Who else is a SBC (Single Board Computer) Enthusiast or Hobbyist?

[urbanman2004]

I recently received an Orange Pi 5 SBC in the mail by way of AliExpress after a month-long wait since ordering it which I intended to purpose it as a Android set-top box for my living room to use for YouTube, streaming movies/TV shows from my server, and ultimately, video game emulation (up to Gen 6 consoles). The early adopter cost of $83 was my main motivation for buying one at the time. The manufacturer had them on preorder beginning mid-Nov and the price would steadily increase incrementally as time went on. I've had my eye on other SBCs w/ the same chipset as the Orange Pi 5 (RK3588S) based on its performance leap compared to earlier SBCs that have released prior, but they cost more than what I was willing to pay for. However, the moment I saw ETA Prime's YouTube video a/b his take using on the Orange Pi 5, I immediately bought one and so far I'm pleased from my experience.

I got hooked on SBCs by accident starting w/ the Raspberry Pi 4 during COVID b/c Target was selling the RP4 4GB version for $45 at RP4 2GB pricing. In a nutshell, there was a glitch so when you bought the 2GB version online, you were sent the 4GB version or if you bought the 4GB version in-store it cost the price of the 2GB version.

After my run w/ the RP4, I eventually bought both the 2GB and 4GB versions of the NVIDIA Jetson Nano. On my 4GB version, I have installed a modded Ubuntu distro which has Emulation Station integrated and on my 2GB version, I have Android TV 10 installed which is akin to an NVIDIA Shield more or less. However, neither of them hold a candle next to the Orange Pi 5 and RP4 never had a chance.

Anyway, I said all that to say this: I'm curious to know of any other fellow members of this forum who are also tinkerers of SBCs such as myself, and if so, what purpose does your SBC(s) serve and what kind of SBCs do you own, have dabbled into, taken some interest in, or went full on mad scientist when applying modifications to it. All relevant enlightening on topic comments are welcome.

 

[MochaMods]

I'm a big fan of SBC's. Own a PINE board. I haven't dedicated any tasks to it yet but have tinkered around with some webdev on it. I can't wait to see the tech progress.

 

[Gamerjin]

Got:
1 RP4 running plex(media server), Kodi (local media player), deluge(torrent downloader), and flexget(RSS feed reader and downloader)
1 RP4 running strictly Kodi, its attached to one of those small 5" touchscreens, but it does work well once you get the touchscreen theme going....

 

[MochaMods]

Got:
1 RP4 running plex(media server), Kodi (local media player), deluge(torrent downloader), and flexget(RSS feed reader and downloader)
1 RP4 running strictly Kodi, its attached to one of those small 5" touchscreens, but it does work well once you get the touchscreen theme going....

have you had any issues with bandwidth? I've heard rpi's have issues with that

 

[Gamerjin]

have you had any issues with bandwidth? I've heard rpi's have issues with that

well, i never really tested it per say, for the most part, the content that plex streams to my roku tv has been pretty constant.

 

[MochaMods]

well, i never really tested it per say, for the most part, the content that plex streams to my roku tv has been pretty constant.

Good to hear! im sure as they get better and better it becomes less of an issue. i just know its a common reason why people dont run seedboxes off of them due to the USB bandwidth.

 

[urbanman2004]

Got:
1 RP4 running plex(media server), Kodi (local media player), deluge(torrent downloader), and flexget(RSS feed reader and downloader)
1 RP4 running strictly Kodi, its attached to one of those small 5" touchscreens, but it does work well once you get the touchscreen theme going....

Oh nice. All have is RetroPie installed on my Raspberry Pi 4, but I don't really use it much b/c everything my RP4 can do can be done on my PS Classic and I consider it more convenient and it's always connected to my TV in my living room. Ever since the RP4, I became a collector of the these little nifty SBCs.

Curious to know what purpose does Kodi serve you? I presume you're using it to stream from your local media server. I used to use Kodi to stream from a 2TB external hard drive that was connected directly to my router (NAS) before buying a full fledged standalone NAS server back in 2021 and ever since then I only stream from my server using VLC.

Post automatically merged: Jan 25, 2023

I'm a big fan of SBC's. Own a PINE board. I haven't dedicated any tasks to it yet but have tinkered around with some webdev on it. I can't wait to see the tech progress.

I'm not as familiar w/ the PINE A64 SBC, but I found this product page from the manufacturer's website which goes over its specs. How often are these PINE boards updated since its specs sheet seems somewhat basic? I'm also curious to know a/b its performance and what its capable of in comparison to other brands of SBCs.

 

[Gamerjin]

Curious to know what purpose does Kodi serve you? I presume you're using it to stream from your local media server. I used to use Kodi to stream from a 2TB external hard drive that was connected directly to my router (NAS) before buying a full fledged standalone NAS server back in 2021 and ever since then I only stream from my server using VLC.

i grew up with the original XBMC, which later turned into kodi, so depending on the platform, i can configure it for several things. However, for most things, i use it as a media player for when i hook up a projector to it.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I have a Pi 3 managing my 3D printer running OctoPrint.
I have 2 Atomic Pis, one of which was dedicated to running my torrent client and serving as a media server just using Samba and a TV server using TVMosaic, but there were too many technical issues with my setup (particularly with the 5TB 2.5" external drives I had in RAID5 that kept failing and the way they (didn't) handle bad sectors, leading to the drive dropping out every time a bad sector was attempted read) and the 2GB of RAM on the Atomic Pi is a bit low. I got pretty sick of the constant issues and every time a drive died I was left unable to use my main torrent client for weeks because there were always bad sectors on multiple drives so a simple RAID5 rebuild wasn't possible, and the odd behavior of the drives when it comes to bad sectors made the recovery process difficult, so I ended up building a proper server that now handles that and more.
I also have a Pi 2 that was for a short while dedicated to running Kodi but eventually got a Shield TV for that.

Only the Pi 3 with OctoPrint is in use right now. I want a Pi 4 to play around with and a bunch of Pi Picos.
Been thinking of getting a PiKVM for my server, but it's a little pricy and it doesn't help that Pis are so hard to get right now.

 

[BigOnYa]

Yup same, I used to use RP4 and ext hd for a NAS setup, but have since bought an actual NAS drive. I tinker with a few boards, RP4, RPzero, few hats, also have bunch Arduino stuff/projects. Recently I've been working on a Music Video Jukebox, with a RP4 4gb, using "Fruitbox" repo. I wanna have a monitor on a jukebox front, that plays the actual music video, Kinda like old MTV used to be, but I can select the tracks I wanna see/hear myself. I also incorporated a shuffle feature that plays dif videos at random, if wanted. I'm getting there, have most parts, but waiting for a better Audio hat I ordered to arrive in the mail. I'm working on the wood housing plans now.

 

[Jayro]

I use them all the time for various things around my house, and they're all Pi 3 and 4 boards.

Pi 3 model B+ runs my bartop arcade, and runs 24/7.
Pi 4 model B 1GB runs my headless file server and torrent client 24/7.
Pi 4 model B 4GB runs my Octoprint server with 1080p webcam at 15fps.

Then I have a few Pi Zeros that are just for hobby gadgets.
I've stuck with Pis because of the overwhelming software support, but I'm not opposed to trying an Orange Pi or Banana Pi for certain things, due to scalpers being cunts with Pi hardware over the last year.

 

[urbanman2004]

I have a Pi 3 managing my 3D printer running OctoPrint.
I have 2 Atomic Pis, one of which was dedicated to running my torrent client and serving as a media server just using Samba and a TV server using TVMosaic, but there were too many technical issues with my setup (particularly with the 5TB 2.5" external drives I had in RAID5 that kept failing and the way they (didn't) handle bad sectors, leading to the drive dropping out every time a bad sector was attempted read) and the 2GB of RAM on the Atomic Pi is a bit low. I got pretty sick of the constant issues and every time a drive died I was left unable to use my main torrent client for weeks because there were always bad sectors on multiple drives so a simple RAID5 rebuild wasn't possible, and the odd behavior of the drives when it comes to bad sectors made the recovery process difficult, so I ended up building a proper server that now handles that and more.
I also have a Pi 2 that was for a short while dedicated to running Kodi but eventually got a Shield TV for that.

Only the Pi 3 with OctoPrint is in use right now. I want a Pi 4 to play around with and a bunch of Pi Picos.
Been thinking of getting a PiKVM for my server, but it's a little pricy and it doesn't help that Pis are so hard to get right now.

I've never heard of TVMOsaic. Do you use it to stream live TV channels OTA? I'm presuming Kodi was meant as your application of choice to view media on your server in that equation?

So when you referenced your torrent client, are you hosting seeds for data you have stored on your server that you share w/ other interested parties to download from you?

Now, I don't really care for RAID on my server since I don't need it mirrored or redundancy b/c a copy of the data on my server is already stored elsewhere on a storage device that's only cold booted from time to time for data replication purposes so I formatted my server to be "Just a Bunch of Disks" (JBOD).

I didn't start getting into SBCs until the Raspberry Pi Foundation started to add USB 3.0 into the RPi's spec sheet so when they applied it to the RP4, I took that plunge back in 2020 during COVID. The whole shortage situation sucks altogether, but realizing how inferior the RP4 is in performance compared to other SBCs, I wouldn't be so hung up on trying to get one when there are better alternatives that aren't being scalped at mountain high prices that blow it out of the water. Now, if you specifically need the RP4 for a particular task that is only unique to the RP4, but not other SBCs then I understand your plight... The only reason I bought a Pico was to mod a 2nd GameCube to run SWISS on it.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I've never heard of TVMOsaic. Do you use it to stream live TV channels OTA? I'm presuming Kodi was meant as your application of choice to view media on your server in that equation?

So when you referenced your torrent client, are you hosting seeds for data you have stored on your server that you share w/ other interested parties to download from you?

Now, I don't really care for RAID on my server since I don't need it mirrored or redundancy b/c a copy of the data on my server is already stored elsewhere on a storage device that's only cold booted from time to time for data replication purposes so I formatted my server to be "Just a Bunch of Disks" (JBOD).

I didn't start getting into SBCs until the Raspberry Pi Foundation started to add USB 3.0 into the RPi's spec sheet so when they applied it to the RP4, I took that plunge back in 2020 during COVID. The whole shortage situation sucks altogether, but realizing how inferior the RP4 is in performance compared to other SBCs, I wouldn't be so hung up on trying to get one when there are better alternatives that aren't being scalped at mountain high prices that blow it out of the water. Now, if you specifically need the RP4 for a particular task that is only unique to the RP4, but not other SBCs then I understand your plight... The only reason I bought a Pico was to mod a 2nd GameCube to run SWISS on it.

I used to use it, I stopped watching TV though. Kept it running so my dad could watch it sometimes, and I already have the TV tuners, CA modules and smart cards so why not use them.
Kodi is what I use to watch all my media, unless I'm on the go then it's easier to use VLC.

Not sure what you mean by that, I just seed stuff from private trackers.

An offline backup is great, but it'll always be slightly out of date, there could be important data lost that isn't in the backup, so the best is combining RAID with backups IMO. Not that there was anything on those drives that I wouldn't be able to get another copy of, but it was around 15 TB of data and it's not like I kept track of everything I had on there, so it would be a hassle for sure.
I have like 50 TB of data on the new server

There is one thing the Raspberry Pis have that no other SBC has: Support.
With other ones, you're limited in OS/distro selection and you're often stuck with an old kernel in order to have drivers and such working. Security is an issue when it can't be updated and down the line you'll run into compatibiliy issues with newer versions of distros and software. But you can rely on Raspberry Pis being supported long term, because they have such a strong community.

 

[zxr750j]

A Pi3+ runs my pool stuff, I've got an Pi400 which can control my switch (cheap vid capture card and nxbt). It also reprogrammed my game&watch.

 

[urbanman2004]

Yup same, I used to use RP4 and ext hd for a NAS setup, but have since bought an actual NAS drive. I tinker with a few boards, RP4, RPzero, few hats, also have bunch Arduino stuff/projects. Recently I've been working on a Music Video Jukebox, with a RP4 4gb, using "Fruitbox" repo. I wanna have a monitor on a jukebox front, that plays the actual music video, Kinda like old MTV used to be, but I can select the tracks I wanna see/hear myself. I also incorporated a shuffle feature that plays dif videos at random, if wanted. I'm getting there, have most parts, but waiting for a better Audio hat I ordered to arrive in the mail. I'm working on the wood housing plans now.

Were you born in the late 70s to 80s?... You could be purposing your RP4 for a whole lot of other things, but instead you're using it as a jukebox? Never knew that was possible, but if you are indeed an audiophile such as myself then I can't knock you for it.

 

[sarkwalvein]

I got into SBCs with the first RPi back in the day. Then I got many RPi3s. And then an RPi 400.
The RPi one I used it in an electronics project related to GNSS augmentation.
The RPi3s... I've used them as servers for different software projects mostly, related to digitalization and home automation.
I also used one of the RPi3s for some time to run a Plex Media server.

I planned to use one of the RPi3s to be kind of an XDCC download server, that I could command with an app on my phone to get whatever I wanted to watch next into my NAS so that I could later watch it on my TV... this was back on the day of horriblesubs (they don't even exist anymore)... I wrote part of the code, the automated downloader system was working and you could create config files for it to automatically get the next episode of everything you were watching; but to add something new into the list you needed to log in and configure via bash using SSH, not very user friendly, the android app was not yet ready... then I got mega lazy.

The RPi 400, I gave that one as a gift to my 4 years old nephew in hope he will get interested in learning Linux and some other stuff with it, perhaps scratch... I think he just watches youtube there now.

 

[urbanman2004]

I used to use it, I stopped watching TV though. Kept it running so my dad could watch it sometimes, and I already have the TV tuners, CA modules and smart cards so why not use them.
Kodi is what I use to watch all my media, unless I'm on the go then it's easier to use VLC.

Not sure what you mean by that, I just seed stuff from private trackers.

An offline backup is great, but it'll always be slightly out of date, there could be important data lost that isn't in the backup, so the best is combining RAID with backups IMO. Not that there was anything on those drives that I wouldn't be able to get another copy of, but it was around 15 TB of data and it's not like I kept track of everything I had on there, so it would be a hassle for sure.
I have like 50 TB of data on the new server

There is one thing the Raspberry Pis have that no other SBC has: Support.
With other ones, you're limited in OS/distro selection and you're often stuck with an old kernel in order to have drivers and such working. Security is an issue when it can't be updated and down the line you'll run into compatibiliy issues with newer versions of distros and software. But you can rely on Raspberry Pis being supported long term, because they have such a strong community.

You made some fair and valid points. After using the SAMBA protocol when setting up admin access to my server and using Kodi as my dedicated application to view media from my server for a whole year (2019-2021), when I tried out VLC back in 2021, I realized I didn't have to do much preparatory work to get it working and have been using it ever since on all of my TVs.

You answered my question when you said you "just seed stuff from private trackers". I just didn't word it right when it came to asking a/b your torrent client.

50TB of data would be overkill for what I use my server for, not to judge, and my server only has a max capacity of 16TB (lol). And just b/c the data on my server isn't as redundant as yours, I'm willing to live w/ that even if the HDDs on the server fail since the cold boot storage I was referencing earlier that I use for data retaining purposes is the original source contrary to my server being the duplicate.

Yes that is true, the Raspberry Pi's do have a lot of community support which trumps a lot of other SBCs' on the market, but in due time, the Orange Pi 5, w/ its affordable price will garner the attention necessary from the community based on its high performance specs compared to the RP4 to be somewhat of a alternative option that you wont be left stranded using especially since RP4's are hard to come by at this current point in time.

Post automatically merged: Jan 25, 2023

A Pi3+ runs my pool stuff, I've got an Pi400 which can control my switch (cheap vid capture card and nxbt). It also reprogrammed my game&watch.

I might have to holler at you to come up w/ some other ideas on what other purposes I could potentially use my RP4 for.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

You made some fair and valid points. After using the SAMBA protocol when setting up admin access to my server and using Kodi as my dedicated application to view media from my server for a whole year (2019-2021), when I tried out VLC back in 2021, I realized I didn't have to do much preparatory work to get it working and have been using it ever since on all of my TVs.

You answered my question when you said you "just seed stuff from private trackers". I just didn't word it right when it came to asking a/b your torrent client.

50TB of data would be overkill for what I use my server for, not to judge, and my server only has a max capacity of 16TB (lol). And just b/c the data on my server isn't as redundant as yours, I'm willing to live w/ that even if the HDDs on the server fail since the cold boot storage I was referencing earlier that I use for data retaining purposes is the original source contrary to my server being the duplicate.

Yes that is true, the Raspberry Pi's do have a lot of community support which trumps a lot of other SBCs' on the market, but in due time, the Orange Pi 5, w/ its affordable price will garner the attention necessary from the community based on its high performance specs compared to the RP4 to be somewhat of a alternative option that you wont be left stranded using especially since RP4's are hard to come by at this current point in time.

Post automatically merged: Jan 25, 2023

I might have to holler at you to come up w/ some other ideas on what other purposes I could potentially use my RP4 for.

Yeah, Kodi is nice. I have a Shield TV so it's just easier & quicker than turning on my PC and browsing for the right file.

I basically downloaded my entire IMDB watchlist, including around 200 shows, over half of it is taken up by shows. So I can watch anything any time I want. And also cancelled my Netflix
4K stuff is big. A single season in 4K is like 150 gigs, sometimes over 200.
I admit, I don't have any of this backed up. I backed up some important personal files to gdrive (that weren't on the server), don't think I can be arsed to back up 50 TB though even if I do have unlimited gdrive.

Were any of the other Orange Pi devices that successful? I looked at them years ago, back then they were still more powerful than Raspberry Pi. But they didn't seem especially popular, besides a few people raving about them.
I'm afraid most people will be hesitant to buy anything other than Raspberry Pi because the names are not as well known.

 

[urbanman2004]

I got into SBCs with the first RPi back in the day. Then I got many RPi3s. And then an RPi 400.
The RPi one I used it in an electronics project related to GNSS augmentation.
The RPi3s... I've used them as servers for different software projects mostly, related to digitalization and home automation.
I also used one of the RPi3s for some time to run a Plex Media server.

I planned to use one of the RPi3s to be kind of an XDCC download server, that I could command with an app on my phone to get whatever I wanted to watch next into my NAS so that I could later watch it on my TV... this was back on the day of horriblesubs (they don't even exist anymore)... I wrote part of the code, the automated downloader system was working and you could create config files for it to automatically get the next episode of everything you were watching; but to add something new into the list you needed to log in and configure via bash using SSH, not very user friendly, the android app was not yet ready... then I got mega lazy.

The RPi 400, I gave that one as a gift to my 4 years old nephew in hope he will get interested in learning Linux and some other stuff with it, perhaps scratch... I think he just watches youtube there now.

Those RPi 400s are pretty nifty since they include the whole kit and caboodle so all you need is a monitor or TV w/ HDMI input to run it from. However, I prefer to use my own choice of separate peripherals instead. I got the Argon case to store my RP4 in and my reason for liking it is b/c the kit provides a daughterboard that allows you to reposition all of the ports in the back instead of them being on both the back and side.

 

[FAST6191]

Lost interest here.

Don't know quite where to point at in all this

I liked getting my full computer onto a TV back when flatscreen was the new hotness as opposed to the slight curve of CRT, though my electronics skills there were limited to 555 timers and basic logic and application specific chips rather than anything too programmable. Similarly serial ports were still a thing so could have my computer take in signals and light LEDs, something that pleased rather younger me at a visceral level (school had some little light gates to do boring things like take before and after speeds/timings to use in a spreadsheet to calculate speeds when you vary the angle of the track a cart ran down and it was right up there with explosives, mercury, vaan der graaf generators, lasers, radioactive stuff, liquid nitrogen, thermite and everything else you do if you want to catch a young boy's attention as it applies to chemistry and physics). Then went to original xbox (which had wonderful homebrew) and sought ways to get them into cars and whatnot without just buying an inverter (which I did also get involved in on the periphery).
Throughout that I was looking on and following the pogoplug/sheevaplug thing quite intently and got into hacked routers and mp3 players as well. I was less involved in programmable chips than some but still did a bit and learned things up to and including fiddling with FPGAs.

Arduino came along and were delightful little things to play with to do all sorts of things that previously were tedious logic setups or having to coax a microcontroller (I missed the earlier PLC and PAL world beyond what I read in books) or maybe CPLD into doing something fun. Raspberry pis came along where I followed it from early talk on tech sites to making the plunge with the 512 meg model B (still have loads around and in service).
For better or worse the pi left its powered by USB design goal and instead became a more boring version of the cheap and cheerful laptops I could hide behind a TV or something and use there. They still had some nice means of plugging in external devices but most were embedded Linux to display things or act as local network devices of various classes. I was not necessarily tied to USB power at the time (though even then most things would give you an amp rather than 500mA) but most of those that went beyond that never quite managed to get it together or were needlessly restrictive (this was before the rasp pi cores got properly opened up as well).

Today I still watch people online having fun doing various data collection or camera traps with complicated processing and external triggers, and am waiting with bated breath to see where both mod chip, flash cart and even wholesale replacement of serious components of hardware (that amiga stuff a while back where they faked a load of things from the CPU on down... wonderful). That said so much of it has been replaced by grabbing an old laptop, being a basic linux distro to install where the mechanical mounting and wiring is more interesting or indeed an old cheap tablet that does it all far better.
Other than them acting as a poor man's FPGA replacement/thing programmable by mere mortals I am having so very little drive any enthusiasm in me for things here.