Igor_K

Added nightly minimal images (root ≈ 500 Mb in size) for La Frite.
https://dl.armbian.com/lafrite/

Ya i think this can be done super cheap with amazon ses. I'll investigate more today and let you know what has to be done.

How is your outbound mail for the forum currently configured?

https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

I would agree on that
 
Le Potato from Libre Computer,  is less expensive and will offer you better performance than RPi
https://libre.computer/products/boards/aml-s905x-cc/#tabs_desc_684_2
 
Allwinner H3 is also good supported, except for the shutdown part https://linux-sunxi.org/AR100  depending on your know-how you can fix it for you or help others as well.

Why it can't be both? I have commit rights for LE and I'm maintainer of allwinner branch (until it's merged in master). And everything I do is in my spare time. As it is the case for any other LibreELEC developer.
 
And 4.20 will be out around Christmas, so I guess I'll merge all HW decoding related patches to allwinner branch around then. But you can get my WIP stuff from my github.
 
BTW, merged version won't use libva-v4l2-request, but native ffmpeg integration.

If anyone was thinking about to get some NanoPi - then today could be the right day
"2018's Black Friday Is Coming!"
http://www.friendlyarm.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&p=5316#p5316
 
Up to 20 Items with Max Discount of $10+ Only on This Friday! [H3] NanoPi NEO: 256M (DO NOT Include Free Heat Sinks): $7.99 512M(DO NOT Include Free Heat Sinks): $9.99 NanoPi NEO Core-LTS: 256M+4GB: $12.99 512M+8GB: $16.99 NanoPi NEO Air : 512M+8GB: $19.99 NanoPi M1 Plus: 1GB+8GB:$29.99 [H5] NanoPi NEO2: 512M: $14.99 1GB: $24.99 NanoPi NEO Core2: 512M+8G:$19.99 1GB+8GB:$26.99 NanoPi NEO Plus2: 1G+8GB: $32.99 NanoPi K1 Plus: $29.99 NanoPi A64: $14.99 [RK3399] NanoPi NEO4: $39.99 NanoPi M4 : 2GB: $59.99 4GB: $79.99 [4418] NanoPi Fire2A : $24.99 NanoPc-T2: $39.99 NanoPi S2: $29.99 Smart4418: $29.99 Core4418: $34.99 [6818] NanoPi Fire3: $29.99 NanoPc-T3 Plus: $59.99 Smart6818: $29.99  

I wouldn't say OSMC is better. It is different.  And it probably fits better for some use cases but not for others. 
In general, OpenELEC is considered a dead project, LibreELEC can be a better option. It has a vibrant community and it is in an active development. 

Kickstarter campaign is about to start.  

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/librecomputer/390161934?ref=399083&token=2af98f81
 

We have produced a few minimalistic housings for the EspressoBin (120x42x81mm) with space for a 2.5" drive using a CNC molding cutter.
Passive cooling of the processor and topaz switch by thermal coupling to the housing works well (housing temperature 31 degrees, ambient temperature 20 degrees).




 
 

Now that this is getting closer to physically existing (ideally I'll have one soon, whether we support it here or not)
 
1) No SD initially worried me because of the normal proprietary loaders/etc.  However we support FEL on Sunxi, UMS on Tinker, and @Neil Armstrong / BayLibre is shoving a ton of patches to get the Amlogic USB boot support into u-boot (2018.11?)
 
2) SPI flash for u-boot, or at least the u-boot environment.  I don't have all the details, but if done correctly this board could keep a consistent hardware profile across distros (MAC address/etc).  ASUS tried this halfway, but didn't go full on for a SPI flash boot.
 
3) The SoC is a Meson64, and has nothing to do with an S805, so think low-power S905X
 
4) This thing should be able to run in very low power mode, assuming the Amlogic blob behaves. 
 
 
 
 
 

Hi guys,
 
finally, paper is finished, and for anyone interested it can be found here on the arXiv site
Be warned, it concentrates on the physics, not the electronics
 
Michael

@tommy I doubt any SBC below $20 would provide an acceptable desktop user experience.  

Probably orange pi pc would be an option, but I've got no real experience with orangepi.

@tommy the best sbc for what? What is your use case? 

maybe a copy&paste from the normal NanoPi Duo?

Under 20$
the Raspberry Pi Zero W for 10$. It's very slow with only 1 core at 1Ghz. You can watch youtube with kiosk browser. And surf, very slowly.
The Banana Pi M2 Zero for 20$. A lot faster. 4x1.2Ghz. You need a good heatsink for it or it overheats constantly. Not very good video playback.
For 25$ the Rock64. Faster, better, but no wifi on-board.
A raspberry pi 3b+ is 35$ and again a bit better.
For your use case an Odroid C2 is perfect. Good Youtube playback, fast, doesn't overheat, ... That's about 50$

Those or the ones I have, and I can recommend. But for 20$ you will not get much.
You need to know that many sbc's don't have hardware acceleration for video playback in browsers. So expect choppy and low resolution video with most. The Odroid C2 does this best in Linux.
Also if a board only has 512MB ram then you want be able to open many tabs.

FriendlyArm also has got some interesting cheap boards.

I review sbc's on their desktop capabilities. Of all those I've got a video, except the C2.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpv7NFr0-9AB5xoklh3Snhg

smart!   the connector the user normally only touches once (HDMI, Network, Powering) is on the back-side and connectors which are touched more often (USB) are on the front (assuming IR is normally on the front side). A bit risky but IMO interesting is to throw out the microSD slot. It may solve a bunch of those support questions which end normally here: https://forum.armbian.com/forum/31-sd-card-and-power-supply/ (at least the SD related ones ) and 12MB SPI flash is more than enough.  IMO an important 'what if' question:
What if I mess up the bootloader and brick it? I'm not familiar with enough with Amlogic SoCs, are they 'failsave' to unbrick SPI once it's messed up (e.g. something like RKs recovery tools?). I've a talent in messing up u-boot, luckily this only happened on SD-card (of fail-save sunxi) yet, where it wasn't much an issue. I probably pledge for a 1gb version if there are still some left for 19$ when I'm back at home..  Not that I'm interested in Kodi on Linux stuff, still a mystery to me why people want Kodi on Linux (anyway, I don't need to understand everything)..  But I appreciate your contribution towards mainline support for hardware accelerated video en/decoding and it could be a cute little IoT end-node for systems where you can't trust that your device doesn't magically disappears (others would call it someone steals your stuff). At least potential confidential information of this node is not in the wrong hands as soon as they cut power. A cute little toy to get a feeling for PXE related stuff. 

@Da XueI'm afraid you will have many complains about lack of SD card. I mean It would be good to have a big flashing banner >>[[ There is no SD card folks ]]<<

Gigabit does not make sense. I'm afraid you will not get more than 20mbps out of your board. This is a very very optimistic expectation,  10 is a more realistic number.  OpenVPN is secure but there is a significant overhead. 
 
Having a hardware encryption can make your board slightly faster probably, but definitely will make it cooler. 

Hi all.
The undervoltage problem was a bad cable. It's a lot more stable with the original cable.
I've finished my review video about the NanoPi M4.
Again with a great working Armbian. Thank you to everyone who worked on Armbian. Great job.
Greetings.
NicoD
 

FYI - the NEO4 is now available - see https://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=241
 
I just placed my order 
 
 

No non-sense, the OP asked for hardware acceleration and preferably mainline kernel, so the thing which scores the most this sense is H3, with all the cons I wrote in the post you quoted (plus the fact that I'm not fond of allwinner which is by far the most non-opensource company of the group).
AmLogic has no committment for mainline kernel and hardware video decoding is missing in mainline (linux-meson.com says "No" "WiP"), so to stay stick to the original question (armbian + kodi) is a step behind the H3. Now you can use it with the legacy kernel and get all the nice things working on a carefully crafted armbian image, but with an ancient kernel.
 
The summary of all this is that armbian + kodi requires a decent amount of exercise either because armbian target is not multimedia and because the "best" SoC here has still several missing things.
That's also the reason why many people said buy a RPi3 which has all the USB ports, GPIO, hardware acceleration (with the notable exception of H.265), 64 bits, chips, fries and desserts for the miserable price of €35

@olivluca FYI I tested jellyfish-40-mbps-hd-hevc.mkv file on RPI3 and was not good. 

On the other hand, Le Potato plays h265 very well (LibreElec v8.90.005 ALPHA)

@olivluca I'm sorry for your confusion. I'm not an expert.  but from my personal experience if we are speaking about Linux-base Kodi player RPI is the best option so far.  Allwiner support is at a very early stage still,  Amlogic support is more mature but still experimental. I have got no Rockchip boards so far. I think it would be better to ask on a Kodi or LibreELEC forums. 

I do remember some discussions on OpenELEC forum (it is completely ruined now, unfortunately)  about NEON optimizations, which improve h.265 playing. 

I can be wrong but seems like Amlogic should support hw decoding.  I my personal experience with LibreELEC/CoreELEC on Le Potato is kinda "mixed".  I wouldn't recommend it as a replacement for RPI3 at least right now. 

Hi,
TLDR: RPI3 is a very good option. 
I've got RPI 3B now. It runs LibreElec smoothly. Previously, I had RPI 2 and even RPI 1 (which is like zero almost). In general, RPI3 works great, I've got no serious complaints just a nit-picking.  
 
IMHO there are few important points (your mileage may vary): 
*) 1GB and 2 cores make a huge difference 
*) A lightweight OS like LibreElec, OpenElec whatever.  Do not waste resources. I tried Raspbian, Xbian and OSMC. They are all good but LibreELEC flavors are just better. 
*) My RPI3 has a root filesystem on a USB thumb drive, it is faster and more reliable. 
*) A good PSU as always. 
 
Now I'm experimenting with AML-S905X-CC (Le Potato) and LibreELEC. It is a very nice board but frankly, it is not a real competitor so far. 

Hi all.
I've discovered Vivaldi Browser for arm. A fork of Chromium.
There is a armhf version and a arm64 version.
Youtube playback with this is a lot better. I've tested it on the NanoPi M4.
The same video in Chromium had 2/3 dropped frames. (10 frames/s) 1080p video
With Vivaldi browser you get 1/3 dropped frames. (20 frames/s)
A lot better experience.

Here you can download it.
https://vivaldi.com/nl/blog/snapshots/vivaldi-1-15-rc-2/
 
Here the source where I found it. From Meveric @ Odroid. Also explanation of how to install. No wget, and change filename to the file you've downloaded for gdebi. Or use gdebi package installer.(not tested)
https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?t=29229

I tried in armhf on the M4 in armhf Lubuntu, worked great. Also tried the arm64 in Armbian Stretch. Also great.
I didn't find any posts about Vivaldi in the Armbian forum. I thought it could be helpful.
Cheers