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which one? The more connectors, the more possibilities for errors. If this is a fixed system, why using connectors? If I see it right on the pictures the expansion board does not overlay the 26 pinheader. There are two possibilities, bent or not bent pinheader (bent is for sure more expensive, cause for the linear you can use two rows of 13 pins). Male or female connector (does not really make a difference, as long as you don't stack your own expansion board directly to the opi). Going out of your case depends on your needs (e.g. on which side of your case do you need the wires, should it look "perfect" or just work). Quick and dirty solution: If you don't use the 3.5mm jack from the expansionboard, just cut it out and you have your hole or melt a hole with your soldering iron into the case (ABS is a thermoplast so melting would be the easiest way). If you want the nice perfect solution, download a CAD, design the perfect case for your needs bring this to a printservice and you're happy to have a nice case.. This is mostly a software related forum and all the support is for free. You get some hints (e.g. about ABS), IMHO it's time that you start to think about your needs. Seems that nobody who have the OPi 0 case used the pinheader or they don't saw your topic.

Don't know where you're come from but there are so many print services arround the world. So send the stl files and get your case for arround 10$. ABS looks often ugly if you drill holes into it (did this once for a RPi case). Going out through near to the USB from the expansionboard isn't an option? If you're sure that you never use more cables on it just solder the wires directly on your board without any pinheader.

What's about a 3d printed case? Something like this or this? Cause OPi 0 runs often into overheating I'm not sure if it is a good idea. Maybe I'll print one for my self and test how it works..

Give the peoples here some time, 22h aren't that much for a specific question. If I have it right in mind a attiny or arduino breakout should also work with the lirc library. Would be cheaper as a usb soundcard not? Years ago, someone ported everything to RPi (ir on gpio header) so maybe this could be a starting point to bring this to work on an OPi. I think it's somehow ironic if you have a sbc with gpio header and need additional hardware to trigger a simple irLED. There's also a analog out (sound) on the 13pin header of the opi 0. So if you get this one working, no additional usb soundcard is needed.

IMO a small shitty passive copper cooler is enough (idles @55°C, rev. 1.4, 3.4.113-sun8i Kernel). Only if you stress it with minerd --benchmark it starts themal throttling after 2-3min (4cores active 912 --> 768MHz max 74°C). I'm not happy with the 'improvement' of rev. 1.4 but it's not often that I need full cpu power for my applications. So it depends on your use case if active cooling is needed or not. I think, it doesn't make sense to clock it @1200 MHz cause it heats up way to fast before themal throttling starts.

Agreed, but functionalities that are not quite working as expected, should be disabled by default. so disable Wifi on nearly every sbc cause a lot of people expect to run these in AP-Mode? I don't know how much time it needs to test everything that should work on every board which has a stable Armbian. ;ainline kernel is often experimental. Calling something else would confuse people..

Some backgroundinformation about wifi on sbc: Search for wifi opi zero on forum: The wifi on the opi zero isn't made for ap mode. The driversituation is somehow questionable. Edit: igor was faster...

Whats about doing some 'psycological housekeeping'? -Red: experimental -Orange: testing -Yellow: stable -Green: RPi like (no idea how we should name it) For a poweruser still no problem to use a yellow image and for the Windows ->RPi ->armbian user (I'm a normal Windows user, started with RPi years ago, maybe, I read a little bit more than others before I ask things) hopefully a hint that not everything works at the moment. For the educational part, I would love to see a post where someone shows the difference between mainline and legacy on some use cases, cause that's something I think that the 'WinPiA' ( lWindows ->RPi ->armbian) user does not understand from begining.

IMO no! Make it easier for people who aren't able/willing to read could not be the ambition of armbian. I think it would be better if we try to explain what WIP means (also explain that WIP doesn't mean that this is finished in the next months), what the difference between mainline and legacy is. Not only in one or two sentences about mainline is for *random application* and legacy is for *other random application*. Bring examples so that people can imagine that legacy/mainline is the better choice for their use cases (showing performance of multimedia application in mainline/legacy, or a serverapplication moved from legacy to mainline). Explain why mainline needs so much time to implement. If there are two "brands" you have to decide what's needed to call it armbian or 'WIPian'. A propper definiton of 'stable' 'testing' 'experimental' is IMO way to go. Something like: stable means network works, usb works, gpio works (e.g. onewire, i2s, i2c), wifi works etc. testing means: we think that all these things should work but aren't sure, experimental means: not recommended for end users, use this images only when you're able to solve problems by yourself or you're able to improve the support status (I like tkaisers link about smart questions, maybe this should be a 'must read' bevor asking questions about experimental builds). For example: Asus Tinker is claimed to be stable (mainline) but: Known issues: Ethernet driver needs some fixing (Downloadpage) Bluetooth seems to be still WIP (Forum) Camera on CSI seems only work with a 'questionable' move Display on DSI Don't understand me wrong, especially @TonyMac32 does a really good job on the thinker board, he spends a lot of time explain the current status, give support (for sure the most activ supporter in the rockchip subforum). But, as long as these things aren't solved it's not stable for me (thinkting as a user not as a dev). Especially for a SBC which is claimed to be a 'RPi with more power' (it's not armbians faults that average joe thinks this is a overpowered RPi) but this is a board where a lot of former RPi users will join armbian with an atitute like 'my VW golf has now a ferrari engine! so why does the gear not working anymore?'. When I started with my first RPi (Model B ), nobody asked for CSI or DSI cause there weren't any cameras and displays on the market. But this changed and an average SBC user thinks this should work (especially cause the tinker looks like a nice colored RPi). Just flag it as 'testing' could help that people understand that not everything is working at the moment. For sure, there will be still stupid questions why *random function* does not work but it's easier to understand when your armbian is flaged yellow or red that something doesn't work than if it's green.

Edit: not directly related to the wifi chip of opi zero, but it gives you some background.

No idea where you live but could something like an Arduino MKRFOX1200 be something for you (only if you live in europe, south africa or the middle east)? 3G USB sticks are cheap as hell, but as soon as it gets to dev boards the situation becomes shitty (U-Blox dev boards ~100$, module only gets cheaper when you buy more than 10). Maybe hijack of a cheap mobile phone is the easyiest way...

If you only want to watch TV, buy a cheap DVB-T2 receiver. If it's about watch and record content, IMO you should look for the cheapest android TV box (that's definitely cheaper than a proper powered SBC with a good SD-card), connect your USB DVB-T2 receiver, download their app (which has hopefully an included recording function), and maybe plex server for android to share your recorded content. If you wanna do the fancier stuff (thinking about a realtime analysis of the tv-program wherease every time they talk about Trump, two orange LEDs will shine and your twitterbot will post something under #orangeisthenewblack [/sarcasm_off]), than you should think about using an SBC for this use case. This comes always with a cost (mostly more time than money). So, if you don't get your answer as soon as you want it's IMO better to add more information than just a simple: 'don't forget my thread'-post. The reason why I annoted this to @TonyMac32 was cause I thought he would have the knowledge, which would help you for your decision. Maybe I should avoid to jump into questions where a boring versions of 'up'/ 'don't forget my thread'/ 'give me the information faster' follow-up posts are written.

It's never enough. To make it clear, your thread started good with the description of your needs. Also the proposal of two SoCs you thought about. But the 'common guys' sounds like the good old 'UP' to me (mostly written on the marketplace parts of various forums). Something like: Since my last post, I found out that the Asus Tinker has a 'random benefit' but I'm still not sure about the H.265 support. Maybe, some one like @TonyMac32 , who's, to my knowlege, really active on the developement to get armbian to work on the Asus Tinker, will jump in and share his knowlege about the H.265 support situation. You should also consider that one day isn't that a long period to get an answer to a specific use case. Don't understand it wrong. I just wanna help that you're get your answer as soon as possible. Not to criticize your starting post. edit: not armbian related, but it seems that RockChip is working on H.264/H.265 (see also on github) hardware accelerated decoding. I've no clue if this helps you.

Do you ever thought about alternatives (Maybe C.H.I.P or Omega 2 are better for battery powered IoT devices. This is a little bit out of my knowledge, not sure if these two are good proposals)? From my experience, the opi 0 is a little bit bitchy as soon as it runs into a undervoltage situation. I realized that the SoC (OPi 0, rev. 1.4) gets really hot (finger test) as soon as there's not enough power to start up the board. I'll investigate this as soon as I have more time and my second OPi 0 arrives (I would be annoyed, if I grill the only one which I have at the moment).

I'm proud to improve your german skills (sure it would sound funny to hear this from a native english speaker). Let's be honest, for the average joe the RPi is the best solution. There's a lot of tutorials (good and also less recommended ones), it still works if you give a shit about proper powering (AJ doesn't expect that his board compeets against his i7 desktop). And he spends only 35$ (~5 beers in a pub here in switzerland ) for playing some hours with it, before it ends as a dust collector. I like SBCs like the Helios 4 (seems that they really thought about an improved board for server use cases), or the pi zero (except the shitty wlan on it) and the NanoPi neo (e.g. IoT-server, printserver for non network capable printers). Also somehow the Asus Tinker could be a powerful mediacenter device (not sure how's looking on software side for this use case). I test it at the moment for a poor artist as a 'desktop replacement' (he needs gimp to prepare his pictures before he paint them on the canvas and in switzerland an Asus Tinker costs you ~40$ whereas a RPi costs you more on every shop without minimum order value). But even intel failed to hijack the IoT market (stoped, Edison, Galileo and Joule). Samsungs artik series started with a cool concept but they saw, that it needs more time to build up a ecosystem (IMO as long as bluetooth is not mesh capable it doesn't make much sense for IoT, it was a smart move to implement ZigBee). Make the Raspberry Pi great #MtRpg doesn't sound that smooth as maga. You should work on your marketing skills.. But the TrumPi (the follow-up SBC would be called covfefePi) will hit back, in WWE style, if you doesn't power it properly ore insert a shitty SD-Card. I'm sure @tkaiser would love it.

Instead of a 'common guys' I would recommend to present your research about your use case. Maybe some experienced users will tell you why your choice is a good/bad idea. I'm definitely not an expert on all this media center stuff, but as far as I know, everything that has to do with hardware accelerated decoding seems to be tricky/not possible with mainline.

IMO that makes somehow sense for the pinheader (although I do not like it). But where do you make the money? Selling boards? definitely not, there's too much competition, as long as every boardmaker claims that his SBC is an 'Eierlegende Wollmilchsau' (I'm native german speaking, means: all-in-one device suitable for every purpose, free translation: egg-laying wool-milk-sow). On a softwareside it's also hard as long as every big company port their stuff to RPi (e.g. Microsofts Embedded Learning Library or Tensor flow from google) seems that every bigger company is only interessted in RPi on a "lowbudget" side. So making some extra money by selling cheap 3d printed cases to the board seems IMO an easier way or they start to think about a use case: IoT (LiPo charge circuit, good gpio libraries from the beginning, RTC, wake-up possibility etc.) Server (proper power management for connecting HDD, no idea what else the serverguys need ) Mediacenter (everything for hardware accelerated decoding) etc

I don't understand why a lot of these boardmakers made their boards with a rpi formfactor. Most RPi cases are realy small. I think a lot of these more powerful boards will run into thermal issues cause average joe thinks that it's a good idea to have his board in such a case. hmm I would call my borad TrumPi and use a orange circuit board, of course with a claimed 68 pinheader whereas only 58 are connected...

There's something called getting started on the armbian site. I think this would be a good starting point for you.

chinese arduino with CHG340/341 or with FTDI. If FTDI, they are mostly fake and I had a lot of trouble on higher baudrates (more than 9600 ) with those fake FTDI (have also one surely faked FTDI which doesn't make trouble).

I'll only start with a new tread if others show the willingness to contribute to such a set of armbian related 'whitepapes'. I have several topics in my mind. Some where my knowledge isn't good enough and others where I need to much time to bring this on paper. Reviewers are needed but firstly, something to review has to be written . IMO it doesn't make sense to figure out a peer review process nor how we present this stuff if this is the only white paper ever written. Some topics in my mind: Raspberry user moves to Armbian Mainline or Legacy (differences and knowledge needed to work on mainline) Wlan on SBC (what is possible with the onboard wirelesschips?) NAS etc. So, a lot of topics but more users have to jump in to get this to a successful story.

If they want not read stuff, give them more stuff to read. I did some tests with cheap USB chargers (bought two only for this test) and cables and thought I would publish it somewhere here in the forum. Cause I knew, that this would give a longer thread I collected all my data in Word (yeah, I'm normally a Windows user. ) and thought to copy paste everything when I'm finished. During the collection of data, I thought why shouldn't make something like a 'white paper' out of it? If I jump into a new topic I'm always interested in application notes or white papers. So, this is a draft (language has to cleaned up and some 'peer review' process should also been done before publishing it) about micro USB and what's to consider when using it. Maybe a set of such 'white papers' with common tasks, mistakes etc. about SBC could be something for armbian? BTW: I started this test with four USB chargers, the 0.60$ one from china didn't survive the test... Powering throught micro USB.pdf

30-34 degrees C seems surprisingly low to me. My opi zero idles @55-60 degree C (opi zero 512mb, we have summer in europe so my room is around 27-30 C). Do you use the newest Armbian? If I had it right in mind, that before optimization of clock speed was done, armbian on H3 boards had thermal issues (I'm not sure if this was still the case when support for h2+ started - that's before I got in touch with armbian). Maybe thinking about a small heatsink, I ran mine the first couple of days without but hat never problems freezing (never stressed it with more than apt-upgrade during this time). Edit: You can lower the max cpu freq. But it should work with the armbian settings.)

Just for fun, its clearly the Sharp Zaurus sl-5600, with a additional wifi card no web encrypted wlan was safe (only on a 'academical test' ). For doing the stuff that I'm doing at the moment it's the opi zero. I'm sure there are more powerful, more stable or in general better boards on the market, but it does the job. All my IoT stuff works on it, I don't need more power for that, so why should I have more power. It's like a 'Volkswagen diesel' - not as clean as it should be, it claims a little bit more than it can, but it does a god job on the things I expect from a IoT headless server.