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Orange Pi Plus 2E - is it any good ?


t-bob

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Hi,

 

I've been playing around with a OPi Win+ which is aint bad but full support seems a while off ... I'm looking for a quad core, 2G, good wifi with external antenna and this seems to fit the requirements. I dont care too much about hdmi but if it works all the better.

 

I was just wondering what current owners thought of it.

 

Can the internal wifi do AP mode and will it do dual modes ...  hostapd-8188 will create wlan0 & wlan1 so that you both connect to an AP and be an AP. Google doesnt show much about 8189ETV

 

Given that the armbian download shows it with a legacy kernel but stable I expect that everything 'works' ...

 

Thanks

 

TB

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4 hours ago, t-bob said:

hostapd-8188 will create wlan0 & wlan1 so that you both connect to an AP and be an AP. Google doesnt show much about 8189ETV

IMHO, if you want an access point buy an AP. :P  Wifi performance on all those cheap small boards is 'questionable' (it's OK for most use cases, but don't expect 'real AP-performance').   If you get it to work in dual mode (never tried, no interest in it) I guess the performance will be 'nightmarish'... 

I had it months ago at hand (not mine, that's why it isn't here anymore) and liked it. GbE & a fast eMMC (this might have changed since then, just use the search engine of the forum. I don't know if and/or how much the performance of eMMC changed in their 'new batch'). 

 

4 hours ago, t-bob said:

Given that the armbian download shows it with a legacy kernel but stable I expect that everything 'works' ...

 

For sure not.. :P depends also on your definition of everything. No guarantee for third-party hardware & software and also no guarantee that it is 100% bugfree. To my knowledge, there aren't any big bugs with the Plus 2E. But if you look at the download page for legacy (stable):

Quote

Legacy kernel images (all boards) (default branch)

  • HDMI output (if exists) supports only limited number of predefined resolutions
  • TV Out is neither supported nor works as expected (only PAL/NTSC resolution, overscanning, no h3disp support, notes for OPi Zero)
  • 1-Wire protocol, reading out DHT11/DHT22 sensors or S/PDIF requires setting the minimum CPU frequency to 480MHz or higher
  • Hardware accelerated video decoding supports only limited number of video formats
  • ‘Out of memory’ (OOM) issues are possible due to a kernel bug

Mainline kernel images (all boards) (next/dev branches)

  • No Maldrivers
  • No hardware accelerated video decoding
  • TV Out is not supported on any H2+/H3board
 

 

When you really care about 'AP-Grade' wifi performance, you should look for boards with mPCIe and an additional wifi-card which is known to perform well in your (a little bit special) use case...  

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1 hour ago, Igor said:

Actually, with recent drivers, anything that hears on 8811/8812/8814 performs really nice also in AP mode. AC speed.

But virtual interfaces weren't tested on those devices AFAIK. In any case for an AP and especially for multiple virtual interfaces AP it's better to stay away from Realtek wireless, and especially from cheap Realtek wireless. They may work in simple scenarois but nobody will guarantee that more complex things will work and nobody will be willing to fix any obscure bugs or limitations with advanced functionality.

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Many thanks for the comments & info.

 

Yes, the only guarantee in life is death & taxes :)

 

All these SBC's have compromises that have to be made. Even the RPi which has awesome s/w support but no external wifi antenna, bad microSD slot (why didnt they pay an extra 5 cents and get the one that clicks in) & only 1G of ram.

 

It's a pity we couldnt get someone to make a SBC with all the stuff that we want but I doubt that would ever happen :(

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3 hours ago, t-bob said:

It's a pity we couldnt get someone to make a SBC with all the stuff that we want but I doubt that would ever happen :(

Cause everyone will something else... :D If you ask 100 people what they'll give you 101 opinions what is most important... :D 

 

I've split them into different use cases. The HC1 for my OMV system. OPi PC plus as 'IoT-server' (I could do this also on my HC1, but since there's often some try and error approaches where the system can end in a mess, I don't wanna backup my OMV-Server every time and load the backup cause I tried something which killed the system. OPi0 (or for lightweight projects I'm a fan of the WemosD1 mini boards) for the whole IoT-Stuff. It costs me ~10$ if I grill one by mistake, instead of 25$ for a PC+ :P - grilled once a DS18b20 due to false connection but the IO-pin on the OPi0 survived my 'connect first, think after approach'... And if one gets grilled I've a backup and so I don't have to wait 4 weeks for a new one. And two raspberries for camera stuff (since Armbian I don't like raspian anymore, but cause they are here they have to do something). Something like a HC1 with mPCIe and some GPIO pins could be a 'one catches them all' board. But my OMV has to be stable and save whereas on my IoT-Stuff, I don't care that much about security as long as they're only on local network (do not recommend this for others - but I'm not professional in IT and IT-security is a learning by doing field for me and I think this is the safest approach possible with my limited knowledge). 

 

3 hours ago, t-bob said:

Yes, the only guarantee in life is death & taxes :)

 

IMOH no! If everyone would pay the taxes he/she/tey should, the whole business model of some small islands around the world would immediately crash... (I'm from Switzerland - we don't do this, never did this :rolleyes: :lol:). 

On 24.11.2017 at 10:36 PM, t-bob said:

hostapd-8188 will create wlan0 & wlan1 so that you both connect to an AP and be an AP

Do you need 'good performance' for this or is it just about having your SBC as a master node for some small other sensor nodes? 

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Yes, we'd never get complete agreement on a config ... but even if we could get an agreement on say the wifi chipset(s) and always include usb3 on anything that's not a 'zero' clone. Stuff like that would be good.

 

The Wemos stuff looks interesting and not too pricey like some other ones.

 

Well, the whole trickle down economy thing worked so well for everyone didnt it :)

 

The master mode would only need OK performance and not excellent ... just web traffic (5+ users)

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I want to use 2 USB micro-B Y cables for my 2 HDD's. I'll give power to one-of usb Y cable ports from another USB power source (not from Orange Pi Plus 2e). But I understand that external power source will give backpower to Orange's USB ports. I need to use only USB DATA pins with Orange.

 

Are there any risks for Orange Pi if it is backpowered from USB ports ? Any protection for backpower in USB port electronics/architecture ? I'm not sure whether I have to cut +5 V wire only going to Orange USB port and only permit this voltage to HDD's side or not ?

Edited by Tido
moved
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