I’ve run an ODROID XU4, Raspberry Pi B, and a couple of the Pogoplugs (they’re Marvell Kirkwood based, see Arch Linux details on how to use it.)
I liked all of them, even the Pogoplugs are able to run minidlna well and keep up with sending large compressed media streams via DLNA. I’ve had a bit of bad luck with things like SD cards and hard drives. In general it’s tough to fault the SBCs themselves although I suspect some have less room than others.
It strikes me as these SoCs all have their own bootstrapping mechanism and they could benefit from a uniform bootloader. AFAIK most/all leverage uboot but I think it has to be customized/ported for each board. The chip manufacturers should make a standard like BIOS/UEFI/etc. I know everybody hates those things for some good reasons but mostly bad. But booting up an x86 computer has been mostly straightforward for decades.
I like the Orange Pi One as it is similar to the Raspberry Pi 3 but half the price. I put Armbian on it and could run VLC, to play movies on my TV and stream my security camera quite easily.
I’m curious about giving Orange Pi zero a try. I saw this one for $19 shipped (w/o supply) and was tempted to pull the trigger. How long have you owned it? What’s the best uptime you’ve gotten?
We’ve had it for about 3 months, we’ve only had it on for a day or two at a time as we generally turn it off when we go to bed. It is in a case with air holes but no fan. I’m thinking of getting some heat sinks and a case fan, when hardware decoding video it doesn’t seem to be struggling, but I’m a bit paranoid about having zero cooling by default.
I’ve run an ODROID XU4, Raspberry Pi B, and a couple of the Pogoplugs (they’re Marvell Kirkwood based, see Arch Linux details on how to use it.)
I liked all of them, even the Pogoplugs are able to run
minidlnawell and keep up with sending large compressed media streams via DLNA. I’ve had a bit of bad luck with things like SD cards and hard drives. In general it’s tough to fault the SBCs themselves although I suspect some have less room than others.It strikes me as these SoCs all have their own bootstrapping mechanism and they could benefit from a uniform bootloader. AFAIK most/all leverage uboot but I think it has to be customized/ported for each board. The chip manufacturers should make a standard like BIOS/UEFI/etc. I know everybody hates those things for some good reasons but mostly bad. But booting up an x86 computer has been mostly straightforward for decades.
Orange Pi One/Zero?
I like the Orange Pi One as it is similar to the Raspberry Pi 3 but half the price. I put Armbian on it and could run VLC, to play movies on my TV and stream my security camera quite easily.
I’m curious about giving Orange Pi zero a try. I saw this one for $19 shipped (w/o supply) and was tempted to pull the trigger. How long have you owned it? What’s the best uptime you’ve gotten?
We’ve had it for about 3 months, we’ve only had it on for a day or two at a time as we generally turn it off when we go to bed. It is in a case with air holes but no fan. I’m thinking of getting some heat sinks and a case fan, when hardware decoding video it doesn’t seem to be struggling, but I’m a bit paranoid about having zero cooling by default.