Home Station 2023 Model A (HS23a) is based on the popular Raspberry Pi 4B, complements the Home Station 24a with its better worldwide support, USB3 ports and maximum ram up to 8 GB.
A lot of Raspberry Pi 4B have been sold, with memory capacities ranging from 1GB to 8GB RAM, they can be repurposed into powerful Mesh Stations running their native Raspberry Pi OS.
There are Raspberry Pi 4B models with 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM memory capacities.
Raspberry Pi 4
Model 4B
Processor:
Broadcom BCM2711, Quad core Cortex-A72
WiFi:
2.4 GHz and 5 GHz IEEE 802.11ac
Bluetooth:
5.0
Ethernet:
1 Gbps
USB:
2 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0
GPIO:
40 pin header
MIPI:
2-lane DSI display output, 2-lane CSI camera input
Power supply output voltage:
+5.1V DC
Output power (max):
15.3W
Output cable:
1.5m 18AWG
Output connector:
USB Type-C
Input voltage:
100-240Vac (rated)
Input frequency:
50/60Hz ±3Hz
Input current:
0.5A maximum
microSD SSD:
1 x 64GB encrypted Ubuntu (brand and model may vary)
If you device is supported by multiple operating systems and you have no particular preference, then the recommended order to try them out is currently Armbian then Raspberry Pi OS then OpenWrt.
Raspberry Pi OS
Raspberry Pi OS based computers provide reasonable compute power with very low power consumption at reasonable costs.
Red LED is the power indicator. It is normally on if there is enough power (> 4.65V).
We have made the Red LED to also indicate the compute station's boot up states.
Step
Pattern
Status
1
red on
power applied
2
red off
before dhcp start
3
red blink
dhcp received ip ok
4
red off
boot up server authentication ok
5
red on
station start finished
Outside of the above boot-up sequence, the Red LED will remain "red on" whenever there is power applied, even after the Home Station has shutdown and all other LEDs are off.
2. Green LED
Green LED is the microSD memory card status indicator. It blinks during memory card activity.
During boot up Green LED (activity) normally blinks in an irregular pattern. It can give out regular Error Patterns - with long flashes then short flashes then repeat in 2 seconds (in most cases):
Long flashes
Short flashes
Status
0
0
No blinking then EEPROM might be corrupted
0
3
Generic failure to boot
0
4
start*.elf not found (on SD-card)
0
7
Kernel image not found
0
8
SDRAM failure
0
9
Insufficient SDRAM
0
10
In HALT state
2
1
Partition not FAT
2
2
Failed to read from partition
2
3
Extended partition not FAT
2
4
File signature/hash mismatch - Pi 4
4
4
Unsupported board type
4
5
Fatal firmware error
4
6
Power failure type A
4
7
Power failure type B
The Green LED is OFF when the Home Station has been shutdown.
3. Ethernet LEDs
There are two LEDs on the ethernet RJ-45 connector.
Yellow is the LINK LED, on when the ethernet Link is connected.
Green is ACT LED, blinks when there is Activity on the ethernet port.
These ethernet LEDs do NOT change colour with different link speeds.
During normal operation the Yellow is solid and the Green is flashing. The ethernet LEDs are OFF when the Home Station has been shutdown.
Most low cost ARM computers with 64-bit CPU and 2 GB RAM (e.g. Raspberry Pi 4B) can be used to build stations for Infinite Disk nodes.
For a ready made solution, the case that comes with ARM Home Station 1 already has provision for a USB 2.5 inch Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
Infinite Disk software is already preloaded in all Home Stations, so nothing need to be installed and the software will automatically configure itself when it is plugged into a local area network.
Infinite Disk hardware is also plug and play. Just push the HDD in from Cable Side of the case then tighten or loosen the 4 hold down nuts coming from the Raspberry Pi 4B, so the 4 nuts have enough pressure to push the HDD against the acrylic case wall.
