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Talking of cheap and powerful devices one can also look at Chinese UZ801 4G LTE (Qualcomm MSM8916) dongles. They cost like only $4-5 and pack quite impressive H
by SXX 1y ago
Talking of cheap and powerful devices one can also look at Chinese UZ801 4G LTE (Qualcomm MSM8916) dongles. They cost like only $4-5 and pack quite impressive HW: 4GB eMMC, 512MB RAM, actual 4G modem sometimes with 2 sim switching support. Since it's actually old Android SOC there is even GPU and GPS in there. And a lot of work was already done on supporting them:
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Zhihe_series_LTE_dongles_(generic-zhihe) https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Zhihe_series_LTE_dongles_...
https://github.com/OpenStick/OpenStick https://github.com/OpenStick/OpenStick
So yeah if you looking for hardware platform for weird homelab projects that's can be it.
- happyhardcore 1y agoI've found [1] to be the best guide for getting started with them; you need to make a copy of the firmware partitions that you re-flash after installing Linux onto it in order to get the 4G modem working. It's honestly absurd how much you're getting for a fiver with it; add a power bank (or make your own from scavenged vape batteries in the spirit of this post) and you have a full Linux machine with WiFi and 4G that can work almost anywhere. [1] https://wvthoog.nl/openstick/ https://wvthoog.nl/openstick/
- motorest 1y agoWhat an interesting gadget! It looks like it has most of the features of an Orange Pi Zero, but at around 1/5th of the price.
- sitzkrieg 1y agoit's almost like everything matching the pi footprint is severely overpriced!
- motorest 1y agoThere's a silver lining in raspberry pi and it's clones being so relatively expensive: they create a market and demand for hackable devices. In an age with so much pressure to plug every single digital hole, these devices bring some much needed market pressure to the opposite direction.
- TeMPOraL 1y agoOr, put another way: to have electronics so cheap today, we're sacrificing empowerment technology could give us. We have dirt cheap supercomputers in our pocket, but what for? They're just overspecced entertainment machines.
- bigiain 1y agoGotta pay for the cop doing surveillance device r&d somehow... https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/09/rpi_maker_in_residence_police/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/09/rpi_maker_in_residenc...
- tkfoss 1y agoIsn't Orange Pi Zero already sold at cost of material & labor?
- DrewADesign 1y agoI like the picos. I think there’s a lot of bang for your buck in there for making little devices and prototyping.
- cultofmetatron 1y agowhat you're generally paying for is support and community. havin people you can ask questions and knowing there's a good chance that soneone out there has both seen your issue and knows a fix is extremely valuable and worth the money if you're just trying to put together a small one off project.
- Tepix 1y agoThe original Raspberry Pi Zero was a good deal at $5 or even at $10. Too bad it was always poorly available and mostly bundled with overpriced dongles, power supplies, SD cards etc.
- dspillett 1y agoThe poor avaialbility was largely due to the great pricing: small commercial users scooped them up in the largest quanitites that they could because they were so competative against other options both in terms of pricce and having the advantage of decent support¹ unlike other inexpensive SoCs. Max-per-customer limits imposed by some distributors were not hard to get around. That meant it was difficult for the individual tinkerers that they were aimed at to get hold of them. And once an availability gap was spotted in the market the scalpers crowded in, so even those commercial users had trouble getting them at RRP. If the current models were any cheaper, that might happen again. It is one of those places where the infamous “what the market will bare” works against us: unless you are buying in bulk you have the choice between paying more or having no availability at all. People are willing to pay more the rPi units because of the support¹ and reliability². I know I am, last time I wanted a small unit like that I went straight for an rPi without even looking at the other options that might have been cheaper. -------- [1] official + community [2] While not perfect in that regard, no supplier is, and the Pis do seem to do better than others in that regard, especially when compared to anything noticable less expensive.
- skeezyjefferson 1y ago> The poor avaialbility was largely due to the great pricing: the poor availability was because they didnt make enough. they blame supply chain issues around covid. in the time they were complaining that it wasnt their fault, competitors like the esp32 started appearing and taking market share. i was totally put off the rpi because of that saga. its no longer a good deal, there are better options in either direction (more microcontrollery or more power)
- dspillett 1y ago
- alias_neo 1y ago> or make your own from scavenged vape batteries in the spirit of this post On this note, anyone got a tut or links to where I can get an appropriate charge controller/BMS (UK) to do this? Like the post's author, I've been collecting vape batteries for a while and would love to build a power bank or use them in some IoT projects.
- jdietrich 1y agoAliexpress. A simple TP4056 usb-c charging board costs as little as 50p. For a few pence more you can get a power bank board with a charge controller and a 5v boost converter.
- alias_neo 1y agoInteresting, I have some TP4056 already, but wouldn't I need some form of "balance" circuitry if I want to connect multiple of these together, to ensure they're all charged and discharged evenly?
- e145bc455f1 1y agoWhere do i get a MSM8916 board for commercial usage at low volumes(1k)?
- dolmen 1y agoWhat about disassembling 1k dongles?
- tonyhart7 1y ago"What about disassembling 1k dongles?" deadass this literally what they do in china, they just disassemble e-waste that don't get used and resell that oversees
- SpicyUme 1y agoA relative bought several products from Chinese company for a small product development. When he found the most suited device he asked if they'd sell without the enclosure, and maybe 1-2 other boards. They told him at 1000 pcs the best option was to buy them and toss the enclosure.
- cjaackie 1y agounderrated comment, probably the way to go with an older chip and under 1k volumes.
- Rzor 1y agoAnd not even that hard to find: "alibaba MSM8916 LTE" on Google and lo and behold: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/TIANJIE-Qualcomm-MSM8916-unlocked-mini-4G_1600463210784.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/TIANJIE-Qualcomm-MSM8... $5.92 each for 500-2999 orders. What a time to be alive.
- greenavocado 1y agoHow much work is it to rip one of these open and reprogram?
- user_7832 1y ago> Qualcomm MSM8916 Well hullo there, turns out that's my old mate, the Snapdragon 410! Quite an unexpected surprise! And funnily in retrospect, my Moto G3 from 2015 (which I still occasionally use for whatsapp!) has the exact same processor, and turns out base android (7) is (un?)surprisingly efficient when you're not doing much! I totally believe you could get a lightweight linux distro going on; I'm more impressed by such an old (and mobile!) chipset still having some sort of vestigial support! (Fun fact, iirc this was one of the first processors to get 64 bit support for android but motorola wasn't able to port it over in time for the launch. Hence it runs 32 bit android instead!)
- AtlasBarfed 1y agoQuad core 64-bit 1.2 GHz are you serious?
- sandreas 1y agoMy biggest Problem with these devices is a.) the world of electronics is moving too fast b.) My lack of skills and time to build something really cool with something like this A while ago i bought a licheerv nano (similar to luckfox pico or Milk-v duo) to build an open source iPod nano via usb-c audio Jack and the open source buildroot for the licheerv nano. I did not find a suitable 2.4 inch or at least < 3"touch display that worked with the integrated MPI port. With LVGL it should be doable to build a small portable audioplayer with acceptable features... But not for me :-)
- VladVladikoff 1y agoSpeaking of cheap and powerful, I’m looking for a dirt cheap android phone that has a decent camera. I used to ship out GoPros to my customers but I don’t actually need them to film in 4K, 1080p with a decent CCD would be fine. And lately new GoPro models have become a pain to setup, they require pairing with a modern mobile phone which my customers sometimes don’t have.
- kingkawn 1y agohttps://www.unihertz.com/collections/jelly-series https://www.unihertz.com/collections/jelly-series
- ww520 1y agoMotorola Moto G is a very capable phone on the cheap. It's even cheaper if you don't mind older models or used. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=motorola+moto+g&qid=1757978993&rnid=14674871011&ref=sr_nr_p_36_0_0&low-price=&high-price=160 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=motorola+moto+g&qid=1757978993&rn...
- freedomben 1y agoI've bought a lot of moto g and I concur. Camera is decent. It won't blow your skirt up, but it is roughly comparable to flagship phones from a couple of years ago. YMMV of course
- Rzor 1y agoIn case anyone wants a few links containing this SOC or similar, there's an entire article on Hackaday and a bunch of links shared in the comments: https://hackaday.com/2022/08/03/hackable-20-modem-combines-lte-and-pi-zero-w2-power https://hackaday.com/2022/08/03/hackable-20-modem-combines-l... (search for Alibaba/Aliexpress/Amazon) Before stumbling on this link I actually found one that mentions a MSM8916 in the description (it even has a screen, sadly no RAM information): https://aliexpress.com/item/1005007496178143.html https://aliexpress.com/item/1005007496178143.html
- LeonenTheDK 1y agoI actually ended up purchasing this unit and getting it running with the instructions from [0] mentioned elsewhere. RAM and everything else seems to be almost identical to the dongles. (4 core A53 CPU running just shy of 1Ghz, 512 MB RAM, 4GB flash storage). The only couple issues I had getting a plain old Linux on it from the instructions was that it didn't like the image buddy prepared custom for his tutorial in [0]. The solution was to follow the source links in the article, and flash it with a "generic" image from the person I believe originally got Linux working on these types of devices. I can't overstate how good these instructions and discussions in the comments are. The other thing was the modem didn't work, but all that required was copying the files from the original modem partition on the device to /lib/firmware of the new Linux installation. Super straight forward. Sadly the screen, while it did function with the stock firmware, doesn't work out of the box with the Linux I flashed to it. Digging around, I think I've determined it's a DSI display, with maybe some evidence of Linux showing its there, but the kernel I have wasn't compiled with any support to run it. I'm not knowledgeable at all in this space though so there's that. It's a great device, all the same benefits of the dongles, but with a battery to boot. If only I knew how to get that screen to work. [0] https://wvthoog.nl/openstick/ https://wvthoog.nl/openstick/
- marcosscriven 1y agoWhere do you get them for $5? Cheapest I can find is around £8 (11 USD), and it’s not clear if they have this chip.
- haunter 1y agoYeah you won't find them for $5 unless you buy in bulk on Alibaba Aliexpress has this as the best selling one though the chipset is not confirmed https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006924641101.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006924641101.html Well I take my gamble, wait 2 weeks and see what I'll get
- mrandish 1y agoJust fyi, the device at that link is currently showing $9.62 for a single unit, once logged in and the one-time-only "Welcome deals" are eliminated. But AliExpress pricing can vary hour by hour based on seller, inventory, algorithm, RNG.
- fivestones 1y agoI just bought one for $1.07 US with free shipping. I was buying with a new account so I probably got that discount. But even so, before buying I got $2.99 the first time I loaded the page, then $9.89 or thereabouts, and finally $0.99 (which I bought, it had an additional $0.08 in fees for $1.07 total). We’ll see if it shows up and is hackable, but at that price it feels too good to pass up the chance.
- fivestones 1y agoJust wanted to update that I got this in the mail today. Not bad—6 days from order to delivery, all for just over a dollar. I haven’t tried to hack it at all yet. Here are photos: https://imgur.com/a/J7S8rEW https://imgur.com/a/J7S8rEW
- fivestones 1y ago
- MuffinFlavored 1y agoDo any of the modem bands work in America? If so... what carrier?
- WorldPeas 1y agoI've heard T-mobile works well with Chinese phones
- mschuster91 1y agoNow what I'd like to see is the other way around - you know, like the "old" UMTS sticks, just for 5G. No OS, especially not one so prone to all sorts of security like Android, just a pure baseband chip, some interface chip that talks USB3, two built-in antennas and the option to connect more powerful/higher directionality external antennas.
- numpad0 1y agohttps://www.simcom.com/product/SIM8300G_M2.html https://www.simcom.com/product/SIM8300G_M2.html
- heavyset_go 1y agoReminds me of the LTE dongles Freedom Pop would give out that were running Linux. If you took them apart you got UART access, too.
- Telemakhos 1y ago> 4GB eMMC, 512MB RAM And, that Snapdragon is 1.4 GHz, I think. That's enough for a bare-bones WordPress installation. My first laptop had a 100 MB had drive, 8 MB of RAM, and a 25 MHz processor, and I remember running a web server on it too, in addition to Windows 3.11 and word processors and other software. One of those dongles would have been godlike power back in those days. I feel like somewhere along the way scripting got out of hand. Stuff like Wordpress is absurdly resource intensive.
- lukan 1y agoHm, thanks for the idea, but I rather want a minimal node environment on that usb dongle server now.
- oblio 1y agoLet's not overhype those days. I had a P1 166MHz and playing an MP3 meant everything else would have to be closed, if I'd open Word the song would stutter. Not all modern processing power is wasted.
- skeezyjefferson 1y ago[dead]
- dzhiurgis 1y agoThis would be so good for open source livestock tracker. I chatter with a friend who works for this and bey built everything bespoke (tracking, temperature (good health indicator), steering (yes you can tell cows where to go), etc). My first question was - did you use some android platform?
- ge96 1y agowould be funny if you could make a drone with this, a flying vape, probably missing good sensors