Ordered 2 EspressoBIN boards

[Jens Bauer]

On January 31st I decided to order two EspressoBIN boards with 2GB RAM each.

 

What made me take the final decision was that the pfSense developers got pfSense running on the board (it's still in alpha, but it very much adds value to the board).

In addition, Armbian's compatibility page (see the download page) lists two devices that I'm interested in:

1. The USB3-to-Gbit Ethernet adapter.
2. The Mini-PCIe-to-4-SATA-ports card. Note: This card will not be able to reach the full 6Gbit for SATA, but around 5Gbit, which is still quite good.

 

And last but not least; Armbian of course needs some testers on this platform.

 

Here are the things that made me get interested in EspressoBIN:

• The native SATA port, which has full 6G SATA speed (good for compiling, good for booting from and good for NAS, great for a router).
• The Mini-PCIe v2.0 slot; allows some 'final customization' to fit my needs - if I ever want to use the device for something else, it also adds flexibility there.
• The device is affordable. $79 is roughly the same I purchased my CubieBoard2 for, but EspressoBIN is far superior.
• The power consumption of the board is low; I can run it on solar panels and won't need an expensive UPS to ensure my server or router is running.
• The network speed will be quite fair; approximately 2.5Gbit/sec total on the three 1Gbit interfaces (since the Topaz is connected via 2.5Gbit SERDES).
• The board can easily be built into a 1U rack enclosure.

 

Things that you should be aware of:

• If you wish to use the GPIO connectors for things other than LEDs, you should be aware that the voltage level is 1.8V, not 3.3V. That means you need a level converter if you're going to 'talk' to 3.3V or 5V electronics.

 

In the beginning, I'll use the boards with Armbian.

Then I'll move to pfSense.

If/when pfSense one day runs on MacchiatoBIN, the EspressoBIN will be assigned another task (there are plenty of jobs to choose from, including servers and NAS).

At some point, I hope to use one of the boards with HaProxy to load-balance a MiQi build-farm (it'll take quite a while before I get there, though).

Some day, a second MacchiatoBIN will likely take over the EspressoBIN's build-farm.

 

Conclusion: The board should be well-suited for both network and storage, the speeds would exceed most other boards in the same price range regarding this.

On the other side, the CPU is a dual core CPU running at 1.2GHz, so it's little likely that it will be as quick for compiling as most of the other boards.

 

When I move from CubieBoard2, I should see the following improvements:

• 32bit CPU  -->  64bit CPU (slight speed increase)
• 1GHz dual core CPU  -->  1.2 GHz dual core CPU (speed increase)
• SATA-via-USB  -->  CPU-native SATA (noticable speed increase)
• 100Mbit Ethernet  -->  2.5Gbit Ethernet, link aggregation (noticable speed increase)
• HDMI output  <--  no display (I use SSH anyway)
• 1GB DDR3 RAM --> 2GB DDR3 RAM (in the end: speed increase)
• 2 x USB2 -> 1 x USB3 + 1 x USB2 (speed increase on some external devices, more available accessories)

 

Now I'm just waiting for the boards to arrive.

[Jens Bauer]

The two boards arrived on February 13th, both in good and fully working condition.

So far, I've tested buildroot and ubuntu 16.04.4 on SD-card; I've installed a bootable ubuntu 16.04.4 on a 3.5" SATA drive; also working as expected.

 

I haven't gotten Armbian's Ubuntu working yet, but I'm pretty sure I'll get there too.

 

So far, it's been the easiest board I've tried; it's documented well enough to solve the few issues I had (eg. mainly how to boot from SATA).

I certainly felt like an expert because everything went so smooth.

This is actually the first time I installed Linux on a new platform without having any real issues.

I did wear out one micro-SD card while attempting to write the Armbian Ubuntu image from my Mac, but that's not an issue related to Linux; it's simply because the Medion card served its purpose. I've ordered some cheap-o-china 8GB cards that I won't be afraid of wearing out quickly - I'll use them for SATA-install anyway.

 

I'm quite satisfied with (and fond of) the boards so far.

There are still plenty of things I'd like to try out, but unfortunately I'll have to wait until I have enough money to do so.

 

Would I recommend this board to others ?

Definitely. If you have experience with other Single Board Computers, then you'd get this one up and running quickly.

If you haven't tried any SBCs before, then this board is not the worst you could start with, though I think I would recommend trying out a very low-cost board first (in order to get some cheap training); such as a Nano-something-Pi - or perhaps the 1GB variant of the EspressoBIN and install the pre-built EspressoBIN Ubuntu (until Armbian's Ubuntu moves out of 'Work in Progress').

[Igor]

25 minutes ago, Jens Bauer said:

until Armbian's Ubuntu moves out of 'Work in Progress

Armbian Ubuntu is already in a better state than official one  In a much better state. The problem is this.