Replace Odroid C2 for pi hole and plex

[r3dl4nce]

Hi

I actually have an old Odroid C2 with Armbian and it's running quite good for pi hole and plex streaming (usb attached hdd) 

I'd like to replace the board with a new SBC but I can't seem to find the right one for me. 

I need

- armbian good support

- 2+GB ram

- fast cpu 

- Gigabit Ethernet 

- eMMC support could be nice for fast OS

- it will run headless

- docker support 

- USB 3 support could be nice, otherwise USB 2 is ok

 

I think it's all. There are a lot of SBC manufacturer and models (orange pi, banana pi, Raspberry pi, nano pi,...) and I can't really understand what is better for me

 

Thanks 

 

 

[TonyMac32]

So, the Odroid-C2 is still a very relevant piece of hardware, I'm not sure if you're going to get a (significant) performance boost by moving to another board today.  For USB3 you have a very small group of SBC's including the ODROID XU4/HC1/HC2, and the Rock64 that have decent support.  (I'm not 100% on the newest Allwinner stuff, it's a weak spot in my portfolio) 

 

Odroid XU4 family (like HC1):

• 32-bit 8-core HMP (4 fast and 4 slow cores)
• 2 GB RAM (LPDDR3)
• USB3 (HC1 trades USB3 external with a USB->SATA adapter)
• Gigabit Ethernet
• eMMC available

Rock64:

• Same basic speed as C2, design-wise (64-bit quad-core a53)
• up to 4 GB RAM
• USB3
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Available eMMC
• Pi Form Factor (like the C2)

Some boards on the horizon should be quite a bit more powerful, but they're still either in very early release or as yet unavailable.  For what it's worth I run my Plex server on an XU4, it can transcode a stream at a time in software when necessary.  With @JMCC's work on multimedia things, I am going to give Emby a try, as I can use a custom ffmpeg with it, unlike Plex where it's "stuck" at whatever they have compiled (Indeed IIRC there was some debate about their compliance with FOSS licensing early on).

[r3dl4nce]

The problem with my actual Odroid is that probably it has some hardware defect. I was originally using it with android as media center and I replaced it because at random it froze. I then replaced the OS (it's running Armbian now), installed on a new SD card (android was on eMMC) and still sometimes it freezes. I'm powering it with its power adapter from Hardkernel (power plug, not usb). 

I was thinking about changing SBC and not buying again a new Odroid, on this forum it seems that Allwinner chips have the best support, so I think I'd like to buy some SBC with good specs and good support.

OrangePi or BananaPi maybe?

Thanks

[JMCC]

I think the best option right now is Odroid HC1/HC2. You'll get the powerful CPU of XU4 with a slick metal frame to hold the external storage, that will also act as an incredibly efficient heatsink (if you put a slow big fan blowing on it, e.g. a laptop cooling pad, you'll have almost no CPU throttling). The integrated USB3-SATA bridge is very fast, and SATA connection is very reliable power-wise (you can forget about powering issues).

 

If you decide to use Emby instead of Plex, the SoC also supports H264 hardware encoding through v4l2 MFC, though I haven't tested it yet. I only tested it for decoding, and it does take quite a bit of load off the CPU. [UPDATE: Tested FFmpeg HW encoding and working, hope to release a media script with it soon. Though, I haven't tested with Emby specifically].

 

As Tony said, if you wait a few months you may get some more interesting options, with more RAM and 64-bit architecture. Hardkernel is pretty good at giving software support to their products, so I am sure the N1 will be well taken care of in that aspect. However, it will be way more expensive than HC1, and you can't have it now. Maybe it is worth spending $49 now in a HC1, and getting some newer board in a year or so.

Edited May 28, 2018 by JMCC

[tkaiser]

8 hours ago, r3dl4nce said:

I'm powering it with its power adapter from Hardkernel (power plug, not usb)

 

All PSUs eventually die so if this power adapter is already a few years old most probably it's the culprit. Wrt your requirements any board (even an el cheapo Orange Pi Zero or a NanoPi NEO) will do. Pi Hole has zero hardware requirements, Plex Media Server the same if transcoding is not needed. Depending on the count of Docker containers you need a sufficient amount of DRAM though.

30 minutes ago, JMCC said:

you can forget about powering issues

Not entirely: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/6171-odroid-hc1-sata-disk-switches-between-sda-and-sdb/

 

31 minutes ago, JMCC said:

I am sure the N1 will be well taken care of in that aspect

 

Another possibility is the N1 never happening since too expensive.

[Igor_K]

Disclaimer: I have no real experience with Le Potato /AML-S905X-CC.  However, it is in my wishlist. 

 

It can be an option probably. 
2Gb RAM (x)

eMMC (x)
Armbian (x) 
4k (x)

 

Again I can be wrong, I've got no real experience with this board. 

[r3dl4nce]

I'm replying very late but I had to do a lot of tests and to be sure. 

Actually, after a lot of re-installations of Armbian on my Odroid C2, it seems now it's working without hanging up. 

It's been 2 weeks without the need to power cycle. 

I installed Armbian on SD card, then moved installation on eMMC with armbian-config, then formatted the SD card and now I'm using that as docker root, in fact I'm running pi hole and emby (switched to it from plex) as docker containers. 

If it's keep on being stable, I won't change it. Even if I don't know why it was so unstable. 

 

Thanks for all the advices. 

[manuti]

The NanoPi K1 Plus:

 

[  ] armbian good support - not yet

[x] 2+GB ram - yes

[x] fast cpu - yes and 64bits

[x] Gigabit Ethernet - yes

[x] eMMC support could be nice for fast OS - yes

[x] it will run headless - yes 

[  ]- docker support - yes when armbiam come

[  ]- USB 3 support could be nice, otherwise USB 2 is ok - USB2.0