Gadget WEEKENDS

[Shades]

You like the ZimaBoard 432?

Looking for a small device that can act as a OPNSense router (with at least 3 ethernet connections for 2 ISPs and at least one large(r) POE switch. I saw reviews on the internet, which are mostly quite positive, especially the 8GByte RAM version. Only a few talk about the existence of a 4GByte version, not really a part of their review.

For the envisioned router needs, 4 GByte of RAM is more than enough for at least the coming 5 years.

[4wd]

You like the ZimaBoard 432?

-Shades (March 16, 2024, 08:17 AM)

It's a great little unit, plenty of power for something like pfsense, at the moment I've just been playing with it seeing what its native OS is like, I'd need to redo my networking a little before incorporating it running pfsense but I don't have the time right now.

CasaOS is a container management front-end based on Debian, got a lot going for it but I found it rather flakey so just installed DietPi along with Portainer.

Have also installed ProxMox on it and run pfsense through that but it didn't really leave enough resources for the other things I was looking at running, 8GB version would have been ok though.

You might want to look at the ZimaBlade, same sort of thing but cheaper because you add your own RAM, (DDR3 SO-SIMM).
Downside is only one Gbe port but decent Intel secondhand PCIe cards are easy to get if you don't already have them lying around.

Base model with 2 core CPU is only US$64 with the 4 core at US$96 - they're pre-order ATM - looking back this probably would have been a better choice for me since I have spare RAM I could have used and therefore bumped up on the CPU.

Btw, don't know if it's still applicable but a first order on a new account got me a 30% discount, so the 432+SATA Y cable was ~US$115.

[Deozaan]

Anyone doing anything fun/interesting/useful with a Raspberry Pi 5? I realized today that I haven't really heard anything about the Pi 5 since they were officially announced.

I got rid of all my Pis (3 & 4) a couple years ago but I keep coming up with reasons to want another one. My problem in the past has always been that I would get the latest and greatest Raspberry Pi with some specific task in mind and then it turned out that the CPU wasn't powerful enough, or the I/O wasn't fast enough, or it didn't have enough RAM, etc., and then it just collected dust. So even though I think I'd like to get one again I'm hesitant because I don't want to spend the money buying the SBC and accessories and the time to set it up and tinker with it only for it to ultimately sit unused like all the others thus far.

[mouser]

I'm very much considering building a raspberry pi based device that you can plug an old standard analog telephone into, and have a game software interact with you over the phone.

[ayryq]

I would get the latest and greatest Raspberry Pi with some specific task in mind and then it turned out that the CPU wasn't powerful enough, or the I/O wasn't fast enough, or it didn't have enough RAM, etc., and then it just collected dust. So even though I think I'd like to get one again I'm hesitant because I don't want to spend the money buying the SBC and accessories and the time to set it up and tinker with it only for it to ultimately sit unused like all the others thus far.

-Deozaan (April 20, 2024, 01:42 AM)

I have the opposite problem: I have three pi 4's in continuous use right now and I bet I could combine at least two of them, since I'm not really taxing them. Two are in the basement running Home Assistant and Pi.Hole. The third is in the attic connected to two software-defined radios providing ADS-B data to not just me but sites like FlightRadar24. I've got another couple sitting on my desk which I had been trying to set up as a sort of Sonos-lite whole-house music player. If that doesn't work out I may use one as a add-on screen to my PC, for flight sim software.
My brother, who lives where the northern lights are often visible, just set a pi 4 (I think) up as a all-sky camera in a tube on his roof. Has a 360° horizon and the whole sky hemisphere in shot, with this software running it.

My new gadget this weekend is going to be a (used) Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III, but it hasn't been delivered yet.

https://www.flightra...feed-stats/?id=48382
https://globe.adsbex...m/?feed=dx4kRzUqNE5p

[rgdot]

A caddy I got a while ago to swap an old ThinkPad's DVD drive for a 2.5" drive instead.

Gadget WEEKENDS

mSATA to USB, have a mSATA drive in the same ThinkPad's WWAN slot and this is useful.

Gadget WEEKENDS

[Shades]

Finally got the ZimaBoard yesterday. It's aesthetics I like. I was using an 12+ year old PC as a OPNSense router, but it failed after a brown-out. Managed to get it back up and running and ordered this ZimaBoard as a replacement. I'll use the 4-port NIC from the old system with the Zimaboard instead. I bond 2 internet connections from different ISPs. Forum post told me that people like the Zima gear to act as their router after adding non-Realtek NICs to the unit.

Got the 8GByte one and I have played with the CasaOS that comes with it. It all works decent enough. If you are a bit patient and don't visit intensive websites, It is practically good enough as a replacement for a normal computer. Needed to get a cable that converted the mini display port to a more useful type of connection in these parts of the world. Once I did that, I connected an SSD to the device and that makes quite a positive difference. The SSD had still a Linux Mint installation on it and after the a somewhat lengthy first boot, it booted and worked fine.

As far as I know, Raspberry Pis are much more constrained regarding available computing resources, so how useful those would be for my particular use case, I do not know. A friend of mine abandoned his RPi 2, he's totally into ESP32 devices now. He's making all kinds of measuring devices with those in an attempt to automate his home. He got an ancient massage chair from NL Replaced motors and redid all the electrical logic with an ESP32 instead of repairing what was there, programmed a web-interface in Home-Assistant for that ESP32 device and now he can control that massage-chair via his computer/laptop/phone. Works wonderfully well.

ESP32 can't do much computationally. But they are very versatile. And for the 2 to 3 USD cost-price per unit, much more useful than his RPi2. Especially in combination with Home-Assistant and its 'Node-Red' extension/plug-in.