Is rpi still the single board go-to?
Hey all, I'm looking to build a couple dashboards out around my house. I've done this before with rokchip boards and they are... fine, but not great. Is rpi the best option right now? Are there alternatives you really like? I'd like to keep it a single board to easily mount behind things where it doesn't take up a lot of space, and I won't lie I like the DIY feeling of it over something like a thin client.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| LXC | Linux Containers |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| NUC | Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers |
| PSU | Power Supply Unit |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| PoE | Power over Ethernet |
| RPi | Raspberry Pi brand of SBC |
| SBC | Single-Board Computer |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
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This is a cool bot! Thanks dev!
Good bot. Here's some electricity. ⚡
as long as it is something simple they work fine.
But compare their price to some 1L mini PCs on the second hand market. you will get a lot more guts at around the same price.
Second that.
RPis are still unbeaten in terms of power usage, but the difference to a low end thin client is small.
Cost isn't really an argument either, you can get thin clients with case, psu and SSD for something like 40€.
I feel like its not very fair to compare prices of a new product from a shop to a second hand product price. Then again, I am not even sure you can find many second hand rpis so maybe it is just the reality.
For an SBC, yes. I don't think anyone's come close to its software support. I'm using quite a few in different applications, some 24/7. I've yet to experience hardware or software failure. I'm using official/quality PSUs and SanDisk Extreme Pro/ Samsung Evo Plus SD cards.
For projects, yes... most of the things I want to build don't need to go fast, so the pi zero is amazing and so so small. If you are just talking little cheap computer to stash somewhere, then no. I do think it would be neat if someone made a SBC N100 in the "credit card" size.
I got a NUC on ebay for about the same price, maybe a little less. Has more I/O and an SSD.
IMO there is something magical about having it all running under such a small footprint device, where a simple aluminum case brings it enough cooling.
Obviously if you want to go for huge media consumption or local AI, then it won't be enough, but for running Home Assistant, qBitTorrent, syncthing... You'll be fine and supergreen.
I prefer Orange Pi over Raspberry Pi
Slightly less good (software wise) but so much worth the money IMO. I'd avoid like the i96(IIRC. If no video output well I couldn't setup ssh etc. That was some time ago so take the information with a grain of salt).
It's a little more difficult space to navigate but worth it if you know why you want one for sure.
I've never even heard of Orange Pi, thanks for the heads up to them!
If you're looking for a quick way to see its potential try using one of these images.
https://github.com/Joshua-Riek/ubuntu-rockchip
I use this to run 4k video, you would be surprised with how many things just work on here.
Also I slapped a 1tb M.2 SSD on there and flashed the OS there so it is very fast and has the potential to be used as a full desktop
OPI is a great SBC! 👍
Yeah I'm using right now like 6 of these and they are working like a charm 👍👍
I think you need to provide the criteria you're using to define "best".
I can compare specs on my own, I'm looking for opinions here. I heard rpi wasn't completely on the up and up recently, shipping problems, overserving corporate clients, etc. If people have had bad boards, bad customer service, things are overpriced for what you get, etc.
Right now it looks like the rpi5 is the best option, but $80 is a lot, and if I can get a couple of lower end boards for half the price with a better company rep, then I'd probably seriously consider those.
Those issues were related to Covid. It made perfect sense for them to focus on their corporate clients, who are their largest revenue source. I've also never heard anything bad about their customer service, nor the quality of the products or pricing.
Now that those supply issues have been solved, there's no real reason to be wary of them. They make an incredible product at a fantastic price.
We've used a couple of different Pis and a couple of different Odroids. The Odroids have been excellent and trouble free, the Pis not so much. Initially we got a Pi because we thought with the bigger community and better software support it would be easier to troubleshoot issues. Except that they have been regular problems that we haven't always been able to work around or fix. One of them got relegated to a retro game 'console' because it was more trouble than it was worth. We've had little issues with the Odroids that wasn't easily sorted.
I have two rpi4 running 0/24 for more than 4 years. Get quality SD card and you are golden. I would avoid it if you need to connect multiple USB drives, but seems like you are fine with SD only. I have no experience with pi 5 or any alternative brand
I've had an RPI3 running for 7+ years (currently running Home Assistant on it). Still uses the original SD card that shipped with it, too. These things are durable and reliable as hell, as far as I'm concerned.
I had a 2-disk mirror hooked to the USB 3 ports. I think it did >200MB/s per disk prior to mirroring and the mirror speeds were similar. It only really started dragging itself when I put disk encryption on top. I think it used to do 80-90MB/s. Exposed it via NFS and it ran it as NAS for an active Plex server for a couple of years. The Pi 4 is still alive, now on another duty. 🫠
Short answer: no
Many have said this. If you don't need the GPIO, get a small PC.
Or if you do not care about power consumption.
The n100 and n200 have quite low TDP values for much better performance than a Pi.
A refurbished tiny/mini/micro PC will use more power in terms of sheer numbers, but the cost is still so small on them that it's really not worth considering for most.
If you search ebay for Intel based thin clients, many are more powerful than RPi while being passively cooled and having very similar power consumption.
What if I want a computer I can power via PoE?
I have never thought about this. Thanks for pointing it out.