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Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35

unihiker.com

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Re: Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35

#111

Post by jedberg »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #107
jedberg wrote: post #104

This seems like a somewhat related place to ask this: Does anyone know where I can get a 3" round screen? I have a Star Wars clock from the 1970s that has a ton of empty space in the base. I want to put a small computer in it and replace the 3" clock face with a round screen, so it can show the time and maybe some fun Star Wars animations. But I just don't know how to find a 3" round screen without buying 1000 of the…

LilyGo has an ESP32 with an attached round TFT screen that's (I think) 2.8" diameter. You can buy single units on Amazon. One of the demo applications is a clock, but it shouldn't be difficult to load a bitmap.

Looks like it's 2.1", but thanks for the tip!

Re: Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35

#112

Post by elabajaba »

reaperducer wrote: post #87
gizmo686 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because as an industry, we are bad at our jobs. The network facing software has critical security vulnerabilities. Even security folks accept that as the way of the world. At the point the software is released it has (hopefully) no known security vulnerabilities, which is a reasonably secure situation to be in. However, eventually some of them will become known, and that is not safe.

People like to shout "cryptobotnet!" every time someone questions the need for absolute security with devices connected to the internet. You might get 2¢ in about 40 years mining with my IoT light bulb. Good luck with that.

If it has a camera, it can be used to steal your security keys if it can see the power LED on your device (or potentially even just if something connected to your device has a power LED).

https://www.nassiben.com/video-based-crypta

Re: Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35

#113

Post by kristopolous »

scheeseman486 wrote: post #72
snarfy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it need continuous, perpetual support? Most devices like this get built, software installed, and never updated again. When is the last time you updated the ECU software in your car? I built a small arcade cabinet using an old raspberry pi 2b. Once I built it I've never needed to upgrade anything on it. It works fine and plays all the old games. I have backups of the SD card in case anything craps out.

If there's a vulnerability in any of the software or firmware that connects and interfaces with anything over a network, there's the possibility of something worming it's way in or out of it. For something intermittently used like a game box that might not matter. For IoT-focused hardware that is connected to the internet continuously by design where, say, a malformed TCP packet could cause a buffer overflow in the n…

Network updates are an amazing trainwreck.

No matter how elegant you seem to be, you'll always be running like half a dozen versions in the wild.

For any large deployment that kind of work will be on your shoulders anyways. Stuffing in security updates or whatever to that isn't crazy

Unless you're saying you want multichannel overlapping upgrade schedules where you have some NxM cadence matrix to test and support (as in ssh x+/-{1,2,3} AND your software x+/-{1,2,3} etc).

I've had to make and manage automated test rigs for those types of deployment as well.

That's an entire room full of whatever machines your deploying and a full time job.

Anyways, this stuff is hard for the out in the wild devices. Putting security updates in a monolithic release package is really the easier way to go and at that point it's on you.

Re: Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35

#114

Post by BlackLotus89 »

I remember a few sites that had arm soc comparison lists. This would check none of my boxes...

Basically I'm looking for

1) a homeserver board with low energy consumption, m.2/sata, maybe a usb3 port and fast ethernet

2) a lightweight desktop with hdmi/dp, usb c, m.2 and good software support (media codecs anyone?)

3) something cheap for projects the "cheap" pis, esp32 and so on are my go to option

For 1) and 2) I'm looking at cheap pi4 compute module boards... but tbh is the pi4 always short of being good enough

Re: Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35

#115

Post by gadgetoid »

CommanderData wrote: post #89
oneplane wrote: post #52

As usual, looks good on papier but no ecosystem and the current stack that it comes with is dead on arrival. Boards need to come with mainstream distro support or with an ecosystem (or both), otherwise it will just die. And with internet connected devices, you can't set-and-forget, so it needs to have live support. Edit: a RockPi S (same SoC) can be had for $35 and a touch LCD for $11... Granted, it doesn't come with…

I purchased a few ARM boards in the past and won't do it again. All became e-waste. Rockchip notably, great hardware on paper. Try developing something that needs hardware acceleration and it's a paper weight. It's a common cycle of broken promises to provide drivers by manufactures, rinse and repeat. The exception being raspberry pi or expressif. Depending on the application.

I’m still trying to get a Rock 5B to boot from NVMe. By all appearances they included a USB Type-C port that doesn’t work, so the system never pulls sufficient power not to boot loop. Apparently even after a firmware update.

To be totally fair to the up-and-coming boards, the Pi was pretty poorly supported on day 1 and the community did (and still does) a lot of heavy lifting. I’m still waiting for a contender, but I don’t have the time or energy to devote to another SBC.

Despite being a super prolific maintainer of Pi-stuff and related projects I haven’t had a single SBC manufacturer reach out to me and say “hey what do you need to support this?” They just don’t seem to care beyond shoving product out the door and hoping for the best.

Re: Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35

#116

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

darkwater wrote: post #14

Unrelated but trying the HN wisdom here: any suggestion for a cheap touchscreen with a CPU attached and a battery that can be used as a control panel for Home Assistant? Yeah, probably some Android tablet but something that actually works well for this job and costs as less as possible? I cannot power it properly where I want to put it so it needs battery and then I can charge it as needed. Suggestions?

I just got a couple of ESP32-S3 devices direct from China (AliExpress), one with a 5" TFT screen and the other with a 7".

I don't know what home assistant is, but these will run C++ or MicroPython just fine. My application is an industrial controller and they are really nice. Dirt cheap at around $30 each shipped (arrived in just over 2 weeks) to USA.

[edit] They have very little I/O since the display is driven in parallel mode and that takes up most of the EPS32 pins. There's a SPI connector and a couple other pins that could probably be redirected for I2C. I haven't gotten around to to checking that. I did use one of the available pins for serial input to read a GPS module and that was trivial to setup though.

Re: Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35

#117

Post by jedberg »

gadgetoid wrote: post #110
jedberg wrote: post #104

This seems like a somewhat related place to ask this: Does anyone know where I can get a 3" round screen? I have a Star Wars clock from the 1970s that has a ton of empty space in the base. I want to put a small computer in it and replace the 3" clock face with a round screen, so it can show the time and maybe some fun Star Wars animations. But I just don't know how to find a 3" round screen without buying 1000 of the…

Our (Pi compatible) HyperPixel Round is just shy of 3” if you count the thick, black border around the edges. Actual screen is 2.1” but diameter is 71.8mm.

Ok wait, so when it says 2.1" that doesn't include the bezel? So the problem all along has been me reading it wrong? Thank you!

Re: Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35

#118

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

anigbrowl wrote: post #103
darkwater wrote: post #14

Unrelated but trying the HN wisdom here: any suggestion for a cheap touchscreen with a CPU attached and a battery that can be used as a control panel for Home Assistant? Yeah, probably some Android tablet but something that actually works well for this job and costs as less as possible? I cannot power it properly where I want to put it so it needs battery and then I can charge it as needed. Suggestions?

m5stack.com

I love M5Stack and in fact just shipped my first project with an M5 Tough. However, those screens are tiny. Even 3" would be a huge improvement.

Re: Unihiker, an $80 single-board PC with 2.8“ touchscreen, quad-core ARM Cortex-A35

#119

Post by anaganisk »

BlackLotus89 wrote: post #114

I remember a few sites that had arm soc comparison lists. This would check none of my boxes... Basically I'm looking for 1) a homeserver board with low energy consumption, m.2/sata, maybe a usb3 port and fast ethernet 2) a lightweight desktop with hdmi/dp, usb c, m.2 and good software support (media codecs anyone?) 3) something cheap for projects the "cheap" pis, esp32 and so on are my go to option For 1) and 2) I'm…

Used Lenovo think center I bought off eBay has, Intel 7th gen with vPro, 8GB ram, 256GB nvme, all of that for 76$ including shipping, pi can even beat that price.
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