SBC choice

[geckow]

Hello!

Firstly, I would like to thank the Armbian devs for their awesome work, without it a lot of my boards would have such a poor support...

I am currently doing a school project which involves embedded pentesting, using a drone. I am looking for:

• the cheapest (we have a limited budget)
• the most powerful (to use some tools such as password cracking)
• the most energy efficient (it will running on powerbank/batteries)
• the lightest and the smallest (to be embedded in a drone)
• it has to have full size USB ports/OTG/headers (to connect an external powerful WiFi adapter)
• and if possible, has to have WiFi embedded (we might control the drone (which is controlled by WiFi) using the board later), maybe bluetooth and have serial connection (to connect an XBee module (or other?) for long range communication)

I thought about using a RPi Zero W, but its single core CPU made me re-think my decision... Then I thought about H2+/H3/H5 boards and I have chosen the Orange Pi Zero/Zero Plus/Zero Plus 2 and the NanoPi NEO Air/Duo, some even have onboard storage.

A video output is not required at all, it will even be disabled because it will operate headless (and same thing for Ethernet and audio).

 

In your opinion, what would be the best choice? Do you know other boards? And since I am in Europe, do you know a reseller here to get the boards quickly?

 

Thank you very much!

[TonyMac32]

Nanopi neo or duo for the absolute lightest weight and possibly lowest power consumption.  I don't have a lot of good data compiled on the Amlogic chips and power consumption, but the Le Potato, NanoPi K2 or Odroid C2 may fit the bill as well, and are 64 bit with a couple additional goodies for improved performance.  

[geckow]

Do you know where I could order these NanoPi boards in Europe?

And I don't know well Amlogic chips, do you know how well they are supported? They look a bit more expensive, and the boards you listed have a similar form-factor than the RPi B models (I have found the Odroid C0 which might be smaller and lighter).

[chwe]

13 hours ago, geckow said:

and if possible, has to have WiFi embedded (we might control the drone (which is controlled by WiFi) using the board later),

so better don't use the built in wifi from the nanopi duo..  As soon as it comes to control drones I suggest that you do this independent from your hacker tool.. Guess what happens if your SoC is busy from penetrating a network while you need to control your drone? 

 

For flight control I would stick with the 2.4GHz stuff made for drones.. First, it works well over long range (or at least at the specified range) and second the overhead for control commands is a way smaller than with normal wifi.

If this needs to be done on the same SoC, it might be worth to look for the small beagle bones (pocket or so) which are RT capable and some project for drone projects are available in opensource (but it is a single core SoC and probably not that powerful for the wifi penetrating stuff you want to achieve)

[geckow]

The drone we will be using is a Parrot AR.Drone 2.0, which comes with WiFi, I agree that 2.4GHz flight control systems are much better!

I think we will try to make the drone land and take off automatically to increase flight time (if we have spare time) 

Don't you think we could stop the network penetration (or put it to sleep) while we control the drone?

We already have some BeagleBones Black laying around, but I have no idea how well it would suit for our situation!

 

I also thought, why not using a stripped down RPi 3B/B+, with disabled HDMI/Ethernet? It would be powerful enough and a bit lighter : 

Spoiler

 

 

[chwe]

1 hour ago, geckow said:

Don't you think we could stop the network penetration (or put it to sleep) while we control the drone?

Probably... But my background is chemistry, or to be a bit more precise I did scale up from small to big.. And things you think about there is: What happens when...? 

• your wifi stuff ends in a locked kernel, kernel panic what ever..
• the RT capabilities aren't that good as you though and some stuff which keeps the drone in an automatic flight mode doesn't work properly
• your FS is somehow corrupted and your SBC is for whatever reason not longer accessible during flight.

To penetrate WiFi you have to flight over other peoples home (the legal aspect of your project is another field which I don't answer cause I've no idea what is okay and where it gets problematic) but I'm sure you get a bunch of problems when your drone hits somebody and the legal authorities figured out that this happened cause your drone was in an auto-flight mode with a setup which wasn't appropriate. 

Legal authorities are a bit picky about drones in those days, and you shouldn't gave them a reason that your drone project to make it harder for the 'good guys' developing fancy and nice stuff for drones.  

 

I would use the SBC on your drone only for collecting telemetric data not needed for a proper flight and your WiFi stuff you want achieve and stick to a flight control which is known that it works well. For sure a more conservative approach, but when it comes to fly over other peoples home safety should be adressed first over the other goals of the project. You wan't be one of this guys:

https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/13/7205741/i-almost-killed-someone-with-a-drone

 

1 hour ago, geckow said:

I also thought, why not using a stripped down RPi 3B/B+, with disabled HDMI/Ethernet? It would be powerful enough and a bit lighter : 

In terms of performance (for the network penetrating stuff), I think a cheap H3/H5 board will perform similar or even better.. And if you buy one with a decent onboard wifi, you're able to connect external antennas so you might no need a second wifi attached to it. Maybe a BPi m2-zero? the built in wifi (AP6212) is for sure better than the Xradio stuff on OPi0 (the 'original' not OPi0plus etc. they change wifi chips quite often...  ) or NanoPi Duo, but the board has no official Armbian support and needs some tweaks to get it boot... Whereas boards with a pmic developed for tablets (e.g. often on A64 boards populated) would make sense cause you'll power your board from battery (but I've no clue how good the software side for such boards is, and which board has a known working battery powered possibility)..

 

btw. the 'new' small beagle (PocketBeagle):

[geckow]

Thank you for your answer! You're totally right, auto pilot is not a so great idea (at least at this stage of the project), and a lot of things regarding security should be considered. It can become really dangerous if it is not under our control and something goes wrong.

 

The problem with onboard wifis is that there is often no way to put the adapter in "Monitor mode" and they don't support "packet injection" which is mandatory for wifi pentesting 

Instead, I think I will use an Alfa 1000/2000mW adapter, it should be able to scan and penetrate wifis further away and supports it!

BananaPi M2 Zero was also on my list, but because of its poor support (no Armbian and the lack of information about its power consumption) I removed it...

Also, I haven't found any A64 board with a small form factor, but this would be a good alternative, sure!

And the PocketBeagle is the same as the BeagleBone Black right? The main issue, like the RPi Zero is its single core cpu, I have to make tests but I think a quad core cpu will perform much better for what we want to do!

[yam1]

I would suggest looking into neo core 256mb/4gb emmc as its wide open as far as connectivity goes - you add what you really need. I would recommend against wifi and instead use nrf for control. Here is my simple nrf hand held control, one or two joy sticks.