the Raspberry Pi 4 is now available in
models with 2 4 or even 8 gigabytes of
RAM
it supports decoding h.265 video up to
4k 60 + H dot 264 full HD it has dual
HDMI output multiple USB 3.0 and 2.0
ports Gigabit Ethernet 802 11 AC
Wireless supporting both 2.4 and 5
gigahertz frequencies bluetooth 5.0 and
in case you didn't catch it I already
mentioned it but it now has up to 8
gigabytes of ddr4 3200 RAM 8 gigabytes
in an SBC folks what as the Raspberry Pi
4 is going to be in production until at
least 2020 6 it's a great time to get
into single board computers my friends
or if you've already got a Raspberry Pi
set up it's time to upgrade the specs of
this particular Raspberry Pi are in line
with a budget PC so we want to look at
it and make it look like a sleek modern
desktop device rather than just a piece
of maker tech with a bunch of wires
sticking out of the GPIO and that my
friends is where the argon 1 case comes
in this stylish aluminum alloy body the
combination of both passive and active
cooling it has both it's got a power
button that safely controls the power
state of your Raspberry Pi 4 and that's
just a few of the points that make the
argon 1 case a beautiful choice shall we
get into it let's get our maker on folks
alright first of all I've got the
Raspberry Pi 4 with 8 gigabytes of RAM
does it it looks like there's no tape on
this box this these are the kind of
boxes I like there we are
alright it doesn't even have a
that's crazy doesn't even have a
anti-static bag so let's hope it didn't
encounter any static along the way what
else have we got in the box nothing a
thing this is they don't touch that and
a manual all right
we've all seen a Raspberry Pi for we all
know what they look like there it is
folks it has the micro HDMI it's got the
USB C power input it's got the headphone
combination jack it's got USB to USB
three Gigabit Ethernet 40 pin GPIO power
over ethernet connector so you can buy
an extra hat it's got a camera connector
it's got video connector and it's got
the SOC Wi-Fi chip everything else so
we're familiar with that I don't need to
get into too many details the argon one
PI 4 case however and I should mention
they do sell a PI 3 compatible argon one
so keep that in mind however you can't
intermix so if you're using an PI 4 you
have to get the PI 4 model if you're
using a PI 3 make sure you get the PI 3
model in our case we're going big or
going home folks so let's get into it
with the PI 4 8 gigabyte never been open
before here we go let's see what is in
this box
paper what is it
warranty card whatever what's this
instructions on how to do you don't need
these you're watching the video and
presumably I'm gonna do a great job
let's get into the bag ah there it is
who cleans up the studio space anyways
there's like weeks and weeks worth not
so kidding
alright there's a protective film on the
plastic bits
and this my friends that is the argon
one Raspberry Pi model for sorry
Raspberry Pi for open it up and see
what's inside okay we've got this
expansion board there it is this is cool
so one of the things with a Raspberry Pi
or any single board computer for the
most part is that you've got these
connectors all around the board so it's
really hard to make it look nice on a
shelf
you've got the ethernet coming out one
side you got HDMI coming out the other
and power coming out here and video
coming out here and Jeep and all that
kind of stuff so what they've done is
they've provided a basically an adapter
that is going to simply plug in to the
board to the headphone jack and the dual
HDMI output and what does it do it puts
all of those jacks directly onto the
back of the Raspberry Pi so I'm just
given that a nice snug little push I'm
being careful I'm actually holding the
the points on the board that I'm pushing
so I don't accidentally break that off
break the solder joints for that I don't
know that it would happen but I want to
be careful so there you have it so this
is going to put the audio and the dual
HDMI at the back along with USB USB 3
and Gigabit Ethernet further into the
box okay we've got some thermal pads
we're gonna need those to make thermal
contact with the SOC and the the RAM and
here is the interior of the argon one
case for the Raspberry Pi 4 so we can
see a fan controller with GPIO GPIO
riser pins so the Raspberry Pi 4 is
going to connect with the GPIO
so it's actually this is really really
cool if I can show you internally so
you're not losing the GPIO what it
actually does is under this magnetic
hood here if I can just get that off
there we go
it has the gpio risen out from the board
so here's where the actual GPIO is and
it displaces it over here with a nice H
GPIO header identifier so you don't have
to look for that card how cool is that
so if you want to get into maker tech
while this is looking so beautiful you
can easily remove this magnetic cover
and access the GPIO alright so let's get
this thing assembled and put together so
we can fire it up now I mentioned that
this is both active and passive cooling
so keep in mind while this is a plastic
base for the for the argon one this is
an aluminum cover okay so this is for
heat dissipation the aluminum actually
kind of pulls the heat away from the SOC
and these are the two contacts so we've
got one for the the SOC itself and one
for the RAM and then we've got the
active cooler so if it still gets too
hot even though it is dissipating the
heat through the aluminum then the fan
which is on a fan controller will spin
up to designated speeds that you specify
based on temperatures I'm going to show
you how all that works in just a few
moments so I need this thermal pad which
is going to make a nice little contact
with with the S these are not the
thermal pads these are feet whoa I was
like hey thermal pad these are feet for
the case this is gonna go right on here
cool I can do that first can't I will do
things out of order I'm sure that that's
what the instructions say to do put the
feet on first just like Ravi at category
five that way I don't forget or lose
them how many people have a whole bunch
of these rubberized feet sitting in
their tool chest there we
okay that's done now I can put those
aside and now I do have these thermal
pads which there we are
they have like us an adhesive on either
side so just peel off that plastic make
sure you do you don't want to put the
plastic on there and have it melt on you
when you're doing a TV show it's good to
clip your nails for aesthetics it's
terrible for peeling plastic off the
back of an adhesive and that just goes
right on there same with this one there
we are
and it's really real
put together it already is kind of
preassembled boy oh boy if you have a
choice do not clip your nails before
doing this
there we are didn't take any trouble at
all
isn't it great that the most challenging
thing about installing this and doing
this yourself to setup a Raspberry Pi
for with eight gigs of RAM in an argon
one the hardest thing was to get the
sticky part the sticker cover off of the
thermal pad
okay so observe the GPIO the positioning
of it and we're going to position that
directly over the GPIO here careful not
to bend any pins and I'm just going to
turn this around so you can see this
side as well
and I'm just going to push that down
nice and snug and it just goes in just
like a GPIO there we are
make sure everything is aligned nicely
and we've got all these screws I presume
it's time to put them all together so it
looks like I've got one two three four
spots to screw in internally and then
four for the cover so it's going to be
these smaller screws on the inside
there we are and note that there is a
hole on the Raspberry Pi where there is
no standoff so you're not screwing into
that and we're leaving these four outer
ones for the bottom of the case so now
I'm just gonna put that on top and grab
the four longer screws and we're going
to put those ones in there we have it
congratulations you did it you did it it
wasn't that hard was it
check out the ports on the back I love
how sleek that looks notice there's no
other ports all around
we do have an SD micro SD port at the
front kind of hidden away on the bottom
however all of the i/o has been moved to
the back I love that plus we've got this
power button and it's just absolutely
sleep we do have to take a quick break
when we return I'm gonna fire this up
and together we're gonna check out the
features of the argon one case with the
8 gigabyte Raspberry Pi 4 stick around
during the break I grabbed my microSD
card with the latest version of a
Raspberry Pi OS on it I wanted to say
raspbian but they've changed the name so
it's called Raspberry Pi OS now I
tracked down my 5 volt 3.5 amp power
supply and just keep in mind the
Raspberry Pi 4 is a power-hungry beast
so while I could probably power it with
my 3 amp power supply or potentially
even something a little bit less you
could damage your SD card if there isn't
enough power and that's surprisingly
easy to do let's say I willy-nilly plug
in a USB device that draws an amp or
something from the USB port well there
you go so I prefer to err on the side of
caution so using a 3.5 amp power supply
is just playing it safe that'll ensure
that I get the best reliability out of
my Raspberry Pi 4 alright with all the
cables connected I'm going to fire up
the Raspberry Pi 4 with a single press
on the power button on the Aragon one
and I can hear just a little spin of a
fan I don't even think you'll be able to
hear that with our compressors and
everything else but it's just a slight I
can tell that the fan has turned on and
it's off and I am booted into my distro
man that is great ok one thing I'm just
going to mention right out the gate is
running cool feels good powered up great
there's one
that I think are gone one potentially
misses the boat on and that's that we're
still using the micro-hdmi okay so I'm
still having to use a micro HDMI to HDMI
cable in order to plug this into my TV
and into the capture devices so that you
can see it at home however now while I
feel like a B they missed the boat on
that they could have made it full HDMI
they've got room for it they could have
done that and besides they're in control
of what they put on the case however as
I move this around it's not janky at all
there's no disconnection on the HDMI and
I don't know about you but when I plug
my Raspberry Pi board directly into an
HDMI cable just like I've done with the
argon one if I move it ever so slightly
the screen goes green or it goes kind of
digitally distorted or something and so
I've got to jiggle that cable again and
then if it ever gets moved I lose that
connectivity and it causes problems
well the argon one seems like even
though it's still micro HDMI which mm
it's not the perfect connection for this
kind of thing even though it is still
micro HDMI it is significantly more
solid than the micro HDMI that's built
into the Raspberry Pi and I noticed that
immediately so I think you will
appreciate that as I mentioned I'm using
an HD micro HDMI to HDMI cable you can
also use a micro HDMI to full-sized HDMI
adapter if you like and the argon one
case is definitely giving me a better
connection to that HDMI output alright I
got a plug in a keyboard
I've already plugged in my USB wireless
mouse I've got my keyboard here and I'm
just gonna plug that into the USB 2
because I'm gonna save those USB 3's for
something else there we go alright so
the firt Oh a little bit of latency
there the first thing that I want to
consider is I want to I mentioned that
this is
that this is a smart power switch so the
power switch is programmable the heat
dissipation the active heat cooler is
actually programmable and I'm starting
to feel a little bit of warmth there
this is what's making me think of that
cooling system so you can see there's
vents at the side and this is doing a
really good job of cooling the Raspberry
Pi for however it is starting to get
warm and I want that fan to come on if
it starts to get a little bit too warm
so it has that passive cooling from the
aluminum and it has an active cooling
system the fan that will turn on as
needed so let's get into our terminal
and I need to become root so I'm just
gonna type sudo su - and there boom
I am root so I am root you see the
instructions that say to go curl and
then the URL HTTP colon slash slash
download dot argon-40 calm slash argon
and then it's one the number one SH and
then a pipe why can't I think of the
word bash okay so I want to break down
that command for you okay what I'm
actually doing is I'm telling it to use
curl to download basically to the output
this script from download argon-40 calm
slash argon one dot sh but instead of
outputting it to my screen which is what
would happen if i remove the pipe bash
see that that's the script so the pipe
bash says let's actually run that script
in bash it's piping that output into
bash so if i wanted to take a different
approach and say i want to control what
this is actually doing or i want to
modify this installer the scripts before
i actually install it well let's take a
different approach so instead I'm going
to W get that
or I could have piped the curl so I'm
gonna W get oh and it's kind of monkey
with my terminal window there I'm going
to control C so that you can see that a
little better
W get oh there we go
so W get is another download tool but
this one is going to actually save the
file to our GaN one SH now it's grabbing
the file I've got it and all I have to
do in order to edit that file is I can
use Nano for example so Nano are gone
one dot s H it's gonna bring it up into
my favorite text editor all right so
first thing that I see and I should say
that one of the nice things about doing
it this way is that you can inspect the
code it's this is one of the things
about open source and the way the Linux
works is you can look through and see if
there's anything that you want to change
or whatever you want to do but so first
of all I see a couple of functions just
basically so that they can reuse some of
the things like creating a file touching
it and setting the permissions before
adding the content check if a package is
installed it's gonna allow them to see a
response code of either ng which is
presumably not good or okay if the
package is not found in dpkg query and
that is going to be called further down
using this loop which grabs a package
list like raspy - GPIO Python sharp-eyed
on GPIO and so on and so forth so
basically packages that are going to get
installed with apt-get so then it goes
through a loop here in package list and
it goes through that loop installing and
approving the installation of each of
those packages but if any of the
packages fail to install response with
ng then it's gonna say hey there's
something wrong you're not connected to
the internet and it's going to die if
however it because there's no else it's
just going to resume if that doesn't
happen so then it's going to move on to
here so we've named the daemon Argan one
D and we've got a power button script
going to be created in user slash bin
slash Argan 1d dot pi we've got a
shutdown script in Lib system D called
Argan D Argan one D dot - power off dot
pi
and so on and so forth so those are just
the file names so that they can be
reused all right these commands are
enabling I squared C and I guess do
cereal that must be cereal that's just
my guess okay and then we're starting to
write out the file so if the Damon
config file does not exist let's created
so we touch it for some reason they're
not using their their function here
maybe that's a bug and we could fix it
it doesn't matter it's doing exactly the
same thing it's just funny that it it is
happening redundantly they could have
used the function these are comments and
then at the bottom of the config file
are the temperature to fan speed ratios
so if it hits 55 degrees C it's gonna
set the fan speed to 10% if it hits 60
degrees C it's gonna set the fan speed
to 55 and 65 degrees Celsius is going to
set the fan speed to a full 100% so
hopefully we never hit that point so
those configuration items of course they
can be changed here before you install
it or and that's just going to change
the output of the Damon config file or
of course you can edit that later or you
can use the tool that they're going to
give you in order to make those changes
yourself shutdown script there we go see
either use an argon create file now and
this is a Python script that it is
creating although it's running this in
bash it's so what it's doing is it's
using the bash command to output to the
shutdown script it's importing sis SM
bus from Raspberry Pi GPIO as GPIO and
then is checking the revision number of
the Raspberry Pi and acting accordingly
moving down power button script this is
going to be what happens when you push
that power button so again a Python
script lets grabbing the bus is grabbing
the GPIO OS the time and that's not just
the time that's the like the counter and
the clock and everything else okay
what's happening here so checks the
revision again and acts accordingly
because it may be a little bit different
response based on the revision of the
board
so it's checking the shutdown check this
is a function so yeah when you push the
button it responds so when you push it
when you okay so it's incrementing
something called pulse time that's a an
integer string that well not an integer
string but an integer that's
incrementing and every time you push the
button it's kind of it's counting that
so when you push it twice it's going to
safely reboot the the raspberry pi now
know what's actually happening when you
push that button twice is that it's
running the OS system command reboot so
it's not doing a hard reboot is not
cutting power and then powering it back
on no it's actually running the reboot
command that I would run in my Vash
prompt so it's a safe reboot it's gonna
automatically sync your SSD it's gonna
save your files and whatever else that
it normally would do during a reboot
command you can also add your own stuff
here if you wanted to like I could do
something like remember this is this is
even though we're typing this in bash
this is going to be a Python script so
you could put any Python here any Python
and then just make sure that you pipe
that with not pipe but direct that to
dollar sign power button script you
could also edit that that file at any
time you could edit that power button
script which is if you go back up it's
going to be saved
power button script slash user slash bin
slash argon
1d dot pi so you can edit that script
and then you'll be able to change the
what it does when you push the power
button twice or when you hold it in for
three seconds and and you can make it
react the way you want maybe you want it
to send you an email or something like
that you can do that or you have
something else like a APC UPS that you
want to have safely turned off or
something after a 30-second time or I
don't know maybe you've got a watchdog
plugged into the GPIO you can use that
as well okay so if you push the button
for if you long
for three seconds it's going to run shut
down now - eh so that's actually a safe
shutdown command to power off your
computer so you're not just killing
power like you would if you continue to
hold in that button for five seconds
which is not a safe way to do it that's
like your last resort but this script is
as you can see running those commands as
you normally would safely so you push
that button and it triggers the GPIO and
it's monitoring how long you press it or
how many times you press it and then it
reacts accordingly so with a little
Python knowledge you could make that do
whatever you want if I push it three
times I want it to play my favorite song
that kind of stuff
whatever you think you can look through
here lots of fun so I love that as you
know people who like to look under the
hood we can do so and then when we're
done say we've made some changes we can
control Oh enter to write our changes
and then control X to exit and now I
just need to go chmod plus x are gone
one dot Sh and now I can run that by
going dot slash argon one dot Sh
just like that which is exactly the same
as using curl the URL piping it in to
bash and I'm going to run that here we
go
it's already got GPIO it's already got a
couple of the things that are gone one
is needing I squared C is already
installed and active and ready to go and
we're done shortcuts created okay what
oh yeah look at that there are actually
shortcuts on my desktop all right argon
one configuration let's run it we're
gonna execute that in a terminal all
right
argon one fan speed configuration tool
this will remove existing configurations
press Y alright what do you want to do
always-on let's try it yeah I hear it
you guys hear that it's so quiet even at
on that's pretty good
please with that however because it is
controlled by an I squared C controller
rather than just a GPIO pin it's not
just on or off its you're able to set
the threshold so that's where we can run
that configuration script again and say
adjust to temperature so let's bring
that up on our screen a little bit I'm
having trouble seeing that on my screen
okay so please provide fan speeds for
the following temperatures 55 C let's do
25% fan speed 60 C let's do 50% fan
speed 65 C all right 90% okay so now the
fan just shut right off because it is
using the passive cooling to keep that
thing below 55 I think it was so it's
completely silent if I start using my
Raspberry Pi to death it's going to spin
up that fan alright so now that I've got
that script installed presumably if I
push the power button it's not going to
do anything nothing however if I push it
two times what's it going to do and
we're gonna lose the screen here but if
it works we know and there it goes
and now notice it's not killing the
power I don't know if you can see that
but it is actually done a safe reboot
that's fantastic that is the Raspberry
Pi 4 with 8 gigabytes of RAM plus the
argon one case those are just fantastic
products I'm really really pleased with
this I love that I can still access the
GPIO without having to take apart the
case that's cool
just absolutely gorgeous