I have learned more since writing this, and based on a question on the FB sbitx group I will add some updated thoughts about the issues of using Pi 5 in sbitx.?
I would say there are three areas of concern: power, heat and software.??
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Power: Pi 4's standard PSU is a 15 watt device, Pi 5 wants 25 watts.? The sbitx internal regulator that converts 12V to 5V won't cope, from what I have been told.? The power is delivered from the radio to the Pi on its GPIO pins, and I worry that upping it from 3A to 5A will go beyond the pin's limits.? Then there are also likely knock-on effects due to drawing more energy from the battery.
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Heat: All that power gets converted to heat one way or another.? The Pi provides CPU and GPU temperature readings, those will need to be monitored and if they get hot, something must be done to cool them.? I think there is room for the Pi 5 Active Cooler if a GPIO extender is used to create a bit more room for air flow, but then the holes in the panel will no longer line up.?
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Software:? The Pi 5 needs Bookworm / Debian 12, the image being produced is Buster / Debian 10 which is quite old.? ?The image being produced uses 32-bit mode whereas the default Pi 5 image is 64 bits.? I found enough help on this group to get to Debian 11 / Bullseye in 64 bit mode.? I haven't ventured further than that so far.
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Even though I got a Pi 5, I am finding a lot more things to work on with the current hardware/software so I've kind of put Pi 5 for sbitx on hold for now.?
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Regards,
Dave, N1AI
Dave, N1AI