Pi5 ... Not On Amazon Yet

It has been a massively popular brute.

Raspberry Pi Ltd don't sell on Amazon, so any supply there is from unauthorised resellers, aka scalpers.

Theo

If you do buy one, make sure you buy the official USB PSU.

I bought a rPi5 without the official USB PSU, and it doesn't work with a standard USB plug. So now I'm waiting for the out of stock 5 amp, 5v, USB charger.

None of this nonsense, with the Orange Pi 5, it runs on standard USB kit.

Long wait.

It seems every Pi has a different power connector.

I am rapidly realising there is no 'standard' USB...

At least 4 standards exist.

It's multi-dimensional. There are standards for the connectors and wiring labelled with letters A, B, C and micro (also non-standard ones labelled mini), then there are standards for the data labelled with numbers

Not all combinations are possible and fewer are permitted by the standards but there is still plenty of room for diversity.

IOW what we call here 'a right buggers muddle'

Very often it's down to the USB cable you use, many/most are simply not up to carrying the current (especially at start-up) that RPis need. I have two Pi 4s and they are fairly fussy (not as fussy as a 5 of course) and they will run on 2.5 amp USB outlets but only with a good, preferably short, USB cable.

Also, of course, a USB 1 or 2 outlet has a maximum specified current output of only 500mA and even USB 3 is only supposed to be 900mA. Many outlets can supply more but on the other hand USB sockets on laptops and such are often only capable of the USB standard current outputs.

-- Chris Green ·

That pretty much sums it up - all things considered it's surprising how often it gets the job done.

I don't think USB mini was "unofficial", they were quite quickly replaced by USB micro though, so it was the cheap cable that would wear/break rather than the port on the expensive device.

A few weird and wonderful non-standard connectors did exist, typically on cameras.

I have 20 watt USB plugs, that is:

The trick being the USB standard expects higher power devices to boost the voltage, that is how fast phone chargers work. However, the rPi5 expects 27W at 5.1V, not at a higher voltage.

The net result is that my rPi5 runs, but shuts down after a few minutes. Loads of undervoltage errors. Strangely, Pi OS seems to stay up better than Ubuntu, but I haven't checked that rigorously. It also runs hot, which the Orange Pi 5 does not.

So I'm waiting for an official PSU.

Yes. I have a Panasonic Lumix that has such a socket. At the time I bought it, a cheap and nasty USB micro-B cable could be had for £1.00. It would work but would not TX data fast nor pass a decent charging current, but would work. Or for £2.99 you could buy a nice USB micro-B that would charge at the full current (2A) and your data would fair fly across.

Panasonic wanted £59.99 for the cable. F*ck 'em and the horse they rode in on! They did provide a battery charging dock so the cable wasn't needed.

Having just punted for a new phone I'm now having to switch to USB-C cables. I've managed to acquire over 30 USB micro-B cables over the last

I started moving to type-C devices in 2015, with a Nokia N1 tablet. All my 'daily' devices (laptops, phones, mice, keyboards, dock, chargers) are now type C.

I have a handful of 'specialised' devices that are still mini/micro type-B but not worth junking just for the hell of it.

Being bare boards, I find the power connector problem easy to solve for the Pis. For my Pi Zeros I snip a USB-A extension cable in half and solder the wires up to the test pads under the Micro USB connectors. Then I can just use USB plugpacks and devices directly, with none of this connector nonsense. I cable-tie the cables to one of the mounting holes on the PCB, which works well for strain relief.

Still, now with USB-C they're introducing some intelligent cables that electronically tell the host what their power capacity is, thereby defying such attempts at simple DIY solutions. The future looks bleak.

They seem to have stopped trying for compatibility in preference for doing all things for all men. Give it twenty years and plumbers will by carrying around USB Type-P adapter kits in order to fix a leaky pipe. :)

I was surprised just how long it's been till I ended up with USB C on anything. There's USB 3.0 A on this desktop, USB 3.0 A on my Linux desktop, USB 3.0 A on my old laptop and USB 3.1 Gen1 A on my new laptop with 1 USB C with Thunderbolt. I've plenty of USB disk caddies that have USB 3.0 B or USB 3.0 micro B. But only 1 device with a C that arrived on Monday. It had a USB A to C in the box. I've not checked it does anything other than charge the phone though!

That's the great thing with standards... so many to choose from !

Can anyone guess which XKCD cartoon this is? :-)

No, so I peeked - Spot On.

Exactly, a phone charger is a totally different beast than a 5V Power Supply Unit.

Unless you need a lot of power for PCIe or USB devices, the Raspberry Pi

---druck