How significant is the 5 second rule for reading a plot?

[number435398]

Seriously, it seems very arbitrary. Why 5 seconds, why not 1 minute, or 10 minute? Where's the real programmed limit? To what degree is this advice and to what degree is it significant or required? I had a raspberry pi that was sometimes hitting 6-7 seconds, but that would mean I need a more powerful computer causing it to not be such an efficient coin. What is the real answer?

[emlowe]

Chia consensus requires the block to be created and on the network within 30 seconds (including any network latency) - of which the plot lookup is only a part, so if you are taking longer than 5 seconds for plot lookups, it gets more unlikely you will successfully farm a block and get your rewards.
Lots of people are successfully farming on the pi

[number435398]

So maybe the delays I was experiencing weren't significant enough to cause a problem on my raspberry pi. Then again, raspberry pis seem only able to connect to around 20 or so drives at once, at best, anyhow.

[rmica]

20 drives is 0.2 PB or even more. It's no small thing for one pi.
Also things to look for are: copying a plot to a harvesting drive can cause temporary peaks. On a full stable harvester you could increase the plot_loading_frequency_seconds to a very high delay, and eventually restart the harvester by hand after a storage change.

[reb0rn21]

~20s here, all works fine.....