[elsmandino]

Hi,

I am currently using Kodi in my living room on a Rasberry PI B (Gen 1). I am running it off an 8GB Noob card that I bought from the Pi Hut (as they are supposedly one of the fastest you can get for the Pi). I am also connecting Kodi to the new Emby backend, which saves everything to the Pi's SD Cards to make synching much quicker.

The Pi is good but a little bit laggy for my living room and I was hoping to upgrade to the second Generation Pi B.

A couple of questions:

1. Power Supply - the current power supply is not powerful enough for the new Pi. I was just going to with one of the recommended Power Supplies but have come accross lots of electrical outlets that have usb built into them. E.g.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/DOUBLE-SOCKET-TW...socket+usb

This would be a neater set up for me - is there any reason not to use one of these?

2. SD Card - I am hoping to set my new Pi to dual boot, so I can choose to sometimes surf the net too (with Raspbian for example). Will my current 8GB be able to do this or shall I need to get something a bit bigger?

Thanks in advance.

[zephura]

Hi

I fear you will be redirect to the Raspberry forum...

for your questions :
1. I'm surprised, I understood that RPi need less and less power RPiB needed 0.7A, RPi2 needed 0.5-0.6A
but the RPi is not really the main point;
The main point is HOW MANY devices you connect ? (wifi, usb-adapter, keyboard.....)
that's why strong power supply are required (for the socket you'r looking into : 2A per usb outlet should be enough, 2x1A ... is enough, but... don't expect to connect too many usb-devices)

2. SD Card
nota benemy opinion...dual boot on RPi, don't really see why to do this, even for surf the net
2Gb for small distro is enough
4Gb for 1 distro is enough

You'll be confronted to strong problem for installing 2 different distros on 1 SD-Card (it can be done, but...)
Before doing anything, WRITE how/what you will do :
- partition the card
- copying files How/which/where ... (that's the VERY hard part)
- installation (how/what/where) (that's the hard part)
- configuration (that's the very easy part)

REALLY, I'm not kidding, write your own howto before doing anything

[invisable]

In theory that usb socket outlet should be ok. However there's no guarantee. As usb sockets have an allowable tolorence there's a chance that the voltage it delivers could only be 4.75v if so this will cause you a problem on the pi2. The only way your know is to try it, just make sure you use the a thickest shortest usb lead possible to eliminate as much volt drop as possible.

8Gb is big enough for openelec, of course you could always go bigger and install berryboot if you'd like to dual boot, but personally I would just swap SD cards and keep it simple.
If you are thinking of upgrading your card I would check this thread.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt...=63&t=4076
I know many of the users here including myself use this card...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Class-Me...B00D6ENF7M
and it's considered one of the best,http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Class-Memory-MicroSD-Adapter/dp/B00D6ENF7M but like you say, Noobs cards are great as well. And if your only going to use raspbian for casual browsing you may have a card that will do the job already.

[elsmandino]

Thanks very much to you both for your help.

In retrospect, I think I am now just going to go with a powersupply from the PiHut - at least it is definitely guaranteed to work.

Also, in light of what you have both said, I agree that I might as well just use a separate SD Card for the odd occassion when I need to use a browser (only takes a few seconds to do).

Just moving on to the actual recommended Samsung SD card below:

* Is this even faster than the the 8GB Noobs cards?
* I noticed on the amazon page that it is warning me at the bottom page that there is a newer model (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Memory-M...b_title_ce) - should I go with the newer or is the original one actually better?

[popcornmix]

In retrospect, I think I am now just going to go with a powersupply from the PiHut - at least it is definitely guaranteed to work.

This is the definitive power supply. However I do trust the PiHut, so wouldn't expect any problems with theirs.

* Is this even faster than the the 8GB Noobs cards?
* I noticed on the amazon page that it is warning me at the bottom page that there is a newer model (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Memory-M...b_title_ce) - should I go with the newer or is the original one actually better?

Lots of sdcard benchmarks here. The Samsung card should be faster than the NOOBs card (but both are very good). The newer Samsung EVO card has had some issues with Pi2, but my understanding is that with latest kernel this is no longer the case. Might be safer to go with the older card (there isn't much difference in performance), but I don't think you'll have an issue with either with a recent distribution.

[Warez]

Samsung Pro

[elsmandino]

Thanks people - I will definitely go for that official plug - even if just for the cool raspberry print on it.

With regards to the cards, it does seem that Samsung is the way to go. I think I will run the risk and try the EVO (or the Suggested Pro, if I can see a good deal anywhere).

Thanks again for your help with this - much appreciated.

[wrxtasy]

Samsung EVO micro SDHC (orange and white one) work well and are nice and fast on the RPi2. Priced reasonably too.