- Joined
- Aug 28, 2019
SBC / Low Power boards general - Raspberry Pi and what not
- Thread starter tehpope
- Start date
-
Want to keep track of this thread?
Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
Create account
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2013
I bought and own the rk3588. I feel scammed since there's not a lot of os options. At least the last time I tried to get it working and booting. Couldn't get anything to work on mine.
Which is why I'm skeptical of all these sbc brands not from the rpi foundation or hardkernel's odroid brand.
Which is why I'm skeptical of all these sbc brands not from the rpi foundation or hardkernel's odroid brand.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2020
Supposedly the RK3588 in the Rock 5b I have is better now with Armbian. We'll see.
Interestingly that Orion O6N supposedly can boot plain old Debian. So, when mine arrives sometime in the next year, we'll see.
I'm building a MiSTer FPGA box, but it will also have a control CPU, originally the Rock 5b, then when it sucked a Pi 5, now since it's taken so long to finish maybe the Rock 5b or O6N. The "control CPU" will be a NAS for MiSTer, front panel display and maybe actually available for gaming as well.
Ed Special
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2021
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2019
Clippy: It sounds like you don't have a specific project in mind...
Is the signage box running fanless? Some performance could be left on the table compared to laptop i3-1115G4s. Otherwise, its single-thread performance and hyperthreading could help it overcome older quad-core Skylake/Kaby Lake chips being dumped on the market as Win10 expires. See Intel i3-1115G4 vs i7-7700T.
The Tiger Lake iGPU is the main draw for this chip. Xe-LP 48 EUs is going to outperform HD 530, UHD 630/750, etc. Probably the 32 EUs UHD 770 in Alder/Raptor Lake desktops too, but clock speeds and RAM could make up the difference. You also get basic AV1 decode and good H.265/VP9 support, good for an entertainment use case.
You know what game doesn't care about having less than four cores? Well, a lot of them, but Skyrim is an obvious one, and the upcoming Skyblivion total conversion based on it. The i3-1115G4 iGPU can probably do 1080p60 medium.
This is with active cooling, results may vary.
Searching for "1115G4" on ebay redirects me to the laptop category. Switching to "All" still doesn't show the listing you linked. Why? Who knows, but good deals can be hidden for whatever reason.
Ed Special
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2021
My trick is that I do not search for the CPU, but the hardware category. If you search i3-1115G4, it's going to show you nothing but laptops because the laptops sell for the most money and therefore make ebay (and Scamazon) the most money, and they will hide the commercial hardware because that doesn't make them as much money. If you search "Thin Client" or "Digital signage", though, you get the relevant used commercial hardware. I'm sure that if you were to ask their search engine engineers why the search engine does this, though, they'd instead say (perhaps in kinder words) that it's to protect you from making uninformed purchases of hardware you're not mentally equipped to work with.
This is correct, but I enjoy sharing useful information I come across, both so I have something I remember that I can come back to to pull that information, and also because while I may not have use for it, that's not to say nobody ITT does. That said, though, if I had to state a specific purpose I'd see for this - pfsense or some other firewall software. You've got two preinstalled ethernet ports, presumably intended to allow the buyers of these things to daisy-chain them instead of having thousands of dollars of rackmounted routers, so you could throw it between your ISP-provided network access point and your own personal router for relatively cheap, and then it should still have enough overhead to potentially also run homeassistant or some other network appliance type software in its spare CPU cycles. Whatever the case, it's cheaper than a barebones RasPi, to say nothing of then adding a second NIC, an OS drive, and (technically optionally) a case to said pi.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2019
Another CIX P1 board:
Orange Pi 6 Plus – CIX P1 SBC offers up to 64GB LPDDR5 memory, 45 TOPS of AI performance
Orange Pi 6 Plus – CIX P1 SBC offers up to 64GB LPDDR5 memory, 45 TOPS of AI performance
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2018
You have to appreciate how china keeps churning them out, yet - of course - no drivers. Meanwhile you can have an AMD-based x86 mini PC for a little bit more and not only will it probably be more performant, it also, you know, actually has driver support and stuff. How are you going to leverage these TOPS with what I assume is non-existing NPU support? What's the point of all this?
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2020
Do you guys have any experience with gl.inet devices? The place I'm staying at has stone age Internet rigging and like 20 people connected to an ancient switch raw, effectively the same level of safety as a coffee shop, so I figured I can just circumvent the cancer by getting a 5G router. Are they any good? I know most if not all of their devices either ship with OpenWRT or have excellent compatibility, which is my main reason for wanting to get one.
Moist Boys
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2023
I used their ioT routers to install a Piratebox file sharing server for a time. Then I set up OpenWRT on it. I probably had a hand full of them and they worked well for low power appliances.
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2019
- Joined
- May 5, 2022
Lots of it is driven by chinese gov subsisdies. Especially for their equivalent of FSD.
Also uh, chip subsidies (someone's gotta take all that SMIC fab capacity).
Uboot is a bitch at times. I run gentoo/Alpine/OpenBSD though so I should probably shut up, but dev distros all universally suck megaballs.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
From what I've heard they're very good devices for the price, however do keep in mind that their travel routers expect you to supply your own LTE/5G modem. If OpenWRT doesn't differ too much from RouterOS in this regard then your phone in USB tethering mode will function as one. Speaking of, another option is something like the Mikrotik hAP ax lite LTE6. On the plus side, it has RouterOS and a built-in LTE6 modem. On another hand, it's only 2.4GHz WiFi where GL.iNet has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz with much better specs than any Mikrotik router, and it doesn't have the USB-A port if you'd wish to utilize it for something else.
You'd probably be better off with a Beryl AX all things considered. You could just use your phone as the modem and you'd still need to power it via USB-C, but you'd have much better WiFi.
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2013
I've got one of their devices. used it for years. no complaints. Though I don't use the gl.inet's firmware. only the official openwrt port. but gl.inet's firmware is basically their spin on openwrt. it has a more friendly front end and the more advance config stuff is just openwrt's luci.
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2019
Progress on upstream Linux for MediaTek Genio IoT SoCs and boards
CNX Software is giving away stuff this week.
Giveaway Week 2025 – Elecrow Pi Terminal Raspberry CM4 industrial HMI display
CNX Software is giving away stuff this week.
Giveaway Week 2025 – Elecrow Pi Terminal Raspberry CM4 industrial HMI display
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2018
Interesting Mediatek chip if the support is good, could not find power consumption figures with a quick google though. Bit on the price-y side for what it ultimately is also if you check aliexpress but if it's low power, not bad. The power supply is listed as 15W and this usually considers, peak, in-rush and USB peripherals so it's not hungry, at any rate.
This idea of an ARM keyboard computer (and yes, I'm aware of the RPi one) didn't quite let me go. I did look around a bit with keyboard kits but they are either too small, aluminum, (which doesn't lend itself to hacking or antennas) crazy expensive (yeah sorry, I'm not gonna pay $500+ for a keyboard) or look stupid - These typewriter looking keyboards have a lot of space and I found a positively juge one that's 6,5 cm (!) (it doesn't sound much but measure the back of the keyboard you are currently using and imagine) at the back and could probably fit everything and also has something I've never seen, actually staggered keys on different levels. I like my keys as high as possible and you could switch out these ridiculous typewriter keycaps with normal ones but I'm afraid even for me that thing is a bridge too far. The D0110 is a candidate that might actually fit if you cut away some of the case internally. I'm not wild about it. There are also quite a few retro keyboard computer cases that are remade and one could use and lend themselves to such hacks naturally but it somehow doesn't feel right either.
There's also the option of 3D printing, but to be frank I've never seen that look good, ever. My luggable doesn't have any 3D printed parts (aluminium lasercut ones though it has).
At that point you're better off strapping your ARM computer to whatever battery you build and at that point it doesn't even make sense to do your own huge battery (which is a thing that needs to be very well thought out, in my luggable I could have made the battery even bigger but chose not to because it felt a bit too unsafe, huge LiPo batteries are not something to senselessly fuck around with, you *can* burn down your house) but to buy one of these camping batteries instead and at that point, with keyboard, external monitor, arm computer and battery you don't really have a luggable anymore but just a collection of off-the-shelf parts. Not saying that's not a fine solution, but it's not really integrated either.
So yeah, the ARM keyboard computer is kind of a dead-end. It was an interesting thing to research, at any rate.
When I researched wethever I should buy the Dasung screen I stumbled across the PineNote, it's basically the same eink-screen of the Dasung combined with an RK3566 (4 GB RAM/128 GB eMMC, very similar to the Amlogic-based Radxa Zero in specs) which is pretty well supported by mainline now. It's kind of a device for tinkering, I mean nothing would stop you to put your own kernel/Linux on there. Their official image is Debian based. People report a battery life of about three days, but I guess it really depends on the usage. I feel the Dasung might be the better deal because you just get a screen that's not beholden to anything and can be hooked up to whatever but the PineNote setup would of course be a very integrated and mobile eink computer solution, if you like to tinker (many people bought this, expected an ereader with all frills and got upset). I'd just use a bluetooth keyboard instead of fucking around with a touchscreen in Linux but YMMV.
- Joined
- May 5, 2022
You could CNC/buy the alu parts and 3D print panels. But to be honest I still consider 3d print a prototyping thing unless is SLS.
Speaking of which, Radxa released an interesting thing recently:
Qualcomm QCS6490 based SBC (So 1xA78@2.4-2.7, 3xA78@2.2, 4xA55), 12TOPs INT8, seems similar to the Rubrik Pi 3.
ETA: On the O6N, apparently they lowered the clock of the CIX, it wasn't stable apparently.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2019
Another Cyberdeck video from Explaining Computers:
Almost an SBC, almost low power:
Almost an SBC, almost low power:
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2018
I have two sheets, one basically holding the keyboard in (a PCB I took from a planck ortho knockoff), and one holding the screen/giving me something I can screw connectors to. People often make such with 3d printed plastic apparently not being aware how ridiculously cheap it is to have aluminum stuff cut for them. Looks much better also. And even if you don't wanna pay that, you can buy ABS sheets for very cheap which are also better looking. The insides are just aluminum rail and PVC cut to size and a PCB that's basically just there to have something to connect cables to and keep the electronics from rattling around in the case. It really doesn't have to be difficult.
I think before I would consider 3d printed parts for a case I'd rather work with wood. The only real problem with wood in these usage cases is that it's bad at conducting heat (and generally kind of a living material).
Oh I like this one but he's not gonna get a battery in there that'll please the J4125 for anything longer than 3-4ish hours, I think. Will be glad to be proven wrong tho. Also paint is interesting because most paints and coatings I am aware of love reacting with skin oils and warmth and will come off when in prolonged contact with a person's skin, It's very nicely painted though so he probably knows more about this. I'd use Plastidip (or equivalent), it's basically rubber coating in a can and very robust, and you can also even remove it easily again. I treated the buttons of my Kensington expert trackball with this when they started getting shiny.
3 mm is probably also the absolute max. you're going to be able to cut with that utility knife without your arms falling off. Fun thing about these ABS sheets is you can also form them with a hot air gun. They also come with a structured surface that doesn't suck tiny scratches from across the room like the smooth ones would (ABS is rather soft) but if you have to treat it with filler afterwards, yeah that's kinda pointless. I'm not sure he pointed it out in the video buy I'm pretty sure the bottom is acrylic. It makes sense because it's more resistant in general.
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2019