8 ms·

The Great Pi Zero Showdown

70 points by rcarmo 4y ago

neilv 4y ago
Other considerations, for building it into a product, and for even one-off hobby use: * For software reliability and sustainability, what Linux distros are supported, do they upstream all changes, do they rely on closed drivers or blobs, etc.? * For one aspect of security, what's the provenance of design and manufacturing? * Hardware reliability?
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  > * For software reliability and sustainability, what Linux distros are supported, do they upstream all changes, do they rely on closed drivers or blobs, etc.? This has been the only reason to buy only RaspberryPis (when I could actually get them). Sure, buy some <other-fruit>Pi, two years go by, the latest available linux version is 1.5 years old now, no new software support, no new kernels, no nothing. Sometimes it's even impossible to download the image in the first place.
  - ThatPlayer 4y ago
    I think Pine64 is another one to look at for software support. It's not immediate as they don't design the chips, but they do work on mainline Linux support for their products. The PinePhone Pro and Pinebook Pro both using the RK3399 SoC is pretty well supported by mainline now, so you can run mainline Linux the not-Raspberry Pi boards with RK3399s (Orange Pi 4, Rock Pi 4). Armbian probably the one to provide updated installs. Pine64's newer QuartzPro64 board uses an RK3588, so I hope to see good mainline support there too as the Orange Pi 5 and Rock 5 (no longer a Pi) use the same SoC. https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/QuartzPro64_Development#Upstreaming_Status https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/QuartzPro64_Development#Upstrea...
  - Shish2k 4y ago
    > two years go by, the latest available linux version is 1.5 years old now You still get support 6 months after release? Last time I bought an <other-fruit>Pi it came with a kernel that was already 2 years out of date on the day it was built (including binary blob proprietary drivers which only worked with that version), and that was it...
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    > Sure, buy some <other-fruit>Pi, two years go by, the latest available linux version is 1.5 years old now, no new software support, no new kernels, no nothing. Sometimes it's even impossible to download the image in the first place. You searched in the wrong place. Board vendors give us something to play with,but they're not a community and we should never rely on their distros as they'll stop any development or support when a new model appears, which isn't a problem at all. Distros with recent, very often mainline, kernels do exist also for boards not produced anymore, just look at Armbian and DietPI. Armbian Debian for the Odroid C2 (out of production) with a kernel that is newer than the one running on the laptop I'm writing this post with. https://imola.armbian.com/dl/odroidc2/archive/Armbian_22.11.1_Odroidc2_bullseye_current_5.19.17.img.xz https://imola.armbian.com/dl/odroidc2/archive/Armbian_22.11.... Armbian Debian Bullseye for OrangePI PC (out of production) with pretty recent kernel. https://imola.armbian.com/dl/orangepipc/archive/Armbian_22.11.1_Orangepipc_bullseye_current_5.15.80.img.xz https://imola.armbian.com/dl/orangepipc/archive/Armbian_22.1... DietPI Debian Bookworm for NanoPI M1 (out of production), no version data but Bookworm is the latest Debian release. https://dietpi.com/downloads/images/DietPi_NanoPiM1-ARMv7-Bookworm.7z https://dietpi.com/downloads/images/DietPi_NanoPiM1-ARMv7-Bo... etc. https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://dietpi.com/#download https://dietpi.com/#download I can understand a RasPI user saying "but I can download the OS image on the RasPI site!". That's true, and I concur it's very handy especially for newbies who find a common place in which they can do everything, but that's more an anomaly than the norm. Would we go for example to Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, etc. websites to download a Linux distribution for our shiny new laptop? Nope, we rather head to Debian, Arch, SuSE, Manjaro, Alpine, etc. sites. That's exactly what we should do with embedded boards. The problem isn't that other boards than the Raspberry PI do not have updated software, but rather that those who provide it aren't popular as they deserve.
- forinti 4y ago
  I wouldn't try to build a product on anything that depends on an SD card for storage.
  - teux 4y ago
    They have industrial-focused pi boards in a memory/dimm-slot format that have on board flash. A company I was at used it in a product for the rapid prototyping capability.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    With a good quality power supply, SD card and a battery backup, that's not too problematic. Most people however either cheap out on these or they get fakes, which is a problem on its own.
    - grawp 4y ago
      You should NOT use writable FS (except for a specialized one on a separate partition/device for user settigs) even with EMMC! And then you don't need battery backup. Using writable rootfs goes against industry practices and is a disaster waiting to happen... like the one with emmc in Tesla's central panels.
  - Oxidation 4y ago
    At least some Kobos use SD cards for their storage.
- pmontra 4y ago
  My hardware reliability case: - the network card of my first Pi (some 2 model) failed - a PI Zero completely died years ago - a PI Zero 2 W doesn't boot anymore but it apparently powers on - a number of SD cards failed after months of use, but that's to be expected. I turn off swap and don't write log files much [1] I'm left with a couple of PI 3 but I don't have a use case for them anymore and frankly the unavailability of the product doesn't make me feel like investing on it. It's becoming a kind of retrocomputing. I switched to Odroid HC4 to build a NAS with it's two SATA slots. I can recycle a ton of disks I put in a drawer along the years. It's about 4 W with the disks off, plus whatever a disk consumes: 2 W for a 2.5 1 TB HDD and 9 W for an older 750 GB 3.5 HDD. I have other disks to test. [1] https://ostechnix.com/how-to-write-log-files-in-ram-using-log2ram-in-linux/ https://ostechnix.com/how-to-write-log-files-in-ram-using-lo... Edit: actually I'm using a PI 3 with a TV Hat to stream free to air TV to my phones and tablets around the home. I'm never sitting in front of the TV set.
  - b212 4y ago
    Thought it was me but out of 3 Pis I had all of them died rather sooner than later… To make things worse I barely used two of them. The only one I’ve got left is still randomly losing HDMI signal, I never know if I’ll be able to see anything when connecting it to any kind of display. Another one just stopped working all of sudden after just a year of working as a weather station. The third one sat in a drawer for a year and a half and wouldn’t run once I got it out. Are we that unlucky or they’re so unreliable? Not a single electronic product failed me so often in the last 30 years.
andrewstuart 4y ago
Does a computer you can’t buy even really exist? We’re in the realm of philosophy here.
- pmontra 4y ago
  Yeah, we should weight those results for availability of the hardware.
- schappim 4y ago
  I was just thinking, the best Pi you can buy is the one you can get… This quote was stolen from another fruit computer company (Apple) sales manager who used it in the late 2000s, when Apple had its inventory issues. Apple Australia director Tony King would say: “Sell what’s on the truck!“, to which he would reply: “Tony, we’ve sold the [bleeping] truck…”
- bambax 4y ago
  I have one Pi 2, two Pi 3 and one Pi 4 and I hold on to them for dear life. I bought them each when they were first available. Never could get my hands on a Zero though. And now it seems impossible to buy any Pi of any kind. An Orange Pi Zero 2 is around €50 on Amazon, or €30 on Aliexpress, which seems expensive for what it does. If a €10 Zero existed I think it would sell like hotcakes; I can think of so many use cases! But maybe it's impossible to do, IDK.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    > And now it seems impossible to buy any Pi of any kind. I almost got a Pi Zero 2 W for 15€ in January, they had 2500, one per customer limit, but the site was heavily overloaded. So I went to bed at around 20:00 with most still available (2100 or so). Woke up at 4 and they were sold out. That was so far the closest I came to one (obviously I’m not buying the available ones for 100€).
  - ahelwer 4y ago
    I don't see why people are so attached to the pi when much more capable computers - 2013/14 era used Intel NUCs or Mac Minis - are available for a hundred bucks on ebay. Maybe lots of people are using the pi for low-power-draw projects but if people are running a pihole and other services on them you might as well go for the other option. There's also the QUARTZ64 boards from Pine64 which are definitely available and include fun things like a neural processor: https://pine64.com/product-category/quartz64/ https://pine64.com/product-category/quartz64/
fmajid 4y ago
Nothing about mainline Linux support, or support out of the box from a distro like Alpine, which is where the RPi excels for all its flaws.
- DanTheManPR 4y ago
  The huge advantage of the RPi is that I can get it up and running doing things that are useful for me just by following online guides. Whereas I ran into lots of problems when trying to do useful things with other SBCs (I'm not a "computer professional" the way most people on this site are). I don't doubt that others are more capable, but the RPi lets me just get on with my projects with minimal fuss.
  - argulane 4y ago
    If you are fine with Debian like OS then https://www.armbian.com/ https://www.armbian.com/ works really well out of the box on most SBC-s,
    - fmajid 4y ago
      I prefer Alpine Linux.
    - DanTheManPR 4y ago
      Thanks for the recommendation, I'll try that out.
jacquesm 4y ago
The Raspberry Pi people really need to get a grip on their supply issues. It's pretty much unobtanium for as long as they've been in business, clearly the market is there, demand has been large and steady and yet they don't seem to be able to get this sorted out, and that has been the case for about as long as they have been in business. I've yet to see a Pi 'IRL' and I'd love to buy a couple but I do not see it happening.
- adql 4y ago
  They've been okay before Chipageddon for most SKUs
- teh_klev 4y ago
  Maybe I've been fairly lucky, but excepting the initial Pi v1 release I've never really had any problems getting hold of them. Until now of course. I'm desperate for a couple of Compute Module 4's and gawd only knows when they'll re-appear.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    The same for me, I have a Pi3 and a Pi4, bought both without an issue.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      If you've recently bought a Pi4 from some place and they still have stock I'd love a pointer.
      - Semaphor 4y ago
        No, like parent, I’m talking about before the current issues. Unlike GP, we had no issues getting Pi’s before the current troubles started, which was what they were saying.
  - adql 4y ago
    I'd imagine bulk manufacturers gobbled up supply, after all that was the point of CM
jonatron 4y ago
I had a Radxa Rock Pi 4, but I just couldn't get it stable. If I buy another non-raspberry Pi, I'd research reliability/stability before buying.
smallpipe 4y ago
An important figure that I'd like to see is the energy efficiency. In a lot of applications, the microcontroller is going to be asleep 95%+ of the time. For those, what I want to know isn't really how fast it can do $COMPUTATION, it's how many time it can do it before I have to charge the battery.
- killingtime74 4y ago
  Doesn't he provide power draw already? For your use case you can just use the idle power
kadabra 4y ago
What about hardware support for video encoding (h.264) in those alternatives? Some time ago, best to my knowledge, if this is a feature you depend on - Raspberry would be the only option you can get that came with a working GPU drivers that support video encoding out of the box.

70 points by rcarmo 4y ago

Other considerations, for building it into a product, and for even one-off hobby use: * For software reliability and sustainability, what Linux distros are supported, do they upstream all changes, do they rely on closed drivers or blobs, etc.? * For one aspect of security, what's the provenance of design and manufacturing? * Hardware reliability?

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
> * For software reliability and sustainability, what Linux distros are supported, do they upstream all changes, do they rely on closed drivers or blobs, etc.? This has been the only reason to buy only RaspberryPis (when I could actually get them). Sure, buy some <other-fruit>Pi, two years go by, the latest available linux version is 1.5 years old now, no new software support, no new kernels, no nothing. Sometimes it's even impossible to download the image in the first place.
- ThatPlayer 4y ago
  I think Pine64 is another one to look at for software support. It's not immediate as they don't design the chips, but they do work on mainline Linux support for their products. The PinePhone Pro and Pinebook Pro both using the RK3399 SoC is pretty well supported by mainline now, so you can run mainline Linux the not-Raspberry Pi boards with RK3399s (Orange Pi 4, Rock Pi 4). Armbian probably the one to provide updated installs. Pine64's newer QuartzPro64 board uses an RK3588, so I hope to see good mainline support there too as the Orange Pi 5 and Rock 5 (no longer a Pi) use the same SoC. https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/QuartzPro64_Development#Upstreaming_Status https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/QuartzPro64_Development#Upstrea...
- Shish2k 4y ago
  > two years go by, the latest available linux version is 1.5 years old now You still get support 6 months after release? Last time I bought an <other-fruit>Pi it came with a kernel that was already 2 years out of date on the day it was built (including binary blob proprietary drivers which only worked with that version), and that was it...
- squarefoot 4y ago
  > Sure, buy some <other-fruit>Pi, two years go by, the latest available linux version is 1.5 years old now, no new software support, no new kernels, no nothing. Sometimes it's even impossible to download the image in the first place. You searched in the wrong place. Board vendors give us something to play with,but they're not a community and we should never rely on their distros as they'll stop any development or support when a new model appears, which isn't a problem at all. Distros with recent, very often mainline, kernels do exist also for boards not produced anymore, just look at Armbian and DietPI. Armbian Debian for the Odroid C2 (out of production) with a kernel that is newer than the one running on the laptop I'm writing this post with. https://imola.armbian.com/dl/odroidc2/archive/Armbian_22.11.1_Odroidc2_bullseye_current_5.19.17.img.xz https://imola.armbian.com/dl/odroidc2/archive/Armbian_22.11.... Armbian Debian Bullseye for OrangePI PC (out of production) with pretty recent kernel. https://imola.armbian.com/dl/orangepipc/archive/Armbian_22.11.1_Orangepipc_bullseye_current_5.15.80.img.xz https://imola.armbian.com/dl/orangepipc/archive/Armbian_22.1... DietPI Debian Bookworm for NanoPI M1 (out of production), no version data but Bookworm is the latest Debian release. https://dietpi.com/downloads/images/DietPi_NanoPiM1-ARMv7-Bookworm.7z https://dietpi.com/downloads/images/DietPi_NanoPiM1-ARMv7-Bo... etc. https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported https://dietpi.com/#download https://dietpi.com/#download I can understand a RasPI user saying "but I can download the OS image on the RasPI site!". That's true, and I concur it's very handy especially for newbies who find a common place in which they can do everything, but that's more an anomaly than the norm. Would we go for example to Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, etc. websites to download a Linux distribution for our shiny new laptop? Nope, we rather head to Debian, Arch, SuSE, Manjaro, Alpine, etc. sites. That's exactly what we should do with embedded boards. The problem isn't that other boards than the Raspberry PI do not have updated software, but rather that those who provide it aren't popular as they deserve.
forinti 4y ago
I wouldn't try to build a product on anything that depends on an SD card for storage.
- teux 4y ago
  They have industrial-focused pi boards in a memory/dimm-slot format that have on board flash. A company I was at used it in a product for the rapid prototyping capability.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  With a good quality power supply, SD card and a battery backup, that's not too problematic. Most people however either cheap out on these or they get fakes, which is a problem on its own.
  - grawp 4y ago
    You should NOT use writable FS (except for a specialized one on a separate partition/device for user settigs) even with EMMC! And then you don't need battery backup. Using writable rootfs goes against industry practices and is a disaster waiting to happen... like the one with emmc in Tesla's central panels.
- Oxidation 4y ago
  At least some Kobos use SD cards for their storage.
pmontra 4y ago
My hardware reliability case: - the network card of my first Pi (some 2 model) failed - a PI Zero completely died years ago - a PI Zero 2 W doesn't boot anymore but it apparently powers on - a number of SD cards failed after months of use, but that's to be expected. I turn off swap and don't write log files much [1] I'm left with a couple of PI 3 but I don't have a use case for them anymore and frankly the unavailability of the product doesn't make me feel like investing on it. It's becoming a kind of retrocomputing. I switched to Odroid HC4 to build a NAS with it's two SATA slots. I can recycle a ton of disks I put in a drawer along the years. It's about 4 W with the disks off, plus whatever a disk consumes: 2 W for a 2.5 1 TB HDD and 9 W for an older 750 GB 3.5 HDD. I have other disks to test. [1] https://ostechnix.com/how-to-write-log-files-in-ram-using-log2ram-in-linux/ https://ostechnix.com/how-to-write-log-files-in-ram-using-lo... Edit: actually I'm using a PI 3 with a TV Hat to stream free to air TV to my phones and tablets around the home. I'm never sitting in front of the TV set.
- b212 4y ago
  Thought it was me but out of 3 Pis I had all of them died rather sooner than later… To make things worse I barely used two of them. The only one I’ve got left is still randomly losing HDMI signal, I never know if I’ll be able to see anything when connecting it to any kind of display. Another one just stopped working all of sudden after just a year of working as a weather station. The third one sat in a drawer for a year and a half and wouldn’t run once I got it out. Are we that unlucky or they’re so unreliable? Not a single electronic product failed me so often in the last 30 years.

andrewstuart 4y ago

Does a computer you can’t buy even really exist? We’re in the realm of philosophy here.

pmontra 4y ago
Yeah, we should weight those results for availability of the hardware.
schappim 4y ago
I was just thinking, the best Pi you can buy is the one you can get… This quote was stolen from another fruit computer company (Apple) sales manager who used it in the late 2000s, when Apple had its inventory issues. Apple Australia director Tony King would say: “Sell what’s on the truck!“, to which he would reply: “Tony, we’ve sold the [bleeping] truck…”
bambax 4y ago
I have one Pi 2, two Pi 3 and one Pi 4 and I hold on to them for dear life. I bought them each when they were first available. Never could get my hands on a Zero though. And now it seems impossible to buy any Pi of any kind. An Orange Pi Zero 2 is around €50 on Amazon, or €30 on Aliexpress, which seems expensive for what it does. If a €10 Zero existed I think it would sell like hotcakes; I can think of so many use cases! But maybe it's impossible to do, IDK.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  > And now it seems impossible to buy any Pi of any kind. I almost got a Pi Zero 2 W for 15€ in January, they had 2500, one per customer limit, but the site was heavily overloaded. So I went to bed at around 20:00 with most still available (2100 or so). Woke up at 4 and they were sold out. That was so far the closest I came to one (obviously I’m not buying the available ones for 100€).
- ahelwer 4y ago
  I don't see why people are so attached to the pi when much more capable computers - 2013/14 era used Intel NUCs or Mac Minis - are available for a hundred bucks on ebay. Maybe lots of people are using the pi for low-power-draw projects but if people are running a pihole and other services on them you might as well go for the other option. There's also the QUARTZ64 boards from Pine64 which are definitely available and include fun things like a neural processor: https://pine64.com/product-category/quartz64/ https://pine64.com/product-category/quartz64/

fmajid 4y ago

Nothing about mainline Linux support, or support out of the box from a distro like Alpine, which is where the RPi excels for all its flaws.

DanTheManPR 4y ago
The huge advantage of the RPi is that I can get it up and running doing things that are useful for me just by following online guides. Whereas I ran into lots of problems when trying to do useful things with other SBCs (I'm not a "computer professional" the way most people on this site are). I don't doubt that others are more capable, but the RPi lets me just get on with my projects with minimal fuss.
- argulane 4y ago
  If you are fine with Debian like OS then https://www.armbian.com/ https://www.armbian.com/ works really well out of the box on most SBC-s,
  - fmajid 4y ago
    I prefer Alpine Linux.
  - DanTheManPR 4y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation, I'll try that out.

jacquesm 4y ago

The Raspberry Pi people really need to get a grip on their supply issues. It's pretty much unobtanium for as long as they've been in business, clearly the market is there, demand has been large and steady and yet they don't seem to be able to get this sorted out, and that has been the case for about as long as they have been in business. I've yet to see a Pi 'IRL' and I'd love to buy a couple but I do not see it happening.

adql 4y ago
They've been okay before Chipageddon for most SKUs
teh_klev 4y ago
Maybe I've been fairly lucky, but excepting the initial Pi v1 release I've never really had any problems getting hold of them. Until now of course. I'm desperate for a couple of Compute Module 4's and gawd only knows when they'll re-appear.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  The same for me, I have a Pi3 and a Pi4, bought both without an issue.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    If you've recently bought a Pi4 from some place and they still have stock I'd love a pointer.
    - Semaphor 4y ago
      No, like parent, I’m talking about before the current issues. Unlike GP, we had no issues getting Pi’s before the current troubles started, which was what they were saying.
- adql 4y ago
  I'd imagine bulk manufacturers gobbled up supply, after all that was the point of CM

jonatron 4y ago

I had a Radxa Rock Pi 4, but I just couldn't get it stable. If I buy another non-raspberry Pi, I'd research reliability/stability before buying.

smallpipe 4y ago

An important figure that I'd like to see is the energy efficiency. In a lot of applications, the microcontroller is going to be asleep 95%+ of the time. For those, what I want to know isn't really how fast it can do $COMPUTATION, it's how many time it can do it before I have to charge the battery.

killingtime74 4y ago
Doesn't he provide power draw already? For your use case you can just use the idle power

kadabra 4y ago

What about hardware support for video encoding (h.264) in those alternatives? Some time ago, best to my knowledge, if this is a feature you depend on - Raspberry would be the only option you can get that came with a working GPU drivers that support video encoding out of the box.