TaleCaster on Raspberry Pi

Can I run TaleCaster on a Raspberry Pi?

Yes, with important caveats and restrictions.

This is not fully tested!

You should not necessarily expect a fully turnkey experience on arm64 following the x86 guide. We do not have adequate hardware to fully test arm64 and it is highly likely there are many problems.

Model Limitations

You absolutely cannot run TaleCaster on anything but Raspberry Pi 4 due to memory requirements and CPU demands. The MINIMUM is a Raspberry Pi 4 4GB, and the 8GB model is strongly recommended. You should expect many operations to be significantly slower compared to x86 as well.

Each application will typically require over 250MB of memory, and will climb significantly above this if garbage collection is slow. (It will be.) Downloaders can easily reach over a gigabyte of RSS to handle buffering.

Storage Requirements

• Only the /opt/talecaster/shared directory can safely be stored on eMMC or SD. All other directories MUST be stored on external drives with higher endurance.

Storing /opt/talecaster/config on eMMC or SD will invariably result in the storage being bricked in a matter of weeks or days! The databases have very high write traffic which is guaranteed to exceed the DWPD limit of eMMC and SD devices in extremely short order!

• It is strongly recommended to use the highest DWPD eMMC or SD card you can obtain. Even excluding the configuration directory, TaleCaster is capable in some scenarios of generating a high volume of logging that is fully internal to the container.

• Media storage must be on network attached storage. Use of USB attached drives is not only not recommended, it is not supported. The sheer load has been shown to cause thermal throttling and CPU bus issues, even on externally powered drives.

Certain attached devices will cause problems!

Many cheap USB OTA, ClearQAM, and RTL-SDR such as those found on Amazon are not properly shielded any more than thin plastic housings shield the Raspberry Pi from unwanted RF and EMI interference. Improper or inadequate shielding WILL result in operating problems.

Recording live video or audio will also place an extremely high load on the CPU and bus, which has been shown to cause USB and network disruptions even on models with PCIe attached NICs.