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

unihiker.com

201–210 of 241 posts

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

#201

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…

Assuming it's small enough for your needs, a used Intel NUC can get you loads more mileage than pretty much any ARM SoC at an equivalent price. Currently available on eBay: * $49.95 for an i5-5300U at 2.3GHz, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of SSD storage * $89.00 for an i3-7100U at 2.4GHz, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage * $135.00 for an i7-5557U at 3.1GHz, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage ...all loaded with ample d…

If space is not an issue used Optiplexes or ThinkCentres are extremely useful for similar use cases

$30-150 AUD

The only concern I have is power consumption being orders of magnitude higher than modern SoCs

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a "critical security vulnerability " depends on the use. My daily driver? Yes, I want all of the security updates. A raspberry pi for playing arcade games that I occasionally scp a ROM over to? I really don't care if someone hacks in. We, as an industry, are bad about pushing "every device that is on the internet needs to be as up to date as possible all the time" when it reality there is a lot of unimportant stu…

> I really don't care if someone hacks in. At best , that means you're externalizing the costs, i.e. now your device is part of a botnet and becomes a problem for other people. But of course that assumes that it doesn't become a problem for you as well; a compromised device on your network is a great launching point for local attacks and a way to send illegal traffic out through your internet connection.

I'm reminded of the aquarium thermometer used to launch an attach on a casino. https://mashable.com/article/casino-smart-thermometer-hacked>

I have a couple Raspberry Pi Zeroes that monitor aquarium temperature. I keep them updated.

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

#203

You flash the OS (okay, admittedly, debian which is nice) onto it from windows with some lugubrious .exe https://www.unihiker.com/wiki/burner No linux/macos tool available. No thanks.

240x320 display, no keyboard. This is no Personal Computer.

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

#204
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the same experience with non Raspberry Pi boards. They've become useless thanks to endlessly broken software and zero support. My rpi's have been useful for years and are still getting regular updates. I think I too was drawn in by the performance claims made by those other manufacturers. I realized though that raspberry pi are very powerful computers. We just take the scale of modern computing for granted a…

Yup. It's RPi or nothing. It's the software that makes these valuable, not hardware specs. If I wanted to sell an ARM board I'd make it as Pi compatible as possible.

VisionFive2[0] is the way to go. They're much further in upstreaming in just half a year than Raspberry Pi in its long history.

RISC-V is inevitable.

0. https://rvspace.org/en/project/JH7110_Upstream_Plan

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

#205

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…

Assuming it's small enough for your needs, a used Intel NUC can get you loads more mileage than pretty much any ARM SoC at an equivalent price. Currently available on eBay: * $49.95 for an i5-5300U at 2.3GHz, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of SSD storage * $89.00 for an i3-7100U at 2.4GHz, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage * $135.00 for an i7-5557U at 3.1GHz, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage ...all loaded with ample d…

Some of the low price NUC like things found on eBay are missing things like a 19vdc 4.5A external power supply, so expect that unless it's clearly called out in the auction.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

What is a dumb brick?

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

#207
post #142
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…

you literally got what you intended, from a cheap board. An arcade setup. To expect lifetime updates like apple is a bit of a reach.

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

#208
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming it's small enough for your needs, a used Intel NUC can get you loads more mileage than pretty much any ARM SoC at an equivalent price. Currently available on eBay: * $49.95 for an i5-5300U at 2.3GHz, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of SSD storage * $89.00 for an i3-7100U at 2.4GHz, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage * $135.00 for an i7-5557U at 3.1GHz, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage ...all loaded with ample d…

Wait, NUCs are that cheap? I would appreciate a link so that I can get my hands on one. I don't use eBay often and filtering feels terrible on their site.

Not a NUC, or your parent poster, but I picked up a Dell Wyse 7020 thin client for ~$35 + shipping from a recycled electronics vendor in Pennsylvania. EPC here in the USA is an electronics liquidator / off-business-lease seller.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/275777770141?epid=519034385&hash=it...

A homegrown website on re-using thin clients: https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/z/zx0q/

Of course, I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to upgrade it and if it will replace my trusty RPi4, but I prefer fanless designs where possible, especially for 24/7 usage.

Search tips: look for "USFF" (ultra small form factor), or find a refurbishment vendor like EPC ( https://epcglobal.shop/collections/dell-desktops/price_-100-... ) and then track down their eBay page. Specifically, EPC Pennsylvania seemed to have some very inexpensive deals: https://www.ebay.com/str/epcpennsylvania

It can also help to search for specific business computer models on eBay, as small vendors doing electronics liquidation may just read the model number on the unit, take a picture, and fling it up on the store page in the "priced to sell" price bracket.

https://www.servethehome.com/tag/tinyminimicro/ has a list of small servers they have reviewed, so that can help with getting an idea of a computer's capabilities, upgrade paths, or gotchas (e.g. not supporting more than 8 GB of RAM or something).

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

What is a dumb brick?

[deleted]

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

#210
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming it's small enough for your needs, a used Intel NUC can get you loads more mileage than pretty much any ARM SoC at an equivalent price. Currently available on eBay: * $49.95 for an i5-5300U at 2.3GHz, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of SSD storage * $89.00 for an i3-7100U at 2.4GHz, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage * $135.00 for an i7-5557U at 3.1GHz, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage ...all loaded with ample d…

Wait, NUCs are that cheap? I would appreciate a link so that I can get my hands on one. I don't use eBay often and filtering feels terrible on their site.

Here are links to the exact machines I mentioned, in order:

[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/364239987954

[2] https://www.ebay.com/itm/145134550658

[3] https://www.ebay.com/itm/175698509348

And here's a link to the search query I used to find those machines:

[4] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=intel+nuc

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