ from that instead of an SD card. Just to see what happens. Not going to happen until tomorrow some time. A bit sore tonight and not in the mood to mess with it anymore. Have to go look up how to do it too, etc.

Both Pi's are still running this AM. The 3B+ had already locked up by this time yesterday. Still not exactly sure what's up with that Pi 3B+ though? I'm going to leave it running all day and see what happens. If it doesn't glitch I'll probably reimage one of my not in use Micro SD cards and swap that in in place of the thumb dive its booted from now. Running Raspbian like it is now. Then wait and see what happens.

Booting a Pi 3B+ from a usb drive is easy peasy by the way. You just image your thumb drive same way you would a Micro SD card. Plug it into the Pi and power up. Thats it. There is a bit of a delay while it first looks for a Micro SD crad, a couple of seconds, then it boots from the thumb drive. I think I'm going to try a portable USB drive I have sitting here (somewhere) doing nothing, if I can find it lol. It's a 60 or 80 gig laptop drive in a USB enclosure. It will all depend on whether 1.2A is enough to drive it. Its USB powered.

EDIT: Wouldn't boot from my external hard drive, too power hungry I'm thinking. Its a 2.5 inch 5400 RPM IDE laptop drive in an external enclosure. Two USB plugs, power and data and a second power plug. The Pi limits total USB current to 1.2A. This drive in theory should only be wanting 1A max, 500ma per port. The startup current is probably too much for the Pi to dish out. Its a well used really old hard drive. I put the thumb drive back in for now.

How about bluetooth?'Is it enabled? Maybe, just maybe, it affects the wifi?

badrobot said:

How about bluetooth?'Is it enabled? Maybe, just maybe, it affects the wifi?

It's not in use for anything, and left at the defaults. I don't think its a WIFI issue, not anymore. Its totally locking up and freezing. In Motion Eye I had no way to tell if it had just lost WIFI or crashed? Not without going up and watching the status LED etc. Most times I just power cycled it. Now that its running full Raspbian with a Monitor etc connected I can see that its crashing and locking up. I'm leaning towards it being an issue with the SD Card slot and or controller. I'm going to leave it running for a day or so running from the thumb drive. If it doesn't crash I'll switch back to an SD Card. I just reimaged a spare Sandisk card that has so far been very reliable.

I think I'm going to end up binning that Pi 3B+. Went to switch it from 5Ghz to the 2.4Ghz band and got a WIFI contry not set, went to set it and got a configuration could not be saved? And it appears it was already set? It showed as Canada? All kinds of wierdness happening any time I try to change a setting or just close an open window. Big delays before anything happens. "Might" be because of running from the thumb drive not sure? Going to leave it be for now then switch it back to an SD crad tomorrow. If its still lagging and glitchy I'm just going to toss it in the recycle bin and be done with it. Its just not worth the agrivation.

Ok, the Pi 3B (not +) that I swapped into the acting up hardware has, as near as I can tell, been running fine for days now. The camrea feed han't been loast while I've been watching it. I usualy have it up on it's own mnitor on this PC that runs tripple monitors. And sometimes I put it up on my XBOX. Anyway, all that hardware, including the new V2 camera seem to be fine.
That means I'm back to it being the Pi 3B+, the SD Card, or the OS being run as the issue. Right now its running full Raspbian from a thumb drive. I had some lags the other day where I actually thought it had locked up again. Then just about when I was going to power cycle it, it caught up and started working again? It's ben running for 20+ hours and I just checked it and it hasn't locked up. Its watching a feed from the other 3B Motion eye in a browser. Thats still up and viewable.
So next step is to switch to full Raspbian on a Micro SD card and see how that goes. I'm going to use one of my Sandisk cards, as I trust those ones. Then let it run just like it is now for at least 24 hours and see if it locks up. If it doesn't that will point to it being Motion Eye or maybe the Lexar SD cards. If it does lock up I'm 99.9% sure its a defective PI. Micro SD card controller or something.
If it doesn't lock up I think I'll try running Raspbian from one of the Lexar SD cards. If it still doesn't lock up I'll know its a Motion Eye issue. If it does lock up its likely the Lexar Micro SD crad. If I ever get as far as running Motion Eye on it again I'll leave the monitor and keyboard hocked up, that might clue me in as to whether if lost WIFI or a full lock up.
This will take days to sort out I think, so stay tuned for more updates, lol.

@badrobot, heat, IE overheating may be an issue? The SOC / CPU is running very hot. The heat sink is pretty well too hot to touch. I have that 3B+ in that SmartPi Lego case. It doesn't have any real ventalization. Just a couple of samll gaps in the cover. I think thats why it locked up the other night running Raspbian. I picked it up earlier today and the bottom of the case right under the CPU was very very hot. I've taken the top cover lego piece out. The red piece, https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/s...r-raspberry-pi Even with that out the heatsink is very hot, hot enough that I don't want to touch it with my finger. Thats not good. The Pibow case I had it in has a lot better ventilation, https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/p...=2601078325258 My guess though, is with prolonged use it still overheats. Just a suspicion really? The heatsink on the 3B that is now in that Pibow Case is hot, but not hot enough that it burns my finger. The 3B+ heatsink does, or at least feels like it would burn my finger. I have to take my finger off after a second or two. Its wait and see time now whether its still running in the morning.

I won't be surprised if it gets too hot because the cam is continuously hogging the CPU resources processing the live stream specially if your resolution settings is high.

badrobot said:

I won't be surprised if it gets too hot because the cam is continuously hogging the CPU resources processing the live stream specially if your resolution settings is high.

According to the Pi foundation, it should just down clock the CPU, then both the CPU and GPU as it gets hotter. I'd have to go look up what those two temperature trip points are.
It was still running when I had a quick look 5 minutes ago. Status LED was flashing. Didn't want to turn the monitor on in the dark bedroom. Will check that in an hour or so after my morning walk with the dog.
Right now its not streaming, its just watching a stream from one of the other Pi's / cameras. It seems to be OK now that I have opened up the top of the case so air can get in. Time will tell, plan is to just let it run all day, and maybe another night. Then I think I'll keep running Raspbian but switch to one of the Lexar SD cards. I want to rule them out as being the issue. Especially the one that was in it before. If it runs fine on the Lexar I'll have one more go at running motion eye on it.