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Comment by trome | Hacker News Reader

Why would I buy the Raspberry Pi Zero instead of an OrangePi PC ($15) or an OrangePi Zero ($8.99)? With the latter, I can actually use an M.2 SSD with the HATs available for it, and I'll get 40MB/s unlike the Raspi's 4 to 5MB/s, and both OrangePis are able to run a fully libre stack with kernel 4.10 and have much more CPU grunt than this Raspi (4x Cortex A7 @ 1.2Ghz vs one ancient ARMv6 core at 1Ghz).

The built in ethernet port, full size USB port and ability to easily add POE support are just gravy on top to make it easily usable, rather than have a dozen dongles and a USB hub hanging off it needlessly.

Edit: Added kernel version, clarified POE support.

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Vendor and developer support, community size, available tutorials, etc.

I don't see Broadcom supporting their chips very well with the Raspberry Pi, you basically can't use most of the boards functionality on Debian without adding a bunch of blobs.

Wrt community, linux-sunxi and Armbian are both in better states than the Raspberry Pi community on their forums or on Reddit, if I google for dhclient issues with the Raspberry Pi I'm gonna get nowhere fast on fixing said issues.

This is the same for every ARM board if you want multimedia support. (Because these companies do not allow you to publish their IP) Ofc if you only connect a punch of hard drives to it and a ethernet cable you are not gonna appreciate what possibilities a Raspberry Pi and their quite open software stack are able to offer you. Get a camera and hardware encoding involved in your tinkering and you will have a bad time for sure.

Uhh, when you actually talk to Allwinner, they are generally pretty helpful unless its not their IP to give. I've emailed Tyle at Allwinner in the past to clear up some chunks of code in the kernel 3.4 BSP, and I found most of the time the code was intended to be under GPLv2, which he clarified.

How is libmmal for the Raspberry Pi's camera libre by the way? The license looks to be proprietary, definitely the opposite of open.

Well, I can easily use, for example, Plan 9 or RISC OS, on a Raspberry Pi without any porting effort whatsoever. Some of us have use cases that do not simply involve Linux.

I am more interested in GPIO support in embedded boards. With RaspPi it is very probable that I will find a snippet to read a specific temperature sensor via I2C or bit banging for example. For the rest of the options (orange pi, banana pi, even odroid, etc) I have not heard such good things.

Literally, once I got my Pi, I got a DHT22 from my arduino box and in less than 3 minutes I could read it.

You can access GPIO, I2C, UART via standard kernel interfaces. Which is the whole point of the kernel. Learn those and you can use the code on any SBC running Linux.

Also the zero form factor is really cute. I'm gonna buy an orange pi because quad core et al, but the rpi Z(W) is .. cute.

> POE support

You got my hopes up, but it's not even passive "PoE", they just exposed the unused pairs on solder pads....

Something Pi-like with proper PoE would be great, but that is just to exotic a feature it seems.

Clarified, sorry about that! I generally just put a blob of solder on the pads to bridge them, then I get frankenPOE at 5v.

Can you expand on this? How do you do this? I'm interested in doing the same, yet I have no idea how are you going about this.

Any links/photos? Thank you!

Kogepathic posted this further down, its just two pads you'd put a 0 ohm resistor on or cross connect:

http://linux-sunxi.org/Orange_Pi_Zero#Passive_PoE

Check this out: https://www.amazon.com/802-3af-Splitter-MicroUSB-Devices-WT-...

Hope it helps you! =)

Other usecases than yours listed. The RaspberryPI Zero is really small, has a camera connector as well as a lot of software and documentation. Not everyone uses a RaspberryPI as a homeserver replacement.

E.g. h264 encoding on hardware & stereo camera support (only on compute module) are unique features of the RPi platform.

It's not: https://github.com/rosimildo/videoenc (H3)

Okay, people who read this and want to go and buy the Orange Pi Zero: PLEASE read the following before purchasing!

> I can actually use an M.2 SSD with the HATs available for it

The NAS hat costs $7 extra plus shipping ($4 to EU for me). [0] And to my knowledge there is no case for the Ornage Pi Zero which can accommodate the NAS hat.

> and POE support

It doesn't support POE out of the box, and it's not 802.3af/at compliant. [1] You can use a passive PoE injector, but 5V in a CAT5/6 cable won't get you very far. You can use a higher voltage, but then you need to add a DC/DC voltage converter and unsolder some resistors from the PCB.

In short: it's a lot of work to get POE working. It's not really worthwhile.

Also the WiFi on the Orange Pi Zero is a piece of shit. [2] Performance is crap and there's high packet loss. Allwinner's driver is a steaming pile of shit and no one from Xunlong or Allwinner is working to make it any better. The stock images from Xunlong are using kernel 3.4!

Several people from Armbian are trying to improve the driver, but there's no public datasheet and the firmware of the wireless module is pretty crash happy.

Also it's 2.4GHz 1T1R (same as the Raspberry Pi W) so the performance is always going to be bad, even after (or if) Armbian manages to fix up the driver.

  - *Does the Orange Pi Zero outperform the Raspberry Pi (Zero, W, 1, 2)?* Yes.

  - *Should I buy the Orange Pi Zero for my project that needs WiFi?* No.

  - *Should I buy the Orange Pi Zero for a project requiring USB and Ethernet?* Yes!

  - *Should I use the images from Xunlong for my Orange Pi <whatever>?* Please no! Use Armbian ( https://www.armbian.com/ )

Images from Xunlong are using an ancient kernel and don't have proper power/thermal management for the SoC. With Armbian and the mainline kernel, temperatures are under control and you don't need a heat sink unless you're using 100% CPU all the time. Also, cores don't randomly shut off due to overheating.

[0] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Orange-Pi-Zero-NAS-Expansion...

[1] http://linux-sunxi.org/Orange_Pi_Zero#Powering_the_board

[2] https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/3243-orange-pi-zer...

> The NAS hat costs $7 extra plus shipping ($4 to EU for me). [0] And to my knowledge there is no case for the Ornage Pi Zero which can accommodate the NAS hat.

Sure, but your gonna be able to max out the ethernet port on an OrangePi Zero, whereas none of the Raspberry Pis can even fill half of a 100Mbps ethernet port. Printing a case isn't all that hard, or you could always build it from thin plywood, cardbord or something else if you want a case.

> It doesn't support POE out of the box

No, but you can wire it for any type of POE you want, whether that be 5v, 12v to 24v, or proper 48v POE. The traces are already there on the PCB, and at that price point I doubt anyone could fit in a buck converter to make it do 48v POE without increasing the cost by a few bucks.

> WiFi on the Orange Pi Zero is a piece of shit.

That and every other SBC, I've got a Raspberry Pi 3 on the shelf that I wrote off due to poor wifi performance. SBCs with small integrated antennas just aren't gonna have amazing wifi. Most of what was in the BSP is now mainlined in kernel 4.10 by the way.

Armbian is decent, I've been quemu-debootstrapping my own images though since I'm not a fan of all the modifications they make to Debian.

> No, but you can wire it for any type of POE you want, whether that be 5v, 12v to 24v, or proper 48v POE. The traces are already there on the PCB, and at that price point I doubt anyone could fit in a buck converter to make it do 48v POE without increasing the cost by a few bucks.

So, you can buy an extra buck converter^ and solder it yourself --removing additional resistors on the PCB-- and it still won't be 802.3af/at compliant, or you can just buy a proper PoE adaptor for $10. [0]

^ Please show me a buck converter that does 48VDC->5VDC for "a few bucks"

[0] http://www.tp-link.com/us/products/details/TL-POE10R.html

What? You definitely don't need to remove any resistors onboard.

Edit: Guess I'm just unfamiliar wrt POE, since I usually use 5v frankenPOE on these boards.

> What? You definitely don't need to remove any resistors onboard.

Yes, you do if you're using a voltage higher than 5V. Read the wiki page:

If you plan to use a buck converter at higher voltages, remove R135/R136 (75 Ohm) as they will dissipate a lot of heat and may burn out! See the picture on the right and below in the gallery for which resistors to remove. [0]

[0] http://linux-sunxi.org/Orange_Pi_Zero#Passive_PoE

> whereas none of the Raspberry Pis can even fill half of a 100Mbps ethernet port.

Sorry, but I beg to differ

    slau@cakec:~ $ wget -O /dev/null http://speedtest.tele2.net/1GB.zip
    /dev/null 100% [================================================================================================>] 1.00G 11.1MB/s in 93s

This is on a Raspberry Pi 2, which acts as a ClusterHAT controller. On a Pi Zero attached to it, which uses a virtual USB network adapter (bridged on eth0 of the controller), I get the following:

    slau@cakep1:~ $ wget -O /dev/null http://speedtest.tele2.net/1GB.zip
    /dev/null 100% [================================================================================================>] 1.00G 8.25MB/s in 2m 5s

I'd say that's pretty honourable, and quite a bit higher than "half of a 100Mbps ethernet port".

Edit: SNMP data during that download test: https://s22.postimg.org/rgsrkru8h/2017_02_28_131858_1257x291...

WiFi on the Chip is also a piece of shit. It's why mine is sat on a shelf doing nothing. Are there any boards like this which actually have decent wifi?

> Are there any boards like this which actually have decent wifi?

Doubtful. It's a race to the bottom for any SBC which isn't a Raspberry Pi or ODROID.

It's highly unlikely someone will make a board that costs $15 and has great WiFi, because everyone blindly buys the $8 board (because cheaper = better!) with shit WiFi and then complains about how crap all these Chinese SBCs are.

Especially when websites post stories about these board releases never bother to update their articles and essentially just give the manufacturer free advertising. [0] [1]

Hell even Intel tablets running Windows 8.1/10 are using shitty 2.4GHz Realtek SDIO based WiFi that still isn't supported in Linux.

In the race to the bottom, good software support is sacrificed first.

[0] http://linuxgizmos.com/headless-orange-pi-zero-sbc-has-wifi-...

[1] http://hackaday.com/2016/11/07/orange-pi-releases-two-boards...

Risk-adjusted pricing: If you buy one of the many alternatives out there, maybe you've got a 50% chance of it working? So the 'real' price doubles on those alternatives. People do this kind of risk mitigation in their head all the time.

When I say 'working' - i'm talking about the reviews of the alternatives that almost always talk about how hard it is to download the software and get them working, there's always some snag.

Has OrangePi fixed their issues with overheating?

Yeah, its just a voltage/clockspeed setting that was easily remedied in software.

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