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The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#211

Post by reaperducer »

noobiemcfoob wrote: post #202
dchest wrote: post #74

Some more cheap SBCs from my bookmarks: - BananaPi (Allwinner, MediaTek): http://www.banana-pi.org/ - Le Potato (Amlogic) and Renegate (Rockchip): https://libre.computer/ - NanoPi (Samsung, Allwinner) : http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/category&... - OLinuXino (open hardware, Allwinner A20, A64, etc, iMX, Ralink): https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ - Odroid (Amlogic, Samsung): http://www.har…

I've been working with the Onion Omega 2+ recently and enjoying it. https://onion.io/omega2/

I was one of the Onion Kickstarter backers and got one of the first ones. It was seriously a disaster for the first year.

Zero support, even in the forums (which are still such a JS mess they don't work on my iPhone). For a lot of users, the microSD slot didn't work. For many others, wifi was a nightmare.

It's gotten significantly better over the months, but it's still not ready for primetime. The good news is that the Onion folks are still actively working on it, and many of the issues have been addressed via firmware updates. But it's still flakey as hell. I've never been able to get its native GUI to work; even the new one released last week.

On one hand, the base unit is only $5. On the other... you get what you pay for.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#212

Post by snvzz »

noobiemcfoob wrote: post #202
dchest wrote: post #74

Some more cheap SBCs from my bookmarks: - BananaPi (Allwinner, MediaTek): http://www.banana-pi.org/ - Le Potato (Amlogic) and Renegate (Rockchip): https://libre.computer/ - NanoPi (Samsung, Allwinner) : http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/category&... - OLinuXino (open hardware, Allwinner A20, A64, etc, iMX, Ralink): https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ - Odroid (Amlogic, Samsung): http://www.har…

I've been working with the Onion Omega 2+ recently and enjoying it. https://onion.io/omega2/

I had to dig this deep to get any specs:

https://docs.onion.io/omega2-docs/omega2.html

And even then, it doesn't even tell me the very basics, such as what SoC does it use.

When it's this bad, it's automatic discard.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#213

Post by rasz »

michrassena wrote: post #200
rasz wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$20 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-04W1431-ThinkPad-X220-i3-231... $30 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X220-Motherboard-FR... ~4-10x Raspberry pee 3 speed, SATA, pcie, 1Gbit ethernet, battery backup. Can get them as low as $10 with one USB port broken (either mechanical or fried).

This is an interesting option. Is it possible run that bare motherboard attached to a compatible power supply and nothing else? I don't see heat sinks on the first link, or RAM, or storage on either.

1GB ddr3 sodimms are pretty much free/garbage(friends, IT at work) due to being outdated and too small for anything, or $4 on ebay including shipping if you cant be bothered to ask around.

Those were just first random links from ebay, you can get better deals if you search harder, for example EU $15 http://allegro.pl/org-sprawna-plyta-glowna-lenovo-x220-core-... whole lower case +wifi +bt +cooling, one usb mechanically broken (out of 3 sockets, 9 more usb available if you solder directly to motherboard in strategic places like camera/mpcie/fingerprint/expresscard/dock connectors). Thinkpads can boot from SD card just like raspberry pee. You boot without keyboard by shorting one pin on keyboard/dock/debug connector.

did I mention full schematic? http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/hardware/thinkpad/x220/x220.s...

mostly open source firmware is also available https://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x220

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#214

Post by [deleted] »

rasz wrote: post #178
jiggunjer wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any of those x86? or is that mutually exclusive with "cheap"?

$20 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-04W1431-ThinkPad-X220-i3-231... $30 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X220-Motherboard-FR... ~4-10x Raspberry pee 3 speed, SATA, pcie, 1Gbit ethernet, battery backup. Can get them as low as $10 with one USB port broken (either mechanical or fried).

[deleted]

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#215

Post by kingosticks »

robhu wrote: post #4

Also of note: Tinkerboard has b/g/n 2.4Ghz wifi. Pi 3B+ also has 802.11ac 5Ghz wifi. Tinkerboard has a superior sound chip, supporting 24-bit, 192kHz audio. Pi 3B+ has a totally garbage mono only analog sound (and presumably fine HDMI digital sound).

It's stereo. And it's not that bad these days either.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#216

Post by jiggunjer »

makomk wrote: post #160
jiggunjer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. boot is a mystery with all commercial SoCs? Show me one that doesn't have an untouchable binary blob in onboard memory. 3. MPEG2 decoding can be done with software just fine? 4. Again, show me one without driver blobs. This is mostly the fault of the chip makers and not the RPi foundation. 5. Power management is a kernel feature? 6. agree

There's nothing mysterious about the Allwinner boot process at least. While there's an on-chip boot ROM that can't be modified, it just loads a chunk of code into SRAM from the boot device and jumps to it at the highest privilege level supported by the hardware. It's not uncommon for everything after the boot ROM to be 100% open source code. That simply isn't possible on the Pi, which is why Debian doesn't support it…

How is a blob not mysterious. The fact that it doesn't use some exotic gpu-based bootstrap is irrelevant. A black box is a black box. Also I'd argue it is uncommon for everything the kernel uses to be open source, I don't know of one where all the drivers are open source (without losing functionality).

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#217

Post by ece »

Unklejoe wrote: post #181
dchest wrote: post #74

Some more cheap SBCs from my bookmarks: - BananaPi (Allwinner, MediaTek): http://www.banana-pi.org/ - Le Potato (Amlogic) and Renegate (Rockchip): https://libre.computer/ - NanoPi (Samsung, Allwinner) : http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/category&... - OLinuXino (open hardware, Allwinner A20, A64, etc, iMX, Ralink): https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/ - Odroid (Amlogic, Samsung): http://www.har…

There are also a few interesting options in the ~$100 price range. One example is the new WandPi 8M. It's based on the NXP i.MX8M and has a few key advantages (particularly, true gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0). I've ordered one myself, but I'm not sure exactly when they're supposed to start shipping. There's also the x86 based UP boards. They're based on newer Intel Atom SoCs, so my guess is that the out-of-the-box Li…

The NXP chips have the other only open source GPU drivers, with the first being the RPi. If you want to do multi-media and need USB3, this is probably what you want.

The upboards are interesting, some have an FPGA, and some NN processing soon courtesy of Movidious.

The Pine64/Rock64 and Orange Pi are as cheap or cheaper than the RPi, and some Allwinner/Rockchip boards have binary GPU drivers, but really YMMV.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#218

Post by my123 »

linuxlizard wrote: post #187
linuxlizard wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what wifi chipset it has. Supports 802.11ac which I need. I should investigate this board, see if it allows monitor mode (low level wifi packet access). The RasPiB+ supports 802.11ac but the Broadcom based wifi doesn't allow monitor mode.

"The wifi/bt module used on ROCK960s is AP6356s from AMPAK Technology." https://www.96boards.org/documentation/consumer/rock960/hard... "AMPAK combines Broadcom Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips in single modules." https://wikidevi.com/wiki/AMPAK Broadcom + Linux is a very mixed bag. Would require more investigation.

The Raspberry Pi uses Broadcom WiFi and Bluetooth chips too. You need to install the linux-firmware package though.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#219

Post by deftnerd »

noir-york wrote: post #143
khedoros1 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you asking if it's possible, or asking for advice on a practical way to get it done?

If its at all possible, and if so, has someone built such an SBC? Alternatively, is there a practical way to attach external DDRAM to an existing 64-bit SBC, perhaps using the GPIO pins? I have zero electronics knowledge so forgive my questions if they are stupid.

DDRAM requires too much speed to do something through the GPIO or USB... What you could do is use the Tinkerboard S, boot off of a microSD card and use the integrated eMMC storage as a big 16gb swap partition... or just partition the eMMC into an 8gb boot and 8gb swap to give you 10gb usable.

Re: The ASUS Tinker Board is a compelling upgrade from a Raspberry Pi 3 B+

#220

Post by pbhjpbhj »

kaoD wrote: post #118
sandGorgon wrote: post #110

what kind of projects does the Raspberry Pi shine in which a 35-50$ phone cant do ? let's say this one - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3000mAh-Homtom-HT16-5-0-inch... ) running Android 6.0 in a 1GB RAM package. You have access to battery, GPS, wifi, USB, acclerometer and a display out of the box (which you typically pay extra for on rpi). And obviously... Android. P.S. remember Android 6.0 has COSU mode to set your…

- RPi isn't Chinese, as in, I'm not locked in (by default) into a Chinese stock OS with god-knows-what spyware installed. - It runs Linux as a first-party-sanctioned OS. Great ecosystem for tinkering. Not locked in to the whims of the manufacturer OS updates. - GPIO pins. - No built-in screen (which I guess draws less power). - HDMI, USB and Ethernet ports.

RPi is British, our GCHQ is well known for never illegally spying on anyone. /s

>"Prior to this [2012], the Raspberry Pi was made in China; some models are now also made in Japan." (https://www.zdnet.com/article/14-million-raspberry-pis-sold-...) //

Now made primarily in UK.

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