7 Raspberry Pi mistakes you should avoid making
Single-board computers from companies like Raspberry Pi are perfect for home lab projects, retro gaming, or even as a replacement for a lightweight desktop computer. But it’s also easy to get carried away and make mistakes that can lead to instability, data loss, and damage.
Here are some common mistakes you’ll want to avoid (including some I’ve made myself).
Choosing the wrong diet
When I ordered my Raspberry Pi 500+, the goal was to keep the price as low as possible. As such, I avoided the kit and purchased a cheap micro HDMI cable separately. I thought my UGREEN 100W power adapter would do a great job powering the Pi.
Unfortunately, I was wrong. The Raspberry Pi 5B, 500, and 500+ require a power supply capable of delivering 5V into 5A, and my power supply caps out at 3A. This led to an insufficient voltage warning, which could cause all sorts of system instability. In my defense, the 4B and 400 only require 5V on 3A.
Do not use a powered USB hub
Another potential power pitfall you’ll want to avoid is using a passive USB hub. Although lightweight devices like USB flash storage should make little difference to your Pi’s power consumption. The same isn’t true for more power-hungry devices that attempt to charge while plugged in, use a lot of RGB lighting, or have moving parts like portable hard drives.
In this case, it’s best to use a USB hub that has its own power supply, such as the official Raspberry Pi USB 3.0 hub. You can limit potential power consumption using the raspi-config utility by opening a terminal window and running sudo raspi-config.
Do not backup your data
If you’re using a microSD card as your primary means of storage in a Raspberry Pi, you should look to protect any data you don’t want to use by saving it elsewhere. Although cheap and versatile, microSD cards are not designed to be used as hard drives or SSD storage.
As a result, they can and will fail suddenly. You can buy an M.2 HAT+ to use with a Raspberry Pi 5B (and the 500+ comes with a built-in 256GB NVMe drive), which is much better for everyday operations. The Home Assistant project has chosen to limit logging for all installations only as a way to prevent microSD failures on Raspberry Pi smart home servers.
How you save things depends. For Home Assistant, you can enable scheduled backups. To back up other data, you may want to enable network sharing on your Pi and copy the data to another device. You can also use a cloud service.
Not updating your Pi often
I’ve encountered many obstacles trying to get things working on my Pi, so I’ve learned to try to make my life as easy as possible. There’s a reason why updating your Raspberry Pi is so often touted as the first step in tutorials, troubleshooting guides, and software documentation.
You can do this relatively easily by opening a new terminal window and running the following command:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get full-upgrade
Not cooling your Pi properly
There’s a reason you can buy heatsinks and fans specifically designed for the Raspberry Pi. These little computers can get hot, especially when under sustained load. If you do things like play games, stream media, use expansion cards like the AI HAT+, or run a barebones NAS, adequate cooling is not optional.
To increase the potential lifespan of your single-board computer as much as possible, you should at least aim to stick a heatsink on it. There are also a few things you can check to determine if your Raspberry Pi also needs an active cooler.
Don’t bother with a suitable case
There’s something appealing about the way a Raspberry Pi looks when it’s not in a case, a bare board of endless possibilities with its circuitry exposed for the world to see. This is also a state in which your Raspberry Pi is most vulnerable.
Electrostatic discharge can destroy your electronic devices, sometimes quickly, but often slowly over time. Sensitive components exposed when your Raspberry Pi is uncovered are also more likely to be damaged by drops and slips. Of course, plugging expansion cards into your Pi is part of the fun, so we’re not saying you should wrap your Pi in bubble wrap (in fact, never do that), just take the usual static discharge precautions that you would take when working on any other computer.
The good news is that there is no shortage of awesome cases to make, 3D print, and buy, including official Flirc Kodi cases. Just make sure any metal enclosures you use have a non-conductive lining, otherwise you could cause a short.
Not Shutting Down Your Pi Properly
Like any computer, you should aim to properly shut down your Raspberry Pi when you are finished using it. You can do this by running the sudo shutdown -h now in Terminal, by clicking the Pi > Disconnect option in the menu or by pressing the power button on the keyboard (Pi 400, 500 and 500+ models).
Failing to properly power down your Pi could result in data corruption and loss.
Taking good care of your Raspberry Pi and the data stored on it is easy if you follow these few simple steps. Want to do more with your Pi? Discover the wonderful world of HATs.
