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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

#171

Post by nick__m »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #116
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 pa…

I use an stm32f103 as an io extender for my esp32-a1s, they cost about 2$ per board and the chip programmer cost about 10$. I use I2C to communicate between the esp32 and the stm32.

I do my development in VSCode using platformio with the Arduino framework and FreeRTOS. It is really convenient to have the same os and framework used for all the MCUs of a project. That's why I use the 2$ stm32 instead of a 1$ stm8.

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

#173

Post by snowAbstraction »

theamk wrote: post #142
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.

Few years ago, you built your arcade cabinet, and decided to put some nice launcher like RetroPie. It works fine for a few years, and then your friends tell you about Pico8 support.. nice, it is supported by RetroPie release! not nice: retropie requires ubuntu 18.04 or later.. let's hope your device supports it. Few years ago, you built a weather station. Sadly, the weather backend you had was discontinued. You found…

Some boards have decent support. I've got an odroid C1 released in 2015 and I saw there is at least an Ubuntu 20 image for it!

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

#175

Post by imtringued »

snarfy wrote: post #36
theamk wrote: post #17

My usual question for small cheap boards is: what will happen to OS support in 3 years? Is it using regular distro or is this a custom fork which will likely be never updated? The website says: > The UNIHIKER comes with a Linux operating system based on Debian and various built-in features, which will be upgraded from time to time. ... don't expect OS upgrades here. If you want to play with it for a while then put it…

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.

Because that is the nature of these SBCs. They aren't some generic queryable platform running UEFI. Instead you have a bespoke OS fork for each individual board. This means that vendors need to give a lot of attention to the software because there isn't a foundation or company taking care of all SBCs at once. The device becomes obsolete very quickly if you can't install recent software. SBC performance hasn't increased much. There are still plenty of boards with A53 cores that have been used for more than a decade.

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

#176

Post by Beached »

Retr0id wrote: post #9
markstos wrote: post #3

The video says "No coding skills? No worries. Just write your code with ChatGPT."

I'm incredibly curious what the experience of trying to write code with ChatGPT is like, if you have no prior knowledge. Obviously, it's impossible for me (and most others reading this) to un-know everything and approach it with fresh eyes. Are there any good real-time videos of non-programmers using ChatGPT to write code? (seems like the best way to understand what it's like)

it's hell, I have been trying it for a couple.months, and you can't really get anything of note built. it's buggy AF, and gets stuck in loops and can't debug itself.

it works ok as a starting point of " I have no freaking clue how to approach this" to "ahh I can see how that will work" and then you go write your own code with the lead.

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

#177

Post by BlackLotus89 »

anaganisk wrote: post #119
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.

One of the rhings I would like are arm or risc v, but tbh if the power consumption is around pi level it is tempting

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

#178

Post by reaperducer »

elabajaba wrote: post #112
reaperducer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fortunately, none of my computers have power LEDs. Also, I don't live in a nuclear weapons facility where I need "security keys."

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

#179

Post by Rediscover »

gadgetoid wrote: post #115
CommanderData wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If You have not tried what the other reply-post suggests (dumb brick), I have a 5V 4A dumb brick I can loan for a quick test. Seattle area. It has worked on quite a few boards here. Or purchase one from where-ever, they are really useful outside of SBCs (though they are usually 5.3V and 4.xA, so watch out with sensitive parts).
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