It is official! The Raspberry Pi 5 is being released October 2023! (Official product page) I expect it will be some time before I can get my hands on one. Until then I will need to compare specifications. Lets take a look at the RPI5 and the Rock 5B. NOTE: This article will compare the…
OrangePi 5 – Testing with sbc_gpio
After a lot of success with the Radxa Rock 5B, I saw that Orange Pi was offering several different boards using the same Rockchip RK3588 or RK3588S chips. I decided to pick up the Orange Pi 5 that uses the RK3588S so I could check out the differences between the RK3588 and RK3588S. Also, since…
Bigtreetech CB1
I picked up the Bigtreetech CB1 (CM4 compatible) along with their Pi4B adapter (base for the CB1 or the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4) for a stellar price. They are currently selling the CB1 module with the Pi4B for $36.98. Even though it only has 1GB of RAM, I figured it was worth a shot…
Atomic Pi Pros, but mostly Cons
I purchased the Atomic Pi at a stellar price. Currently you can still get it for $50 at Amazon with the camera and breakout board. An incredible price for an x86_64 SBC! The Atomic Pi does have some Pros, but mostly cons. I’ll walk through what I found here. Scoring and Specs Here is a…
sbc_gpio: Pi 4B vs Rock 5B
One of my goals over the past couple of years has been to find a suitable replacement for the Raspberry Pi 4B as supplies have been low and costs have been high. During the past couple of years, I’ve purchased several different boards to test out. Now that I have a GPIO abstraction layer and…
Radxa Rock 5B Setup for sbc_gpio
If you are looking for the results of the sbc_gpio tests, please check out our sbc_gpio Pi 4B vs Rock 5B comparison. Configuring the Radxa Rock 5B for our sbc_gpio test require 1x I2C, 2x SPI, 1x UART and 2x IR (1 Tx and 1 Rx). All the configuration will need to be done directly in the /boot/config.txt file….
ZRAM for your SBC
One issue that I have seen crop up multiple times on different SBC’s is memory and swap. I have seen many SBC’s out out of the box that come with no swap space enabled. For systems with no GUI running a single task, this rarely turns into an issue. For larger systems running a GUI…
Raspberry Pi 4B Setup for sbc_gpio
If you are looking for the results of the sbc_gpio tests, please check out our sbc_gpio Pi 4B vs Rock 5B comparison. Configuring the sbc_gpio for the Raspberry Pi 4B test requires 1x I2C, 2x SPI, 1x UART and 2x IR (1 Tx and 1 Rx). All the configuration can be done directly in the…
Python bmx280_spi
While working on my SBC comparison, in addition to building a new library to read DHT11/DHT22 sensors using the SPI bus, I had a hard time finding a working library to read BMP280/BME280 sensors using the SPI bus. Most of the libraries utilized I2C, which in normal situations would be fine. For this set of…
Python dht11_spi
I am currently working on a project to compare different SBC devices and compare the functionality to the gold standard, the Raspberry Pi 4B. Rather than just comparing specs, I am endeavoring to compare the GPIO functionality and support within Python. As a part of this comparison testing a grabbed a trusty old DHT11 and…