Second volume of /sbcg/, discussing everything around SBCs : >Hardware >Software >Tips and tricks >News >Troubleshooting
The SBC news: >Odroid XU4 is on sale for 50$ od hardkernel site >Sony released new multimedia SBC called Sprsense, available from 13/12/2018 >OrangePi released official FW for OPi 3G IoT >LicheePi Nano is for sale, at 2$ on TaoBao!
This thread questionary/discussion starter: >Could Jow Forums design a new SBC? >Should SBCs have dedicated GPU? >Where is this trend going? More towards "small computer" or "maker thingy"? What do you think?
Well in shorthand.. there are two main CPU architectures - x86 (Intel) and ARM (...ARM). They are both licensed, i don´t know how much x86 costs and if even its possible to license, but ARM core costs like 120k$. That means there is basically no user expandability, customization or whatnot. RISC-V, as name implies, is RISC (Reduces Instruction Set Architecture, same as ARM) architecture, but open-source. That means, all cores, designs of cores and all this stuff is free-to-use. You can just download it, tinker a bit and voilá, you have you custom CPU or SoC or MCU or whatever you designed. The beauty is, that you can add your own instructions to help CPU do certain tasks a lot more effectively and faster.
The board you linked is RISC-V devboard. HiFive One should be arduino compatible, running at much greater speeds with more memory, flash and basically in every apect better. Obviously, running RISC-V core. The HiFive Unleashed is like the first one but on steroids, and it´s capable of running Linux distros.
So actual benefits of RISC-V: >Total customization and control of what´s inside chip >Better specific task performance (like TC/IP routing, graphics, encrypting...) >ITS FREE
Its still in very early phase of develompent, but it looks really promising and in few years, it should change not only the mobile CPU world, but basically everything that uses CPUs.
Jack Morgan
So whats the cheapest one that could run armbian with kodi and playback 4k hdr remux movies from a home server without hickups?
Luke Harris
I was going to cringe at this for actually making a serious response to the "OwO whats this?" meme, but this is a really great explanation. Based user
Kayden Flores
Anything with gigabit ethernet and 4K video output should do. >Pine A64+ (20$, 4K @ 30FPS) >Rock64 2GB (35$, 4K @ 30FPS with HW H.264/265 decode) >Odroid C1+ (37$, same as others)
Sorry, i got up like an hour ago and didn't realize it was meant as meme. Ty user
Liam Ward
Does anyone played with LicheePi Nano? I've got two boards from China some time ago. When I checked last time all documentation was in Chinese. Does it finally got some English tutorials/whatever? I dont mind working with google translate, but some basic information about first steps, like board setup and running Linux would be nice. Just to save my time
I'm not an OP tho. Maybe there is a better option to get it
Parker Cruz
obviously.. Use buttons or rotary encoder then, idc
thats kinda shit, reminds me of OrangePi forums and community. That SoC looks nice! Thanks
No, i posted, it's not actual. Deal ended last week, sorry for that!
Welp 7$ for that board is a bit much, considering its shit support, manuals and stuff. But hey, maybe someone will figure it out. Or not.
Levi Davis
Why did you writw h264 h265 decode near the second one? Aren't decoding capabilities software based? Sorry if brainlet
Blake Nelson
Welp mostly yes, but some SoC have those hardware decoders. That means, offloading your CPU with encoding task, making it run more smoothly. In fact, most SoC now have at least H.264 HW decoding, but some 4K videos use H.265 and i know some boards (like Pi 2B) struggle with it.
Nathan Jackson
>not running everything on a bunch of fpgas so you can have ACTUAL total customization and control of what's inside the chip
Grayson Lee
I'm trying to find future manufacturing companies for the RISC-V platform to invest in. Know any?
Carter Sanders
I know they have partnership with WD, Microchip, NXP and Samsung. Not sure about chip manufacturers yet. Just check they news periodically, they should announce that soon.
Jack Diaz
>>Sony released new multimedia SBC called Sprsense, available from 13/12/2018
Also why does it need a gps receiver, and why is it using a microcontroller?
Zachary Jones
Also why does it need a gps receiver Most likely for receiving GPS signals >and why is it using a microcontroller? Because that's more than enough for many tasks
Noah White
Indeed!
I'm not sure about GPS.. And microcontroller probably because you don't really need too much to play music in HQ. But it have 6 cores, which is.. interesting. Also their OS name is hillarious (NuttX). It may be cool platform to explore and experiment on. IDK, its new so i included it.
Brayden Wood
WD has already built RISC-V CPU to use it as a SSD controller. They also want to create a datacenter processor with that micro arch. Too lazy to find src, just remembered that from their conference talk.
>why microcontroller cuz power consumption, you can probably power it with coin battery for months. Treat it as an expensive arduino with huge audio/DSP capabilities.
Idk why GPS tho. The only use-case for this I can imagine is small spying device. Which can record voice and log the position
Colton Adams
i ordered some orange pis from aliexpress. how shit are they?
Daniel Cox
Okayish, but forget about their vendor GNU/Linux images. Only Armbian seems to work correctly on them
Xavier Hall
I just got an Odroid HC1. Installed Ubuntu on the uSD card and moved /home to the HDD.
The HDD Is never going to sleep even with no user activity. Is it because of the /home thing? Would root be accessing that folder maybe?
Jose Ramirez
>Most likely for receiving GPS signals Oh I see, my initial impression was it was intended for multimedia-audio things only.
Andrew King
I tihnk Linus mentioned it in last video.
Hardwarewise pretty good, value very good, but their SW and OS support is shit. Never get responded from their team, their forums are basically dead.
/home is base directory from where your desktop and stuff is i think. Even your windows HDD never gets to sleep if you do nothing, because there is always something to do. I've never seen an SSD nor HDD go to sleep mode by themselves.
Leo Parker
>Even your windows HDD never gets to sleep if you do nothing, because there is always something to do. yeah but the primary drive with OS is the microSD card, there's basically nothing on the HDD except some .config directories
Owen Miller
>The HDD Is never going to sleep even with no user activity That's a good thing unless you're running it off a battery
Carter Ward
yea, but /home contains some stuff that OS needs to check. And as said, its good, because getting out from sleep mode takes some time and slows things down.
Nicholas Young
ok, I'm just worried about wear and tear. the server is just going to be used for rsyncing files once or twice a week, it doesn't need to be all that snappy.
Tyler James
I've seen HDDs with 80k hours, SSDs with 20k hours working no problem.
Hey, so i'm trying hardly to design custom SBC. It's fucking pain in the ass, mainly that DDR routing, which i had to learn. I'll build a few prototypes, and if they work i'll give them away. Specs: Allwinner A13 SoC 512MB DDR2 RAM 2x USB 2.0, 10/100 ETH, WiFi, 2x TF SDc,
It's mainly for learning and testing, and if it'll work, we'll jump on doing some serious stuff, so be prepared! :)
Because at time of drawing chematics, I had one A13 lying around (sold it later lol) and i quicker found libraries for it. Next will be based on A64 or some RK3xxx. Thanks for the link btw.
hahahah, reminds me of my younger me, when i wanted tou build 8b CPU using transistors only.. figured out i'll need around 5k transistors and like 4 sq. meters of protoboards, so yeah.. Currently im working in EasyEDA (i know, leave me) because of simple library support. Also working on same thing in Eagle (much simpler to work with, but library support is kinda shit for SoCs, and i don't have really time to made custom ones.) I also recommend KiCAD, tho it's unlearnable for me. I recommend Eagle the most.
Connor Thompson
I worked with EasyEDA. I know that web apps = shit, but at least it gets the job done. Tbh I think you gave me an idea for nice after-graduation project. It connects things I'm interested in with stuff I want to learn (like more advanced PCB design, low level Linux setup) and in the end I will get something I like to play with - SBC. Thx! Are you going to post src of your work somewhere?
Btw. I also wanted to implement my own CPU but on FPGA. I still plan to do it, someday...
Christian Cox
different purposes *dabs*
Jace Richardson
Yep, its kinda shit. But almost every small project that doesn't need high speed routing anf stuff i made in EasyEDA, again, because libraries and ability to co-produce stuff. Yea, as soon as i'm done i'll order bunch of PCBs, try it out and if it works, then i'll make it public. Really, try it. It's not that hard actually, just painfully slow (i'm working on this 4th day straight, almost done), especially DDR routing (you can find some neat whitepapers on that, look for "DDR routing guidelines pdf" and i recommend one from NXP). Also, start with Eagle, eEDA is not for that really.
Neither, me and classmate designed few CPUs in logisim and that shit can export VHDL, so yea.. I just have other stuff to do and no FPGA devboard available.
Dylan Campbell
> Idk why GPS tho. The only use-case for this I can imagine is small spying device. Which can record voice and log the position
Tracking stolen devices.
Samuel Stewart
finally found SBC boards with decent cpus without huge ports soldered in, but they don't seem to sell them in units of 1
Luis Gray
Very good answer, thanks
Samuel Hughes
What SBC it is? Also if you want bare CPU, RAM and some other stuff in minimal configuration, look for SoM (System on Module), like RPi CM3.
no problem :))
Jaxson Lopez
What’s the verdict on RockPro64? I would love to use me some arm boards more powerful than the RPI but I don’t want to be stuck with wathever modified version of Ubuntu offered by the maker.
they have one that's like the rpi, they look interesting
Anthony Clark
Previous thread > we discussed it somewhere. Along with Rock64, RockPro64 are probably the best value boards. Althought, they don't have such community support as RPi does, but manufacturer actually cares about customers, update stuff and have pretty well documented pages. I have 2GB Rock64 and i have basically no things to complain about.
Holy fuck. I can't see any ARM, but they look reeeally interesting. I'll take a closer look later, thanks.
Andrew Wilson
>ARM a yea i mean the pin out, it looks like they are designed for bigger pcbs, if those ports where more flatter...
Joshua Sanders
well there is always posibility to resolder them..
Yea, i've seen lot of ppl using RPi as pihole device. Zero is cheapest, but you'll be better with 3B/3B+. You may also try that new 3A+.
Evan Diaz
Hey, since you all are here, i have a question that requires more expertise than i currently have. I'm wiring an old portable TV to take component video input from an SBC. I was going to use an Rpi but am thinking I might prefer a Rock64 for higher amounts of available RAM for uses other than just retro game emulation. My concern is that I was going to hide the entire board inside the casing since there's room for it, but the Rock64 has a power button (among other things) I would need physical access to externally. What are my options? Can I use i/o pins to wire an external power button? I'm hoping to leave one edge of the board accessible externally and really would rather have access to the USB ports than needing to face the power button edge outward.
Joshua Gutierrez
Welp afaik, Rock64 doesn't have power button wired anywhere else than to actual button on board. So if you want to use it externally, you have to desolder that button from board a solder bunch of wires instead.
Carter Cox
Hey, is there any GPU IC that have its datasheets available?
Carson Johnson
>desolder and solder Ahh, I've been assembling parts and have been intending on building this skill in the meantime. I hope I have some aptitude or this will be a shit show. Based asshat
Isaac Walker
well its just a button, nothing could possibly went wrong unless you are total idiot which i guess you are'nt. They should really add (even unpopulated) header for external power button, it would make our lives a bit easier. Also, noted for future SBC :)
Owen Howard
Yeah, I was just already on the fence about lack of ease of use and this only adds to it. When I was thinking of my build in terms of Raspberry Pi, I was thinking I would only run Retroarch and emulate 2D games, and not need physical access to the board. Now it occurs to me I could stream from Steam, play YouTube videos, even use an external screen if I have port access... I'm just concerned about this old plastic case from 1985, and how much I can afford to faff with it before I cause damage. Not really sure how to handle matters from here. If anyone could weigh in further that would be really cool.
Cameron Flores
Which orange pi is worth buying?
Bentley Wood
As I can see, $1.5 is for some adapter board, isn't it?
Just got a pi zero W with a phat dac and installed Musicbox github.com/pimusicbox/pimusicbox It's a bit rough since musicbox is rarely updated, and I'm bit of a noob to make a build myself, but it works and does as intended. 10/10 can recommend for someone to cheaply upgrade your Hi-Fi.
Though I plan to test it with Volumio later today as it seems to be frequently updated and more stable.