New member with several questions

[Skygod]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm looking at a project to provide a Media Server in a small bar to the customers along with an Intranet webserver and Wireless Internet gateway. I want the internal LAN consisting of my Desktop PC and the new SBC server to be running GbE and for the SBC to be serving data from a 2.5" 250Gb SATA drive directly rather than over a USB bridge.

 

This has led me to a choice of a Cubie board or Banana Pi connected to a GbE switch or alternatively I could simply get the Banana router board and avoid the extra switch device. (I'm leaning towards the router board as it will be less devices and therefore consume less power, unless there is a major disadvantage to this option)

 

If I go this route, am I correct that an armbian image will provide my basic server requirements? If so, are there any recommendations on tutorials for configuring the SBC router using my ISP modem in bridge mode?

 

I intend to run a basic LAMP stack to provide an Intranet webserver and Plex as the media server (maximum of 6 simultaneous clients envisaged). Should the Banana router board be sufficient for my needs?

 

As for powering the device, I plan to use a UBEC with MicroUSB connecter which will provide 5V3A and can be powered from either the 24V out from my Solar inverter or from a standard laptop power 'brick'.

 

Any hints on where to get information and tutorials / HOWTOs would be gratefully received, as would any views regarding alternative hardware solutions.

[Igor]

Hey. 

 

Take a look on threads where we discuss about R1 troubles to see why the most obvious solution might not be the right one. Than if you want to have a good wireless coverage no onboard solution is perfect. Perhaps the best / most stable one is Cubietruck / BananaPRO. But since you are going to use this in a bar, you need to have in mind the limitation of wireless users. All clients (i think max is 5) need to share 56Mbit network speed which will be very bad in peek hours.

 

Bottom line. Perhaps a decent dual band gigabit wireless router + any A20 based banana / cubie / olimex will be much better / realistic solution. 

[tkaiser]

Perhaps a decent dual band gigabit wireless router + any A20 based banana / cubie / olimex will be much better / realistic solution. 

 

Absolutely second that. This is the most time saving approach. Unless the devices mentioned here are ready I would always prefer that solution after spending so many hours with the rubbish R1.

[Skygod]

Bottom line being that the wireless on the router board isn't really going to be any use an Access Point?

 

Okay, I can get around that by enabling the WiFi on my D-Link ADSL modem/router and have the clients connect to the network that way, but unfotunately this device only has 100Mb ports rather than GbE, so to get decent transfer rates between the Banana Pi & my desktop PC, I'll need to connect everything to a GbE switch.

 

By removing the need for WiFI, I guess a straightforward Banana Pi Model 1 will then be sufficient to provide the other services.

[tkaiser]

MicroUSB connecter which will provide 5V3A

 

Nope. "MicroUSB connector" is rated 1.8A max. -- the contacts being too tiny prevent you from providing anything above 2.0A and while you're doing this you're already violating specs and the connector gets hot. Even worse: Many/most USB cables are crappy and lead to voltage drops.

 

Never ever buy a device with peak consumption exceeding 8 W (applies to many SBC with a connected 2.5" disk) and that wants to be powered through MicroUSB. MicroUSB as "DC in" solution has been made with cell phones in mind where neither voltage drops do any harm except longer charging times nor the current limitation (most people won't even notice when their phone takes twice as much time to recharge due to crappy cables/connector)

[tkaiser]

to get decent transfer rates between the Banana Pi & my desktop PC, I'll need to connect everything to a GbE switch.

 

Devices exist that are able to run OpenWRT/DD-WRT and aren't that expensive, eg this one: https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr4300

 

In case you've an old 3.5" PATA disk enclosure lying aroung you could use the PSU from this device (dual voltage) and provide power to the router and Banana Pi simultaneously. A 12V PSU and step-down converters will also do the job.

[Skygod]

Nope. "MicroUSB connector" is rated 1.8A max. -- the contacts being too tiny prevent you from providing anything above 2.0A and while you're doing this you're already violating specs and the connector gets hot.

 

Does this mean all the bundles supplying a 5V2A PSU are also violating specs?

 

My understanding was that the supply would only provide what the device demands in terms of the current. The UBEC I was looking to implement is usually used to supply 5V supply to radio control models from banks of LiPo cells.

[tkaiser]

My understanding was that the supply would only provide what the device demands in terms of the current.

 

Correct. But if your device demands more than 1.8A then MicroUSB is the wrong connector. And since many/most USB cables lead to voltage drops an USB connector to power the board reliably is always the wrong connector. The hardware vendors using this connector know this but they do not care since it's not their but the customer's problem and they try to be attractive for RPi users when choosing the same (crappy) connector to power their boards since users think they can re-use the PSU they used with RPi or any crappy cell phone charger.

 

The usual story with this MicroUSB connector:

 

User uses 5V/2A PSU as by the requirements and experiences random shutdowns in load situation or when he provokes peak current situations (connecting mouse/keyboard to USB, spinning up a connected hard disk). He asks somewhere in a forum and other users who had the same problem before answer: "Hey, now I use 5V/4A and problems are gone", "Me too, with my new 5V/3.5A PSU everything's perfect".

 

In reality the amperage doesn't made the difference but the new PSU had a directly connected cable which prevented the voltage drops. That's all. You won't be able to let an A20 based device demand more than 600mA when running at 100% on all CPU cores while being overclocked. Same applies to 2.5" HDDs (expect peak power consumption when spinning up!). On nearly every board it's always voltage drops that are the problem. And they happen only under 'full load' situations (compare with the graphs in the aforementioned link).

 

I know 3 exceptions:

 

- Lamobo R1: There the on-board switch IC and Wi-Fi and the different power scheme (powering the hard disk through the PSU instead of directly connecting pwr-in with SATA-power) leads to situations where the R1 exceeds the 1.8A

 

- Lemon Pi and Roseapple Pi (use the same reference design): They aren't attractive at all due to their S500 SoC. But these two boards feature a MicroUSB connector for pwr-in and also 2 USB 2.0 type A ports (each one providing "up to" 500mA for devices) and 1 USB 3.0 port providing "up to" 900mA. In the schematics it's written that you will need a PSU rated with 2.4A or above if you plan to use power hungry disks on the USB connectors. While they use a pwr-in connector that is rated 1.8A max. -- broken by design

[Skygod]

Interesting points tkaiser.

 

My understanding was that the Banana Pi could only be powered by Micro USB, so getting a 1.8A maximum supply would be difficult to say the least, but then I found a few articles suggesting that it could be powered through the SATA power port.

 

I do have an old 3.5" PATA drive PSU 'brick' which simply terminates in a 4 way Molex connector, so would it be a better solution to power the 250Gb SATA drive and the Banana Pi via the SATA power port from this unit?

 

I could also take a 12V line to power my D-Link ADSL router.

 

 

 

I'd have to abort the idea of taking power straight from the 24V DC port  on the solar inverter though.

[tkaiser]

http://linux-sunxi.org/Banana_Pi#Powering_the_board

 

The Banana Pi has two MicroUSB connectors one being used for power-in and the other is USB-OTG (also suitable to power the board since the AXP209 PMU can be feed from power-in, USB-OTG and LiPo battery: you could also solder a cable to the battery solder pads to power the board reliable but a bit weird ;-) )

 

Powering disk and board separately is always better. And I also had good experiences using 24V (in fact 27V from a quality PSU) to power a bunch of RPi over PoE with simple step-down converters on the other side of the Ethernet cable providing 5.1V to the boards.

[Skygod]

Cheers for all the feedback. Gives me a few options to consider. (As for using a RPi, I threw that idea out when I realised that all Disk I/O, Network traffic and any other USB peripherals would be through a single USB port)

[tkaiser]

As for using a RPi, I threw that idea out when I realised that all Disk I/O, Network traffic and any other USB peripherals would be through a single USB port

 

Of course. That's the main disadvantage of any RPi (I tried to point out this architectural difference in the linux-sunxi wiki already)

 

But one of the many advantages of any RPi is the ability to do HW accelerated video encoding/decoding on the VideoCore VPU. We use a couple of RPi B+ as surveillance cameras (being able to do also a lot of other things since while recording video and sending the encoded h.264 stream through the network CPU utilisation doesn't exceed 10% even when using the slow B+ clocked at 700MHz):

 

[Skygod]

I just need headless, so the quality of video output is not relevant to me.

 

I already have a standalone CCTV system, so this is of no benefit. I just want good processing power per dollar with GbE and direct SATA.

 

 

For what I want to do, I'm becoming convinced that the Banana Pi is the best solution for my requirements at a very affordable entry price with native SATA support and GbE network interface.

[Skygod]

Order placed!

 

Banana Pi M1+ with case, fan, ceramic heat sink, 'potentially dodgy' 5V2A PSU & SATA cable. (Probably won't end up using the WiFi, but it's there for any future project)

 

Plex Media Server will be installed along with LAMP stack with music files (mainly FLAC, but some MP3) being served from a 250Gb 2.5" inch SATA drive.

 

(If the PSU is indeed crap, I'll look at a more robust 'in spec' solution using a step down regulator hooked up to the 24V supply from the UPS battery bank)

 

 

So now, it's just wait for the delivery and then I'll probably be back asking more questions.

[tkaiser]

being served from a 250Gb 2.5" inch SATA drive.

 

Ah, one thing I forgot to mention: The older the disks the more they often consume (applies especially to peak current needed at disk spin-up). And you might also end up with the LCC problem (LCC --> load cycle count): many 'green' 2.5" HDDs suffer from this problem when running with linux: the drive's firmware parks the drive's heads every few seconds in a landing zone just to let the kernel unramp them a few seconds later.

 

Be prepared to install both smartmontools and hdparm and watch/adjust the relevant parameters (preventing increasing LCC counters and sane spin-down timeouts). If your disk doesn't support automatic spindown, it's time to give hdd-spindown.sh a try: https://github.com/lynix?tab=repositories

 

With Armbian it's easy to put the rootfs on a connected SATA disk. But unless it's an SSD I normaly refuse to do so and stay with the rootfs on SD-card with Igor's default settings (check /etc/fstab for details) and put only 'application data' on disk. With this setup I manage high spindown times since the disk only runs when really needed.

[Skygod]

Just bouncing a few ideas around at the moment, so any feedback appreciated.

 

I will end up with a number of devices that run on DC (Amplifier, Banana Pi, Ethernet Switch/Hub, Desktop PC (using Pico PSU), LED strip lighting, CCTV DVR recorder, ADSL Router/Modem, phone charger etc.), so I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to simply buy a single good quality high amperage Regulated Switching Power Supply (12v - 30A?) and run all my DC devices from this?)

 

I can use BEC devices from Radio Control hobby suppliers to handle the stepdown from 12V to 5V where needed (like the Banana Pi), but I would then potentially be at risk with a device able to draw a massive current which could 'fry' something.

 

Is there any major flaw with this thinking?

 

(As for the external 250Gb HDD, it started 'clunking' today and its SMART stats are not good, so the Banana Pi will probably have a new 250Gb SSD connected instead, so power shouldn't be an issue)

 

I'm also looking for easy to manage software to run on the Banana Pi as a 'jukebox' (music only - FLAC & mp3) with clients able to select tracks from the library. All audio output should be from the server by default and not streamed / transcoded to the client. Again, any ideas or thoughts gratefully accepted.

[zador.blood.stained]

From my point of view, using one SMPS for powering multiple devices with different requirements to voltage stability is not a good idea. Especially supplying more or less powerful amplifier from switching power supply is generally a bad idea.

 

Using Ethernet routers or switches, embedded boards such as Banana Pi, step-down converters for USB devices and other things with relatively low power comsumption from one PSU should be okay, especially if you connect all wires directly to SMPS output ("star" topology).

I would not recommend using Pico PSU without additional capacitors near its power input and relatively thick wires connecting it to 12v SMPS.

Given that with all these devices 12v power will be very noisy from all step down converters, powering even small audio amplifier from it may require using additional filters.

 

For audio player - have a look at mpd, it is a music server daemon that has different clients to control it (command line (useful for IR/LIRC), desktop Windows and Linux apps, web ui, Android app, etc).

[Skygod]

The SMPS I have been looking at has three separate 12V outputs, so I was looking at running a couple of devices on each one, as the idea of half a dozen cheapo power adapters all being connected into a mains block isn't very appealing.

 

Regarding the amplifier, it's a 30W per channel Class D device which is currently powered by a laptop 'brick'. I'm only running a low power Haswell board in my PC now, so the current shouldn't be too demanding, do you still think it would be necessary to provide thicker cables?

 

Thanks for the tip on mpd; after a quick look, it seems able to provide what I want, so will investigate further and start checking out the Android client apps.

[zador.blood.stained]

Separate outputs or independent stabilized channels? It's a big difference.

 

For wire thickness "rule of thumb" is "1 mm² per 10A" (for copper wires), so, i.e. for amplifier (yes, 60W is peak maximum power, not constant, but just for example), 60/12=5A, so recommended minimum wire cross section area will be 5mm² 0.5mm².

With PC - Haswell CPUs TDP varies from 35W to 140W depending on model, "low power" here is relative  , and you need to take into account other devices (especially HDDs).

 

I'm using MPDroid as android mpd client.

 

Edit: Sorry, screwed up too 

[Skygod]

Looked at your TDP figures and thought WTF!

 

Then realised my screwup! My PC has a Braswell not a Haswell (Asrock N3700M) with a TDP of around 6W along with a Samsung EVO 250Gb SSD (5W) and a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1Tb HDD (8W)

[zador.blood.stained]

20W sounds low enough, so here you are good.

Another thing I forgot to mention, when you will be choosing step-down converters, you better look for devices rated for high enough current (more than you will need) and that they have radiators and preferrably external MOSFETs (rather than built in control chips), because cheap converters for radio control hobby projects certainly are not designed for long continuous uptime or even working 24/7.

[Skygod]

 

 when you will be choosing step-down converters, you better look for devices rated for high enough current (more than you will need) and that they have radiators and preferrably external MOSFETs (rather than built in control chips), because cheap converters for radio control hobby projects certainly are not designed for long continuous uptime or even working 24/7.

 

For the step down converters, II'm looking at a device based on the KIM-055L, as this will provide enough current, allows flexibility on the DC input voltage, comes with a heat sink and seems to be efficient. ( http://www.bajdi.com/testing-switch-mode-voltage-regulators/ )

 

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/DC-DC-12V-9-35V-to-5V-5A-KIM-055L-Step-Down-Power-supply-Converter-Module/32451097505.html

 

[Skygod]

Okay daft question time!

 

I set up the Banana Pi as a Shairport server and all was working really well, but when I rebooted, I've lost any way of connecting, as the SSH server isn't starting. I have network connectivity, as I ping the IP address from another machine on the network.

 

Thinking I could check the boot sequence, I hooked the Banana Pi up to the TV HDMI input, but that simply says "Unrecognised Signal", so any tips on how to gain access?

[Skygod]

I had disconnected the attached hard drive and it seems that Debian Jessie won't boot if there's an entry in /etc/fstab referencing a non-existent device.

[tkaiser]

I had disconnected the attached hard drive and it seems that Debian Jessie won't boot if there's an entry in /etc/fstab referencing a non-existent device.

 

Unless you provide the "nofail" option this is now the case. And this change in jessie is intended: have a look at eg. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=797039

[Skygod]

tkaiser, I now know that :-)

 

I've seen a few threads that have gotten quite emotive about the issue as systems that previously worked fine simply stopped booting. It took me a couple of days to determine the problem, but I won't get bitten twice with this one.

 

I'm really pleased with this Armbian distro for my little Banana Pi M1+ so far. I've got so much running on this device now and it handles everything I've thrown at it so far.

 

Connecting a tablet / smartphone using MPDroid to the MPD server is working really well, but one guy simply wanted to stream the audio from his Windows laptop to the audio output on the Banana and he's now able to do it through TuneBlade by connecting his sound output to the Shairport service that I've installed.

 

I'm still working my way through the ID3 tagging of c.30k tracks which I'm doing on my Windows desktop and then using using Robocopy to update the files on the Banana through a Samba share that I have created.

 

The best $70 I've spent on hardware I reckon (including heatsink, case, fan, PSU, Micro SD) plus an initial donation to Armbian for making it all possible on a hardware platform that I'd no previous experience with.

[Skygod]

Have just run an apt-get update & upgrade and see I'm now on 3.4.110

# uname -a
Linux <my fqdn> 3.4.110-sun7i #10 SMP PREEMPT Mon Dec 28 11:48:43 CET 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux

script.bin is still linked to /boot/bin/bananapipro.bin

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      25 Dec  7 19:11 script.bin -> /boot/bin/bananapipro.bin

No WiFi now though :-(

 

Output of dmesg | grep ap6210

[    5.727940] [ap6210] parse wifi_used failed in script.fex.
[    5.732266] [ap6210] bluetooth is disable in script.fex.
[    5.741335] [ap6210] No wifi type selected, please check your config.
[    5.934401] [ap6210] WLAN placed in POWER ON
[    7.936360] [ap6210] failed to power up wifi chip, retry again

After 4 retries it simply gives up trying

 

 

 

I have also just connected a brand new 240Gb SATA SSD to the device, but it's not being recognised. I'll have to hook it up to my desktop to check the disk works and if so, then check I've actually got power being supplied by the SATA connector on the Banana Pi M1+

[Skygod]

Well, the SATA drive works okay in my Desktop PC and also when installed in a USB / SATA enclosure connected to the Banana Pi M1+, so there's a problem with either the supplied SATA data/power cable or the SATA connectors on the board.

[    0.687636] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 mmio [mem 0x01c18000-0x01c18fff] port 0x100 irq 88
[    1.009622] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)

I've now effectively lost both the USB ports, as the onboard sound through the 3.5mm jack keeps sending a 'heartbeat' pulse every couple of seconds which has meant using a USB soundcard and now the SATA connectivity is not functioning, so the brand new 240Gb SSD has to go through USB.

 

Combined with the failed Armbian upgrade and issues rolling back to 3.4.109, the last few days of testing have not been too good.

[Igor]

M1+ is not directly supported since I never even checked if and which are main differences between M1+ and PRO. Obviously there are and you will need to find a proper / correct script.bin with HW settings.

 

Edit: Try this fex

script.zip

[Skygod]

Cheers Igor. I do apologise for the moaning, but it's just been a few bad days.

 

I accept that the M1+ isn't directly supported, unlike the Pro.

 

 

(Definately an issue with the sunxi-tools not being in the 3.4.110 upgrade though)