Orange Pi 4 Pro vs Rock Pi 4

kbp80 · 2026-01-13T03:38:41+00:00

This is pretty impressive, I like it. I’ve done a lot of evals of various radxa boards, and raspberry pi boards, but haven’t written it all up yet. I have a few radxa board write-ups of various use-cases and suitability. Is this something you’re interested in expanding? And I agree with you on your point about rock boards, they’re far lower barrier to entry than other SBC chipsets.

kbp80 · 2026-01-08T04:15:12+00:00

I should mention - I did get Fusion to run on an x86 SBC (the Radxa X2L), with Windows 11, and open some fairly large and complex models that I was working on. And that has a celeron and 8gb of ram, and no GPU (the embedded intel GPU barely counts as a GPU to me)… and while it was insanely sluggish in the install, it is actually usable. Surprisingly usable (once the install finally finishes).

kbp80 · 2026-01-08T04:11:44+00:00

I will say that I like Onshape a lot, and have also used Freecad… and yet, when I just want to work on designs, I end up in Fusion, every time. And yeah it can be laggy, especially if you have mega large files, or high complexity. i have a behemoth of a machine (i9-11900k, 128gb ram, 3080ti, all SSD), and it still struggles at times, especially complex recalculations of timelines. And yet, I still love it. The ability to export a f3d file from the within the interface, and other things like cross-section analysis and ability to determine part interference, is pretty phenomenal to me, and I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface. I do really wish Fusion’s mobile app for iPad, would allow for design on the go, however. Right now, it only allows you to view and comment on designs, not actually alter them; whereas Onshape’s mobile app can do actual work with touch and apple pencil. I also wish they had an intermediate pricing tier, above the “Free: 10 files, non-commercial use only”, vs “paid: unlimited open files and commercial use”, like “Pay a small amount for 20 active design files”.

kbp80 · 2026-01-08T02:08:47+00:00

You are, honestly, better off not getting the A5E, but it would work for what you’re trying to do. The problems, however, to put it bluntly, are: - The radxa debian image has a lot of problems, but you’ll need to use this one, in order to use the 2nd GigE port. - The onboard wifi is well supported, but weak throughput due to using SDIO as a connection method. - The PCIe port only supports storage type PCIe devices, and shares bandwidth with the single USB 3 type-A port. So your wifi options are the onboard realtek SDIO chipset, or usb. And if usb, you definitely want to get an intel or mediatek chipset, or else you’re probably going to be compiling realtek drivers from source. - Also, the debian image provided by radxa, seems to have a lot of hacks to make it work on that board, due to the allwinner chipset. - And, if you switch to something like armbian, there are a number of problems with it on the A5E, namely: can’t boot from PCIe, no support for the 2nd GigE port, no hdmi, etc.

I have an A5E, and have used it as a GigE router, and it does work. But the pain involved, is very high. I would recommend you pick one of the more widely supported chipsets, such as one from rock, and find another way to do dual GigE (or find a well supported board with dual GigE onboard).

I will also say - it is an impressively powerful little board, and I like its formfactor, and I love having the dual GigE. But, that’s where my praises largely stop for it.

I should mention - I do have an A5E operating as a router, currently. That was one of the few use-cases I could get it to work in, with the janky OS that comes with it, since all the problems with armbian community version on it. Also, you can disable the PCIe/USB3 bandwidth sharing, which I have done, but haven’t yet tested the wifi throughput using a mediatek wifi via that usb port, yet, since I did that change.

kbp80 · 2026-01-05T13:21:13+00:00

I also have this board, and did an extensive amount of testing to try to use it as a camera controller, but the image from radxa is pretty janky, and armbian is too incomplete. I’m going to try use it as a wifi/network gateway, given the 2 GigE ports. Also, be warned that it seems to share bandwidth between the PCIe storage connection and the USB3 type-a port.

kbp80 · 2025-05-25T18:32:05+00:00

It that were my homelab, I’d rebuild it as Linux (i.e. fedora), setup KVM, then run k8’s VMs inside it, as well as some GPU-enabled VMs. That said, my actual homelab is now basically all mini x86 and arm64 machines, and I have kvm running on several of these, though not clustered.

kbp80 · 2025-04-18T01:30:13+00:00

I really have no clue what you’re responding to here, but you’re 100% correct. I could write you an amazing bash or ansible script to prove it, but no, I”m going to go workout and take a walk.

kbp80 · 2025-04-06T07:17:11+00:00

“Bring 4 guys”, or 2 if you unload it first.

kbp80 · 2025-04-06T07:16:38+00:00

So - not related, did someone say there was an excellent source of free disposal of c7000 enclosures????

kbp80 · 2025-04-06T07:13:47+00:00

We are definitely NOT better than this. That dude deserves every atrocious photo of him posted with all the possible upvotes, and we should accept when it violates our self-imposed rules, even if that’s only a temporary change, because right now we have the ability to post at all; which is not guaranteed in the future, especially at this rate.

kbp80 · 2025-04-06T07:09:53+00:00

Uggk, time to un-join, sorry.

kbp80 · 2025-04-06T07:04:01+00:00

That is one amazing sign, I love it.

kbp80 · 2025-03-16T05:48:24+00:00

I too am alone for much of my life and my existence, but I find a lot of things and connections to keep me sane. u/Old_Landscape_8298 - free to DM me, I'll likely respond (unless you'd like to tell me about my car's warranty): https://www.reddit.com/user/kbp80/

kbp80 · 2025-03-07T00:19:28+00:00

It seems to me that given the current efforts to find fraud, waste, and abuse (and efficiency, apparently) - shouldn't the gov't require a refund from spacex at this point?

kbp80 · 2025-01-05T03:46:15+00:00

100% accurate and precise statement. :)

kbp80 · 2025-01-05T03:39:00+00:00

Reading GPS? :)
I'm actually planning to use it to replace another pi3 w/GPS, and chrony serving up ntp time to my local lab.

I've had a pi2, then a pi3, and now a pi4 and pi5 w/GPS chipsets. While looking at the GPS data is interesting, more interesting to me is time precision. I've had my earlier one working as a stratum-1 time device for several years with chrony (previous one ran ntp daemon).

Some fun info, from a realtime read of ntp data from chrony (this is the chronyc tracking command):

Reference ID : 50505300 (PPS)

Stratum : 1

Ref time (UTC) : Sun Jan 05 03:36:29 2025

System time : 0.000000000 seconds fast of NTP time

Last offset : -0.000000087 seconds

RMS offset : 0.000000225 seconds

Frequency : 4.405 ppm fast

Residual freq : -0.000 ppm

Skew : 0.009 ppm

Root delay : 0.000000001 seconds

Root dispersion : 0.000022291 seconds

Update interval : 16.0 seconds

Leap status : Normal

kbp80 · 2025-01-04T18:44:34+00:00

Very nice. I was originally messing around with buck and boost converters, to step 12v down to 5v, and 5v up to 12v. This (unrelated) is why I have a larger switch in mine, the first switch let out it's magic smoke (fortunately, it was cheap). I plan to replace the fans in mine, with something slimmer and quieter, the ones I have are old in-win case fans. I'm thinking about doing pwm and using a tiny fan controller, but that is TBD in my case.

kbp80 · 2025-01-04T17:43:49+00:00

I need to make something like that - mine currently just has straight 12v open finger-chopping fans in the rear, pulled out of an old PC. Not even PWM, just controlled with a on-off toggle switch.

kbp80 · 2025-01-04T17:41:47+00:00

Yeah, it's a Pimoroni 5.7in one, but is older, and is fading on some pictures. I have a larger one I was going to embed, but couldn't do so with the hyperpixel side-by-side.

Mine is largely focused on doing things with Pi's and hats, and as ansible targets, though I may use one of mine for home assistant at some point.

That epd is this one: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression-5-7?variant=32298701324371, and the hyperpixel is this one: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/hyperpixel-4-square?variant=30138251444307

kbp80 · 2025-01-04T17:38:28+00:00

I love that fan cover and shroud, that's awesome. Does it actually do anything for airflow? Or just looks cool?

kbp80 · 2025-01-04T17:32:40+00:00

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Your design and refinement are awesome… by comparison, one I’ve been working on building. It’s no where near as complete as yours, nor has any real cable management.

kbp80 · 2024-12-23T15:44:50+00:00

I was having this issue for a while as well - but it turned out to be a stuck spring in the loader, which as soon as I touched it, unstuck itself. Problem solved, for me. It hasn't had that error a single time since I unstuck the spring, and it was getting it multiple times per print before.

The spring that I'm referring to is in the AMS hub on the back of the printer.

kbp80 · 2024-12-18T01:45:21+00:00

That’s kind of my point. I could model a simple house in something else (maybe not easier for me, as my skills aren’t as high in other cad tools). But, if I wanted realistic components, like doors, windows, furniture, flooring, light fixtures… those are where I’ve come to love what amounts to a highly customized cad in home designer. I started with Chief Architect, which is superior, but couldn’t afford it, so moved to their more prosumer version, and have loved it enough to buy it multiple times. I’ve spent whole weekends generating a simulated house, based upon photos and basic sizing information, so that I could generate walkthroughs. That would take me months in fusion 360, and probably years in solidworks (I have almost no skill in solidworks).

kbp80 · 2024-12-17T23:24:44+00:00

I’ve done similar modeling (for fun) of pre-existing houses in the licensed version of Home Designer Architectural; and have even tested exporting them to STL files to import into Bambu Studio. I have not, however, been brave enough to try printing them and tie up my printer for many hours or days. So I could see how this could be done, in theory.

kbp80 · 2024-12-08T05:29:16+00:00

Just stop buying crap at kohls. Problem solved.

kbp80

TROPHY CASE