Raspberry Pi 4 : What are YOU going to do now?

backstander

@herb_fargus
My brother has Pi-hole setup on his RPi3 and he loves it! He set it up so he can VPN into it from anywhere so he also doesn't have ads on his phone or laptop on the go. Also makes surfing the internet more secure while using open WiFi networks. He has a RPi4 on order to upgrade his Pi-hole but he hasn't received it yet.

I'm going to wait a few more months before I pick one up in hopes that the firmware, drivers and software will be better optimized. I'm excited about trying more games from N64, DreamCast, PSX, PSP, PC-FX, DOSBox and MAME. I'm also curious if Sega Saturn, 3DO and Atari Jaguar will run better. Maybe even Dolphin will work so I can get some GameCube games running. I can dream.

I will probably setup Pi-hole on my current RPi3b+ (unless I can score a 2nd RPi4 haha...I'm still dreaming).

quicksilver

Does pi-hole benefit from being on a pi4? I had read that you could set it up on an older model pi and it works fine. Is this not true? I have an old pi 2 laying around I was thinking about using.

backstander

@quicksilver
I think the main benefit would be the gigabit Ethernet (you would probably be fine with using the 1GB RPi4 model). My brother is using the RPi3 (not the plus so 100 Mbps) and it works fine for him. I could also see it being beneficial having more power if you have it setup on a very larger network with many, many more end users.

obsidianspider

@quicksilver You can run Pi-hole just fine on a Pi 0, 2, or 3. I have a spare Pi 3 running Pi-hole and a Pi Zero as the alternate and have zero issues with two dozen devices on my network for a few years now. DNS uses miniscule bandwidth, so 100MBit is more than adequate.

thelostsoul

@KN4THX I am mostly interested in reducing input latency with optimized settings for 8 and 16 bit systems. Also I am excited about the improvements on newer MAME versions and off course the Nintendo 64. My current environment is an overclocked Pi3B.

njscorpio

The project I would love to do is....create a coffee table style arcade cabinet, but instead of one monitor set vertically, it would be two horizontally oriented 4:3 monitors, set with the top edges of each touching each other. So it would be a table where each gamer sat on different sides, and had a screen on the table facing them. I imagine the Pi 4 should be able to display (for example) duplicate Street Fighter screens. Each player would have their own screen.

mitu

@njscorpio I imagine you could do this also with a video splitter to duplicate the image to 2 screens.

KN4THX

@retrogamer1980 Any games in particular?

KN4THX

@njscorpio I remember going to my local Pizza Hut back int the 80s and playing/relaxing on a Pac man style table which was awesome for eating a slice between turns. I'd love to have the craftsman skills to build one of those.

Edit: Just realized you are talking about two different screens. This would be a pretty sweet setup. I actually remember one of my early computer desks had a shelf down above your feet for the vet monitor to sit on so you looked down to play games or type and you could fold the desk opening down over it to create a full sized desk for schoolwork.

@thelostsoul I havent done much with my Pi due to school this term but have been reading up on the latency and run ahead and am quite excited to see how this all works!

@herb_fargus Does the Pi Hole cause any issues with website viewing? I know with traditional ad blocking software I used to run into issues where the site wouldn't load because I blocked the advertisement.

ParadoxGBB

For me, I'd love to push getting DosBOX ECE built / running and seeing if I can get Windows 95/98 running on the thing, opening up a few additional titles from my childhood.

Windows 3.1 already runs great on the Pi3B+ (at least for me).

Jiryn

Is the Pi 4 4GB even out yet?
I can't seem to find it in stock anywhere

Also, do you recommend their power supply, or would any USB-C Work.
I see Canakit has a set that comes with an adapter, which is why I asked.

Sano

IMHO the separate USB3 bus and full 1Gb Ethernet now open the possibilities to make a decent budget NAS/cloud/seedbox.
I plan on buying 2 USB3 external HD, a powered USB3 hub and making a LVM RAID1 NAS based on a Pi4, probably on top of retropie.

Darksavior

I will need to figure out how to place the pi4 in my dead pal snes since I can't find an 18AWG usb-c extender.

For shaders, I hope the gpu can handle some of the better crt shaders or maybe the existing pi ones at a higher res.

For some reason, lr-snes9x (latest) has gotten huge slowdowns lately. Games like Kirby3 and Trials of Mana will no longer play fullspeed on my pi3b+ at 1.45Ghz. I'm just sick of not having a device capable of doing full speed snes.

I also hope to move more games to lr-fbneo and see how well a newer mame runs. Managing arcade romsets for multiple emulators is annoying.
I'm also wondering how well psx-beetle runs even without a dynarec.

The flirc pi4 case preorder is still on sale. pishop.us has the 2GB pi4's in stock so I ordered mine today. I also ordered the official usb-c psu from there. Accept no substitutions. Some sites, including that one, will try and sell you a bundle with a 3rd party one. This site in particular bundles it with the 2.5A microusb version with a usb-c adapter...

hooperre

All these projects sound awesome (particularly the Pi-Hole / file-server route), but I'm concerned a bit regarding security. Is changing the Pi's user name and password and the SSH port enough?

mitu

@hooperre said in Raspberry Pi 4 : What are YOU going to do now?:

Is changing the Pi's user name and password and the SSH port enough?

You don't have to open the SSH to the world and for pi-hole you don't need to expose the PI to the internet - it can sit in your LAN behind your router.

hooperre

@mitu How about for RetroPie? I have been wondering this in general for a while.

mitu

@hooperre said in Raspberry Pi 4 : What are YOU going to do now?:

@mitu How about for RetroPie?

I don't understand the question.

hooperre

Is changing the Pi's user name and password and the SSH port enough to protect my Raspberry Pi from brute force attacks from Chinese bots?

I assumed by enabling SSH I'm making my Pi accessible, but now that I'm thinking about it, there's no external IP address for it so that's probably what you were referring to. So it would be behind my router as well. My MotionEyesOS Pi OTOH I guess is the one I would need to worry about, which does have an external IP and has a changed password and port.

I'm assuming all these bots are using the default login with port 22.

Sorry, this is stupid I just haven't really thought about it much. I remember there being a discussion about whether SSH should be on by default and the admin team decided not to so I kind of assumed the RetroPie project left Pi's prone to attack if SSH was enabled.

cyperghost

@hooperre said in Raspberry Pi 4 : What are YOU going to do now?:

Is changing the Pi's user name and password and the SSH port enough to protect my Raspberry Pi from brute force attacks from Chinese bots?

Better than nothing.

I'm assuming all these bots are using the default login with port 22.

Yes and if you set it to defaults your Pi will be visited by several "friends" very soon. I suggest to use a logfile watcher that will deny access after 2 attempts with wrong password. But leaving SSH open is a security risk at glance.

mitu

@hooperre said in Raspberry Pi 4 : What are YOU going to do now?:

Is changing the Pi's user name and password and the SSH port enough to protect my Raspberry Pi from brute force attacks from Chinese bots?

Depends on the new password, it's its relatively simple, it's not going to be enough.

I assumed by enabling SSH I'm making my Pi accessible, but now that I'm thinking about it, there's no external IP address for it so that's probably what you were referring to. So it would be behind my router as well. My MotionEyesOS Pi OTOH I guess is the one I would need to worry about, which does have an external IP and has a changed password and port.

It depends. If you have IPv6 enabled on your router and your ISP supports it, you might find that your PI can get a - public facing - IPv6 address. Your router should also have a firewall to prevent the direct access.

I'm assuming all these bots are using the default login with port 22.

Commonly, yes.

Sorry, this is stupid I just haven't really thought about it much. I remember there being a discussion about whether SSH should be on by default and the admin team decided not to so I kind of assumed the RetroPie project left Pi's prone to attack if SSH was enabled.

I think that was an upstream (Raspbian distribution) decision, but it's still a sensible default.