5 ms·

Keep in mind that tiny ~550 MHz, MIPS 24K core based boards have been around for a while, including OpenWRT support. They are not as powerful as one might like,

Keep in mind that tiny ~550 MHz, MIPS 24K core based boards have been around for a while, including OpenWRT support. They are not as powerful as one might like, and with performance lower than a Pi 1 (and a lack of accelerators), you might be better off getting more recent ARM based stamp-sized SBC for the same price. What is interesting about this one is that it has reasonable documentation for a change (but not about the MediaTek SoC) and they might actually be able to move volume on both their main device and extension boards.

mkl 4y ago
> you might be better off getting more recent ARM based stamp-sized SBC for the same price. Can you suggest any examples?
- rcoder 4y ago
  FriendlyElec has a range of boards under their NanoPi brand that might fit: https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=69 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/categor... The NEO Air in particular is a very compact board using an Allwinner chip, which works pretty well under Linux including such niceties as support for the integrated power management chip. I also recently got a couple of the Space Cats Jeter Nano boards. They’re more on par with the VoCore, performance-wise, but with a lot of GPIOs on more hobbyist-friendly (read: breadboard-ready) connectors.
  - nine_k 4y ago
    The Nano Pi looks 5-6x as expensive, and quite noticeably larger and heavier. Much more powerful though.
    - rcoder 4y ago
      I’m not sure which NanoPi you’re looking at; the Core Air is not quite 2x the price ($32 vs. $18) of the VoCore and only a bit wider/longer, and similarly thin. Also, as you mention it’s in an entirely different class w.r.t. performance, if a bit power-hungry compared to newer SoC designs. Neither one is going to compete with a cheap Atmel or RISC-V MCU in cost, but on the flip side the NEO Core et. al. can run a web server, Docker containers, or a NodeJS app under modest load vs. needing everything rewritten in very tightly-managed C. :)
      - nine_k 4y ago
        Hmm, I somehow ended up on a page showing a Neo Pi for $55.
    - Andys 4y ago
      The nanopi neo lts is $16 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=132 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product... and I have found it to be pretty good.
  - mkl 4y ago
    > Space Cats Jeter Nano Do you have a link for this? Your comment is the top result on Google for those four words.
    - danmur 4y ago
      I want to know too, it's driving me crazy
- oneplane 4y ago
  Any AllWinner H3 for example (i.e. first hit at Aliexpress: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10000299302152.html https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10000299302152.html) or something like a Sipeed Lichee Nano if you want to go smaller. (https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4001150568609.html https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4001150568609.html) For a significant performance increase, but at a larger size (still very small): https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10000379696950.html https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10000379696950.html Most of the RockChip/AllWinner/MediaTek type things are China ODM anyway, and besides some middleman-markup the SDKs and reference designs are all the same across the board. If you want a product that is going to last a little longer and is a bit more useful beyond the basic physical specs (like size and I/O), you'll also want to know what bootrom, bootloader, devicetree and register documentation is available. Native in-tree Linux kernel support would be a must as well. At that point you can essentially boot any (low-footprint) distro forever until SoC support is dropped from the kernel (which takes a really long time if the SoC is still in use). -- Updating mostly for my own peace of mind: like most Chinese native manufacturers, they (the SoC manufacturers) generally don't give a crap about other companies, rights or long-term sustainability. I would suspect this is mostly cultural/political and a bit of 'eat or be eaten', not some dunk in the style of "country bad, people bad". This doesn't mean that therefore nobody should use any products anywhere forever, but like the sunxi community for Linux support (https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page) you might need to find out if there is enough knowledge and willingness available to you to actually be able to make good use of the products listed. This is why the Pi is so successful, the SoC is fine but Broadcom doesn't allow any public information on how it works and how to program for it; the community and the foundation around the Pi make it possible to make it work long-term regardless, and for any AllWinner/MediaTek/RockChip you'll want to select your parts in a way that gets you a similarly useful ecosystem. Buying a cheap thing and getting an Hello World out of it today is easy, getting a product that doesn't turn into e-waste in a year is a lot harder.
  - discardedrefuse 4y ago
    I recently went down the rabbit hole with these tiny ARM devices. For anyone else looking at them, I found the best place to start is to pick a chip with full Linux mainline support. https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort Right now, the latest devices have new chips that aren't supported yet. So if you get one of those, you're stuck using the manufacturer's Linux distro. If you get an older chip with mainline support, you can run a 3rd party distro like Armbian. https://www.armbian.com/ https://www.armbian.com/
- zokier 4y ago
  RockPi S is one of the smaller boards around, albeit still quite significantly bigger than vocore (1" vs 1.7" square)
- squarefoot 4y ago
  As others suggested, FriendlyElec has some good offers, then there are the Orange Pi boards (some of which very similar to the FriendlyElec ones to the point they can boot the same image without modifications). Also take a look at Hardkernel and Pine64 boards; the Rock64-2GB may seem more costly at $34.95, but actually is a lot cheaper since it integrates all peripherals and connectors that would be optional on the VoCore2, aside being a lot more powerful. Also take a look at Armbian for a very well supported Debian-Like OS: many manufacturers cease their support for their boards once the newer models are out, while Armbian and DietPi support a lot of models, including old ones, and are well worth helping with a donation. https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=69 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/categor... http://www.orangepi.org/ http://www.orangepi.org/ https://pine64.com/product/rock64-2gb-single-board-computer/ https://pine64.com/product/rock64-2gb-single-board-computer/ https://www.hardkernel.com/ https://www.hardkernel.com/ https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://dietpi.com/#download https://dietpi.com/#download
  - zokier 4y ago
    Something like rock64 is completely different class, being 6x larger than vocore
dark-star 4y ago
The VoCore is from 2014 (VoCore 1) or 2016 (VoCore 2), of course there are faster SoCs out there now...
- oneplane 4y ago
  H1, H2 and H3 are also from <2014, they were faster then and they are faster now. But speed isn't the only factor. MIPS 24K is dead. Example: https://linux-sunxi.org/H3 https://linux-sunxi.org/H3 On the other hand, between then and new many things have changed, yet this VoCore submission is only 8 hours old. Seems like a good idea to point out that it's not the newest, shiniest thing everyone should flock to just because it's on HN.

mkl 4y ago

> you might be better off getting more recent ARM based stamp-sized SBC for the same price. Can you suggest any examples?

rcoder 4y ago
FriendlyElec has a range of boards under their NanoPi brand that might fit: https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=69 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/categor... The NEO Air in particular is a very compact board using an Allwinner chip, which works pretty well under Linux including such niceties as support for the integrated power management chip. I also recently got a couple of the Space Cats Jeter Nano boards. They’re more on par with the VoCore, performance-wise, but with a lot of GPIOs on more hobbyist-friendly (read: breadboard-ready) connectors.
- nine_k 4y ago
  The Nano Pi looks 5-6x as expensive, and quite noticeably larger and heavier. Much more powerful though.
  - rcoder 4y ago
    I’m not sure which NanoPi you’re looking at; the Core Air is not quite 2x the price ($32 vs. $18) of the VoCore and only a bit wider/longer, and similarly thin. Also, as you mention it’s in an entirely different class w.r.t. performance, if a bit power-hungry compared to newer SoC designs. Neither one is going to compete with a cheap Atmel or RISC-V MCU in cost, but on the flip side the NEO Core et. al. can run a web server, Docker containers, or a NodeJS app under modest load vs. needing everything rewritten in very tightly-managed C. :)
    - nine_k 4y ago
      Hmm, I somehow ended up on a page showing a Neo Pi for $55.
  - Andys 4y ago
    The nanopi neo lts is $16 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=132 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product... and I have found it to be pretty good.
- mkl 4y ago
  > Space Cats Jeter Nano Do you have a link for this? Your comment is the top result on Google for those four words.
  - danmur 4y ago
    I want to know too, it's driving me crazy
oneplane 4y ago
Any AllWinner H3 for example (i.e. first hit at Aliexpress: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10000299302152.html https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10000299302152.html) or something like a Sipeed Lichee Nano if you want to go smaller. (https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4001150568609.html https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4001150568609.html) For a significant performance increase, but at a larger size (still very small): https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10000379696950.html https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10000379696950.html Most of the RockChip/AllWinner/MediaTek type things are China ODM anyway, and besides some middleman-markup the SDKs and reference designs are all the same across the board. If you want a product that is going to last a little longer and is a bit more useful beyond the basic physical specs (like size and I/O), you'll also want to know what bootrom, bootloader, devicetree and register documentation is available. Native in-tree Linux kernel support would be a must as well. At that point you can essentially boot any (low-footprint) distro forever until SoC support is dropped from the kernel (which takes a really long time if the SoC is still in use). -- Updating mostly for my own peace of mind: like most Chinese native manufacturers, they (the SoC manufacturers) generally don't give a crap about other companies, rights or long-term sustainability. I would suspect this is mostly cultural/political and a bit of 'eat or be eaten', not some dunk in the style of "country bad, people bad". This doesn't mean that therefore nobody should use any products anywhere forever, but like the sunxi community for Linux support (https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page https://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page) you might need to find out if there is enough knowledge and willingness available to you to actually be able to make good use of the products listed. This is why the Pi is so successful, the SoC is fine but Broadcom doesn't allow any public information on how it works and how to program for it; the community and the foundation around the Pi make it possible to make it work long-term regardless, and for any AllWinner/MediaTek/RockChip you'll want to select your parts in a way that gets you a similarly useful ecosystem. Buying a cheap thing and getting an Hello World out of it today is easy, getting a product that doesn't turn into e-waste in a year is a lot harder.
- discardedrefuse 4y ago
  I recently went down the rabbit hole with these tiny ARM devices. For anyone else looking at them, I found the best place to start is to pick a chip with full Linux mainline support. https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort Right now, the latest devices have new chips that aren't supported yet. So if you get one of those, you're stuck using the manufacturer's Linux distro. If you get an older chip with mainline support, you can run a 3rd party distro like Armbian. https://www.armbian.com/ https://www.armbian.com/
zokier 4y ago
RockPi S is one of the smaller boards around, albeit still quite significantly bigger than vocore (1" vs 1.7" square)
squarefoot 4y ago
As others suggested, FriendlyElec has some good offers, then there are the Orange Pi boards (some of which very similar to the FriendlyElec ones to the point they can boot the same image without modifications). Also take a look at Hardkernel and Pine64 boards; the Rock64-2GB may seem more costly at $34.95, but actually is a lot cheaper since it integrates all peripherals and connectors that would be optional on the VoCore2, aside being a lot more powerful. Also take a look at Armbian for a very well supported Debian-Like OS: many manufacturers cease their support for their boards once the newer models are out, while Armbian and DietPi support a lot of models, including old ones, and are well worth helping with a donation. https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=69 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/categor... http://www.orangepi.org/ http://www.orangepi.org/ https://pine64.com/product/rock64-2gb-single-board-computer/ https://pine64.com/product/rock64-2gb-single-board-computer/ https://www.hardkernel.com/ https://www.hardkernel.com/ https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://dietpi.com/#download https://dietpi.com/#download
- zokier 4y ago
  Something like rock64 is completely different class, being 6x larger than vocore

dark-star 4y ago

The VoCore is from 2014 (VoCore 1) or 2016 (VoCore 2), of course there are faster SoCs out there now...

oneplane 4y ago
H1, H2 and H3 are also from <2014, they were faster then and they are faster now. But speed isn't the only factor. MIPS 24K is dead. Example: https://linux-sunxi.org/H3 https://linux-sunxi.org/H3 On the other hand, between then and new many things have changed, yet this VoCore submission is only 8 hours old. Seems like a good idea to point out that it's not the newest, shiniest thing everyone should flock to just because it's on HN.