Raspberry Pi 500 PLUS - First look

ARM ARM news
1

First off, if you order a RPi 500 Plus, be sure to order the Canakit 45 watt power supply or the Raspberry Pi 47 watt power supply.

To install EnOS on your RPi 500 Plus without opening up the RPi 500+ and removing the included NVME, you will need to have either Raspberry Pi OS or EnOS installed to a micro SD card.

Connect the micro SD card and boot the computer. In my case it detected the presence of the uSD and booted from it. Go Here and download the RPi 5 image.

In a terminal window, enter lsblk -f to find the device name of the NVME.
Now use gnome-disk-utility or your favorite burning app to burn the image to the NVME.

Power off and remove the micro SD card. Boot up and it should boot from the NVME and auto start the install script. After providing the necessary information, a reboot should take you to your fresh EnOS install.

By default, the RPi 500 Plus uses NVME Gen 2 specs. Then you will get about 400 MB/sec transfers.

sudo hdparm -T --direct /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1
Timing 0_DIRECT cached reads:  882 MB in 2.00 seconds = 440.56 MB/sec

use a text editor to edit /boot/config.txt
Scroll to the bottom and under [all] enter

dtparam=nvme
dtparam=pciex1_gen=3

Now you should have twice the transfer speed.

sudo hdparm -T --direct /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1
Timing 0_DIRECT cached reads:  1704 MB in 2.00 seconds = 851.41 MB/sec

Using a Kill A Watt ez the RPi 500 Plus with a Crucial P310 500 GB registered the following

idle            bouncing between 3 and 4 Watts
stress -c 13    8 Watts
stress -m 4     7 Watts

As per here this is what I found for the default Keyboard LEDs

The default keys on the Pi 500+ to increase and decrease the global hue are
Fn+F3 and Fn+Shift+F3 respectively. The default keys on the Pi 500+ to
increase and decrease the global brightness are Fn+F6 and Fn+F5 respectively.

I am not interested in the Keyboard lighting, it is just a distraction for me.
So I used Fn+F5 to essentially turn off the lighting.

For those interested in the Keyboard lighting, Debian has an app rpi-keyboard-config
for much improved lighting options. The rpi-keyboard-config binary and a little makepkg magic could probably make this available to Archlinux ARM users.

Impressions

Upon first boot, I had a blank black screen. The problem ended up being an incompatibility problem between the HDMI to micro HDMI adapter and the RPi 5+
The micro HDMI female connector RPi 500+ was recessed to far into the device for a good
connection. On the HDMI adapter, I ended up cutting back the rubber grip to expose a little more of the plug and all was fine.

For a low power device, with the RPi 500+ configured to NVME Gen 3 specs, it is definitely snappy enough for a daily driver. In fact I am going to make this my daily driver for at least a week and see how I like the keyboard.

fastfetch
fastfetch921×539 83.7 KB

Pudge

14 Likes
2

So it worked just like i assumed to install to the nvme drive. This is how i installed on my Pi400 to an external usb drive. I know that this new Pi500+ with an nvme drive should be really good compared to my Pi400 using an an older external laptop spinning drive mounted in a case which i run xfce4.

1 Like
3

You are not alone.
(jump at around 03:00 if you want to skip the long intro)

1 Like
4

This video is just like someone filmed my experience. Taking apart the RPi 500 + and checking out how the board was seated. Then shaving back some plastic to expose a bit more plug.

I have had zero problems with the video cable since modifying it.

When I had the case open, I noticed the supplied RPi 500+ official NVME was a 256 GB 2280 device, Not the 2240 NVME. So I exchanged it with a Crucial P310 2280 Gen4 500 GB NVME. So I can report that this NVME performs very well in the RPi 500 Plus, with the dtparam set to Gen 3 the performance is great.

I am now using the RPi 500 Plus as my daily driver.
I like the smaller size of the keyboard. I am also very pleased with the key’s touch and feel. The only thing I don’t like about it is the key layout. I am used to a full 104 or 105 key keyboard. So I miss the numeric pad and the position of the End, Home, PgDn, PgUp, and etc. keys. I guess I just need some time to adjust.

Pudge

2 Likes
5

My trial run of the RPi 500 Plus just ended.

It was working OK when I turned it off last night. This morning, the keyboard will not work.
It occurs on both Raspberry Pi OS, and EnOS. I can plug in a USB keyboard and that will allow keyboard input. But what’s the point.

Maybe it is the ribbon cable between the keyboard and the motherboard??

I haven’t decided what I will do about it.

Pudge

2 Likes
6

This is unfortunate. I hope you can fix it.

7

I wrote something in the previous thread about this and then deleted it because you know, i am new here and i don’t want to stick out. But maybe i should have kept it :slight_smile:

8

I decided to give this one more chance. Before, I was using a RPi USB Mouse I got with my RPi 400 kit. This time when I was hooking everything up, the RPi USB Mouse was in a different room while a Logitech USB mouse was laying right there. So I used the Logitech mouse. Every thing else was the same.

With the Logitech USB mouse, it has performed as expected. No glitches. Rock solid.
I find it hard to believe that a USB mouse would cause intermittent problems with the key board. But hey, I’ll take it.

If it continues to perform like this, I will be very happy with the RPi 500 Plus.

Pudge

4 Likes