My experience with Banana PIs is that they require some obscure kernel to run because the developers cannot be bothered to bring their hardware support and drivers upstream. Same was true for uboot. Has any of that changed in the meantime? If not, that this is a no go for me.
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Yeah, this is an absolute blocker for me. If its not supported upstream then it's a no-go. I don't want to be running whatever hacked up Ubuntu image the manufacturer put together then stopped updating in 3 months when the next iteration gets churned out
It's the same, I picked up an Orange Pi 5 plus on sale and didn't even think about the kernel and module driver situation. It's rough. Joshua-Riek/ubuntu-rockchip and the other contributors do great work to un-fuck the situation and get a non-screwy ubuntu install cobbled together, but in the comments for issues even he gives off a "well, the situation is shit" sort of vibe.
I won't buy another rockchip sbc.
Yeah, I figured. I'll stick to the Raspberries then, mainly because the "just work"™
That's a shame.
That's too bad because the specs OP listed are pretty great plus I'd love to see the Raspberry Pi Foundation (or whichever corporate entity controls production and sales) knocked down a few pegs due to their anti-consumer behavior over the last several years.
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Yeah they are a massive fuck around unless you already know how
I had the same impression until I dusted off my banana pi one last month and there was an up-to-date armbian image for it. Totally pleasant surprise.
Fair, but I'm not running armbian, so my requirements boils down to: Must run any up to date Linux distro without having to side-load custom kernels or anything. Should work out of the box.
Does it’s run upstream Debian or SUSE? No? A custom distribution with proprietary binary blobs and no updates after one year you say? Sounds shit.
This is the only question that really matters. If it's overpriced? meh, it's a cheap alternative to a NUC. But if it's going to be stuck on obsolete software forever, run.
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??? Armbian is open-source. Some boards eventually get stuff from Armbian merged back into upstream Debian however you’re still better running Armbian as it comes with optimizations to avoid burning SD cards etc.
Good specs, but the rpi still has the absolute big advantage of it's vast field of available turnkey software.
There is a big difference between "it works out of the box" and "it works so-so after a lot of fiddling, and I still don't know why".
Depends on your use-case. If you want to use GPIO and other low level features, yes the Pi is faster to get going, if you're just using ir for a NAS/storage then a board like that will work out of the box.
Well, it always depends on the use case. And if you think over the use case, maybe other solutions might even be better.
It's the software, stupid!
What an unpleasant and unnecessary turn of phrase .
I dunno, this is going to be expensive, unless you need the GPIO or the smallest size possible I'm not sure what the advantage is over spending $150 or so on one of those mini Intel N100 boxes with dual 2.5GbE, they are x86 so can easily run normal software like Opnsense or similar without worrying about support going away down the road.
Or without 2.5GbE just one of those $60-80 8th gen Dell/Lenovo/HP USFF PCs off ebay.
SBCs just don't seem very competitive currently because they're quite expensive for what you get, and require specialized software releases, plus stuff like hardware transcoding never seems very well supported even though the chip can technically do it.
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Hopefully it’ll beat pi4 prices as well
If you're looking for cheap... what would recommend is instead a Mini-PC like the HP EliteDesk 800 G2 DM or the Dell OptiPlex 3050 Micro.
For a small NAS and self-host a few services even an old laptop will do it, however there are advantages to picking a mini PC. Those machines are quiet, don’t require much power and some can even fit a 2.5" hard drive so you won’t need external hard drive enclosures. More on that later.
For eg. for 100€ you can find an HP Mini with an i5 8th gen + 16GB of ram + 256GB NVME that obviously has a case, a LOT of I/O, PCIe (m2) comes with a power adapter and outperforms a RPi5 in all possible ways. Note that the RPi5 8GB of ram will cost you 80€ + case + power adapter + cable + bullshit adapter + SD card + whatever else money grab - the Pi isn’t just a good option.
Aside from the big brands like HP and Dell there are other alternatives such as the trendy MINISFORUM however their BIOS comes out of the factory with weird bugs and the hardware isn’t as reliable - missing ESD protection on USB in some models and whatnot.
So it costs more up front, and it uses more electricity which costs more in the long term.
I don't need all the extra Pi accessories, I already have cables and chargers and SD cards. So for me, the price of a Pi is just the price of a Pi.
- HP Mini with an i5 8th gen = 35W
- RPi 5 = 27W
Do you really think that will make a difference. For what's worth how much do you pay to have a 35W device running all year? In my case I'm paying a crazy 0,157€/kW... Amounts to 35/1000*24*365*0.157 = 48.14€/year considering a full load that the machine never has.
The max Power consumption often does not matter on devices that run 24/7 more important is the idle powet consumption. Here are SBCs and ARM Chips in generell way better.
I had my Pi 3B+ down to under 5W on idle having various services running. I can not speek for newer Pi versions but i would estimate them still lower then 8W on idle. That is really hard to beat with an normal PC. Maybe the Mini PC with newer Mobile or integrated CPUs are getting in this region.
Not quite sure where you got the 37W for the HP Mini.
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Lmao did you just compare the highest possible power consumption on a Pi with the lowest possible consumption on a desktop PC?
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Where on earth are you buying HP Mini machines for so cheap? Even the older gen seem to be 5 times as expensive as your estimate.
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Thank you for your detailed suggestion.
I’ve got HP ProDesk 600 G5 Mini i5-9500T off ebay for $190. Best damn purchase ever. Running 21 docker containers and transcode 4k with ease while consuming only 35w.
However, sometimes you need GPIOs especially for school projects.
However, sometimes you need GPIOs especially for school projects.
Yes but think about this, for a simple school/electronics project you can get even an old RPi 2B+ for around 10$ nowadays that will get the job done. For a NAS / media center / selfhosting any second hand machine will be a better choice. I wouln't even mix the two into a single board.
There are also other brand new cheap SBCs that might work for your electronics such as the Radxa Zero 3W or the Zero 3E or even the Raspberry Pi Zero W. The point is that it doesn't make sense to buy a standard and expensive RPi for things that don't require much CPU. If you don't really need an OS and you code C or MicroPython a 3.5$ ESP32 board as well.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| LTS | Long Term Support software version |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| NUC | Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers |
| PCIe | Peripheral Component Interconnect Express |
| PSU | Power Supply Unit |
| RPi | Raspberry Pi brand of SBC |
| SBC | Single-Board Computer |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
9 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
[Thread #294 for this sub, first seen 22nd Nov 2023, 14:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Well, I do kinda want a new router (but would also need to switch from opnsense to openwrt).
I've better suggestions for you than that board... way better.
- https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R3
- https://openwrt.org/toh/sinovoip/bananapi_bpi_r3_v1.0_v1.1?s[]=bananapi&s[]=bpi&s[]=r3
- https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=23.05.2&target=mediatek%2Ffilogic&id=bananapi_bpi-r3
There's an upcoming board the BPI-R4 with optional Wifi and 10G SPF cage: https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R4
Oh, waw, this is amazing. And exactly why I don't follow this kind of things :). I don't need a new router. But then again, need is such a weird word ...
Unless it can natively run all the existing ready-to-go Pi images and software packages and will also receive community support when I ask for help in a Pi-adjacent forum it's not really going to be a competitor to the Pi. The hardware is pretty much irrelevant.
Is it $60 or less? Everytime one of these alternative boards with an assload of more features pops up, nobody bothers to mention the price. Obviously we could spend more money to get more features, that's what spending more money does. You can't replace something without actually offering an alternative. The pi's biggest selling point was that it was cheaper than a steak dinner. If you dont match or beat that, you aren't actually competing with the pi.
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Damn, I got a Pi 4 8GB ram. Still planning on putting recalbox on it though.
Do you research very well before buying other boards than a Pi. It may be for you or now, depends a lot on your use-case.
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