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.
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.
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€.
RPis are still unbeaten in terms of power usage, but the difference to a low end thin client is small.
Not even close when it comes to tuned idle power usage.
My pi 3 idles at 3-4W, my Futro at around 5-6W. I’d say that’s pretty close.
I prefer Orange Pi over Raspberry Pi
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
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.
OPi definetly worth the money, and you can always use Armbian and software problem solved.
Do you know if it works well with GPIO from python? IIRC I had to use a OPi image and then fix and compile some low level lib.
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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Many have said this. If you don’t need the GPIO, get a small PC.
The n100 and n200 have quite low TDP values for much better performance than a Pi.
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.
Never have seen a thin client that goes below 7ish Watt on idle. Basically every RPi does. https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-consumption
