Radxa Zero 3W

[@carlosalbertoperalta1080]

Great video, I think that the Zero versions of RPi, Orange, Banana and this one are keeping alive the original spirit of the RPi ; low power-low performance-high amounts of fun!

[@betag24cn]

these things are not low performance, the first ones were, this thing is almost a daily driver

[@shivanSpS]

@@betag24cn No, A53 and A55 are far too slow for that. They can do a decent job for a few things, but they really cant be used as a daily driver, not even the RPI4 qualifies, and thats a quad A72. That said, we need to pay attention this year as Allwinner have a few new socs coming our way, including a 2xA76+6xA55 and a 2xA78+6xA55, if they are priced right we could have some very interesting SBC coming up.

[@aliasgharkhoyee9501]

​@@shivanSpS I think that's why he said 'almost'

[@betag24cn]

@@shivanSpS a53 is what i had in my smartphone and i could run alot under android, a55 us even better, i thing you have not used those cores extensively so you say that

[@shivanSpS]

@@betag24cn In fact i have a RPI3, a RPI4(i had), Orange PI Zero 2W, Orange PI 3B and a Orange PI 5A. And the A55s dont even come close to the desktop experience of a A76, even the A72 is a lot better. It is not a small difference it is night and day. That said, you can install android on them and it will run it well. But normally you dont want to run a full desktop OS on them.

[@stevemarshall5249]

I started working with computers in 1969 - you know, the ones that filled rooms, used punched-cards, etc etc etc. I still do a bit of software development, some for payment, some for my own tinkering projects. You'd think I should know better by age 74! It is totally insane that a thing like this, that will fit into a matchbox, can run a full operating system with a graphical UI. It's stuff like this that keeps me interested - great stuff, thanks for your videos.

[@techadsr]

Advancement in computer tech has been amazing since our time starting in '69. We've put our time in and now in retirement we have the time to play. Videos like this give us previews of worthwhile new "toys" to explore to see how far we can go with them. Makes me wonder if something like Proxmox would boot off SD and use the 32G of emmc.

[@Lurch-Bot]

It can do that but you really shouldn't be using this as a desktop PC. You really want its big brother for that application. This is more like, 'Ooh, look how sophisticated DIY microcontrollers have gotten'.

[@techadsr]

@@Lurch-Bot Purpose isn't a Desktop PC but rather to see how far one can take these small boards.

[@mx338]

The Radxa 3E is such a great version, I really prefer wired connections over wireless connections whenever possible.

[@Lurch-Bot]

I'm literally planning a wired security camera system as a backup to my Wifi ones for that very reason. I also want to put cameras in places I really don't want Amazon to see.

[@chrisschembari2486]

Aaahhh!! Thank you! When I first heard of a "Zero 3W" SBC, I assumed that the W might have something to do with the board consuming 3 watts of power. Now after watching 0:45 , I see that the W obviously indicates that it is a wireless model, contrasted with the 3E Ethernet model. It's so important to clarify one's terms that it actually makes one feel brighter. What a relief!

[@Aruneh]

As always with these, the problem is the software support. The PoE option does look very interesting though!

[@tonysheerness2427]

What is better a board that is available that frustrates you or one you can not get but if you manage to get one works.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@tonysheerness2427 All SBC boards originated as maker / hobbyist boards which put them in the realms of enthusiasts willing to put in time and effort to build the right software on them to get them to do many wonderful things - this is the main reason that they were designed around Linux because Linux has near-infinite customisation options also, if you know how to build it the way that you want it. The Pi Foundation released the RPi SBCs that were made to be used in both industrial and educational environments and managed to build an ecosystem with superb support for all users. The problem with that is that it made the RPi boards "the exception rather than the rule" because the level of support turned their boards into near-consumer level devices. That all got to a head during the pandemic when more people were no doubt doing more hobbies at home and there were manufacturing and shortage of supply of RPi boards. Hence the frustration you have now because supplies have still not returned to normal. However, I and many others, who are part of the maker and hobbyist communities do not have those same frustrations because we know how to do "a bit more DIY" with those non-RPi SBCs to make use of them as well as we would RPi boards - being able to use such boards meant we did not suffer the "frustrations" of supply shortages. It's also worthwhile remembering the migration of the "mindless masses" to Windows 11 has also resulted in lots of cheap used PC hardware being sold on your favourite auction sites - meaning that you can pick up a 3rd or 4th generation Core i5 or i7 SFF PC for the same price (or less) than an RPi, but offering more power. There is a cure to your "frustration" and that is to put in more time and effort yourself to being able to build and use other options than a RPi when it comes to creating computing solutions - be less reliant on "the exception to the rule" as your only possible solution.

[@valkaielod]

@@tonysheerness2427 Not available in the EU, so I'd say the Pi is still better :)

[@r.in.shibuya]

More specifically the problem is RADXA itself. They don’t make any money from you have working software… You already bought their hardware.

[@Dante-420]

​@@r.in.shibuyait's not Radxa's fault that Raspberry Pi has a monopoly on the SBC community

[@Pallidus_Rider]

Amazing technology - looking back at my Zenith 286 with 10MB hard drive and Enable office suite, makes me blush 😄

[@lesliedeana5142]

Thank you for going off the main path to find gems like this, and do your effective evaluations!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Greetings Leslie. :)

[@TooSlowTube]

@@ExplainingComputers ThePiHut have the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W in stock, without the header. SKU: SC1146

[@reinhardscherer2860]

to use sd-card only for booting and emmc for real os: - dd the sd-card to emmc, mount and fix emmc's /etc/fstab to emmc'c root, boot from sd-card, install os-prober, run it and reboot. then you can select either sd or emmc to run debian from when booting the sd-card

[@nerdegem]

I really love the Radxa boards; they really have the perfect mix of performance, price and availability. It's a shame that the software is usually somewhat half baked compared to a Pi.

[@garsonthedude]

@@WhiteG60 In some cases you don't need to use OEM provided OS image. For example, DietPi has very good support for a number of SBCs.

[@HungarianManbeast]

I have the radxa zero 2 and I love it, good to see that they can even improve on that design

[@ritmo1130]

So amazing to me to see that little board running a GUI OS, I wouldn't ask for more from that little guy. Think about how many projects can be achieved with it. Thanks Cris!!

[@judsonleach5248]

When I get paid Thursday I'm gonna buy my FIRST Ras Pi 5 ! - Super excited!!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Excellent. :)

[@jeffreyjoshuarollin9554]

As the proud and happy owner of a Raspberry Pi 400, I think you’re going to love it.

[@DrKnow65]

Good morning algorithm. Yes, more Explaining Computers please :)

[@An.Individual]

2:13 rpilocator is showing good availability of the Pi Zero 2W here in the UK

[@ExplainingComputers]

Great to hear! I stand corrected.

[@dank9561]

Can't find anywhere with the pre-soldered header though.

[@joseph9915]

Yea rapid has 278 in stock and cpc has 329, Pi Hut etc has stock, but I couldn't see where they list stock amounts pimoroni & others also have the ones with headers. If you want the older Zero W digikey as an example has around 3k stock.

[@sidneysmith4622]

It's pretty good stock at the closest microcenter to me too. Let my brother use one for his 3d printer and walked in and bought another next day.

[@knerduno5942]

After seeing this video, I would rather have this.

[@giannistsolebas6962]

SBCs have gone wild these days, for a simple desktop user is absolutely worth owning one of those than a low end PC. Radxa made a very solid piece of material right there!

[@JohnDunne001]

I'm waiting for the 1M subscriber's party!!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Getting closer!

[@williamhorton9763]

It really should be 1B by now.

[@JohnDunne001]

​@@williamhorton9763 Less than 12K to go... nail biting!! :D Well deserved and very pleased to see EC so close to the milestone!

[@shivanSpS]

Hi Cris, for the Orange PI Zero 2W remember that the GPU is not enabled by default but it can be enabled in the "orangepi-config" menu that Orange PI includes in their OS. Altrought tbh i like the Orange PI Zero 3 more, it is almost at the same price but includes Gigabit Ethernet... The good thing about this radxa version, the RK3566 is by far better supported than the H618. And the WIFI chip on the Zero2 W seems to have a few issues (it is the same wifi chip used in the Orange Pi3B)

[@sean_vikoren]

I have become so addicted to your uniqe transitions. Well played.

[@jonass1285]

I love your channel! May it be for updates about what's new in the SBC world, useful software tools, or explanations about the technical workings of information technology. Keep up the great work and your unique, professional and calm video style!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks. :)

[@edwardjoyner9344]

Haven't commented in a while, but needless to say I enjoy the weekly video as always.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Greetings!

[@privacyvalued4134]

The sick burn that came out of nowhere on the availability of the Pi Zero was brilliantly epic. I had a good chuckle.

[@lawrenceallwright7041]

No tools required, although nice to see Mr Screwdriver still makes himself useful as a pointer. CB finally admitting defeat with his huge fingers trying to point out tinier and tinier and tinier features on a board!

[@phrankus2009]

Thanks for being you, Chris.

[@litebkt]

I look forward to your videos, Chris. Thank you.

[@johndroyson7921]

Thank you for the informative video. These interesting hardware reviews are a real treat.

[@ArefinKarim]

I am slowly getting fan of these SBCs.

[@retrotony4119]

This is a board I will check out. I just bought a raspberry pi zero 2 w from Adafruit. They were in stock as of last week from that site, however as of the time I’m posting this they are out again.

[@jaffarbh]

It's impressive how a little 3w chip could play a FHD video "almost" perfectly. Once upon a time, you had to have a beefy workstation to do that.

[@alanthornton3530]

Thanks Chris for an interesting video, I liked the screwdriver used as a pointer! It's a shame Radxa didn't provide a 'Boot loader' to run the image from the eMMC, hopefully they'll watch this & sort one out for you. :)

[@KameraShy]

Hopefully an update if and when they do.

[@legojenn]

Thank you for demonstrating the 3W. I'm glad to see these devices run like general-purpose computers albeit turtle-slowly. As you mentioned, owners will likely not use the device that way. It just means that the device will be more likely work for what the owner intends. In the spirit of moving the goalposts, I would also love to see more distros and operating systems which will allow for more customisability, but that's a big ask of individuals who are sharing their labour and companies operating on low profit margins. I wish that I had a problem that the 3W could resolve because it seems like a nifty little gadget.

[@RoboNuggie]

Interesting little machine, and the future plans with it's variants is a great idea if they come to fruition... Thank you Chris!

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thanks for your support. :)

[@philspencelayh5464]

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.A lot of these things remind me of a Libre Tritium I bought on a kickstarter, promising to outdo a pi in every way. It eventually turned up, looking like a pi and after much struggling I managed to get it to run an operating system. By then it had run out of puff and getting it to do anything useful was impossible. Since then I've stuck to Arduino and Pi.

[@paulmilligan3007]

I'm watching the video for the third time because, strangely, I find the fact that you had to do some work to get it working more exciting than just working out of the 'box'. I also like the fact it has USB 3 vs Pi Zero 2 W having USB 2. It's a board just to have fun with, to prove that £20 buys a seriously working computer. The Pi 5 is almost boring, because it just does everything you ask of it. Please keep up being so enthusiastic, it encourages us experimenters to just enjoy playing with sub $/£ 50 hardware.

[@edwardharding5677]

The eMMC speed looked very fast indeed! It would be interesting to see what it is like to run a desktop OS when it is working.

[@markconger8049]

It is possible to do it with a workaround. I commented about it but the basic idea is boot from SD then chroot to the eMMC where you’d have the operating system. The only drawback is the SD card must remain for reboots. But otherwise the card is unused.

[@MrOlegBoldyrev]

Raspberry Pi Zero 2w are offered on Aliexpress.

[@joeg3950]

Thank you for another video with solid content and smooth production

[@Grant_S_M]

Sunday mornings are great. EC and coffee before the sun comes up in western Canada. Good morning, Chris!

[@fxsrider]

Amazing how capable those small boards are!

[@rustyholt6619]

wow and it came with a clear case ,,, some holes required

[@nicolasfritzges4013]

the bootloader should be inside the image you wrote in the sdcard. if the sdcard has a boot partition you can dump it to a file and flash it, not sure, but it may work

[@Praxibetel-Ix]

What a good little SBC! It is a shame about the attempts to get an OS to run from the eMMC flash storage failing though. Still a good board regardless and a great review. :)

[@m8hackr60]

Agreed. First, great review! Radxa boards, in my experience, have had issues with the bootloader and is often very challenging to get it to boot up from the desired storage... Even when there's only one option for the board. On my Rock 5b I have to leave the mSD card in for it to boot up from the NVME storage. Minor complaint given the power of the board, but nonetheless can be frustrating.

[@alanthornton3530]

I hope you're keeping OK & having a good day? I noticed a few avatars with baboon size arses at the beginning of the comments :(

[@Praxibetel-Ix]

@@alanthornton3530 Good morning from my corner of the galaxy! It seems the spam bots have invited themselves to the comments again this week. The least they could do is put some pants on! I'm sure they'll get booted out. Anyway, I hope that you're doing okay too! :3

[@alanthornton3530]

I'm keeping fine this side of the planet, just waiting for the Vogons to finish that bloody bypass, they're so bad tempered I put it down to their poetry :)@@Praxibetel-Ix

[@ArmSoM]

Wow!Great post,absolutely amazing!you always have such a unique perspective on SBC

[@crayzeape2230]

Someone posted a eMMC flashing workaround on the forum. -------- I have found a workaround that allows me to flash the eMMC via an alternative route with reasonable effort: 1. Flash linux image onto SD card 2. Boot Radxa Zero 3W from SD card 3. Configure network 4. Copy image to Radxa Zero 3W via SSH 5. Flash image to eMMC using dd command: $ sudo dd if= of=/dev/mmcblk0 Afterwards you can remove the SD card and the Radxa Zero 3 should boot from eMMC. --------

[@ExplainingComputers]

This is helpful. I will try this, thanks. :)

[@massimomeli5960]

Great video as always. I love this board, but we need a touchscreen MIPI connector, to make a device like a Tablet.

[@cashmoney2493]

Very well done once again! I always love your SBC review videos! Can't wait to see the Orange Pi review!!

[@mikefarrington7141]

Great video as always Chris. Though, I was disappointed that you didn't run any CPU benchmarks (like your prime number stuff). Maybe when you publish the Orange Pi Zero 2W you can compare them along with the Raspberry Pi Zero and a full-sized Raspberry Pi 4 for comparison's sake.

[@montecorbit8280]

At 1:44 No tools required.... But we miss Stanley the Knife!!....and Mr Scissors!!!!

[@lucasbrown7338]

I think the Mediatek chipset is quite interesting one in terms of the performance and also involves a great update for the technology usage.

[@mamawau]

Would be nice to see a simple Pihole setup on this device that is just powered by the router and controlled via SSH.

[@uki352]

I once in a while chat with Tom and years ago, when he sold his Cubie-Board company and founded Radxa, he told me that you do not need to break your tongue to spell the name. It is just "Radix a" so the base of vector a. Keeping in mind he sold his company to the co-founders and starting a new company, he probably wanted to go back to some basics. And watching his developments, he seems pretty successful in doing so. I myself had been involved a lot with early RK ARM SOCs but at times, when we had to fiddle out the devices from the VHDL code as no datasheet was ever available. But some things never change and the heavily botched uboot bootloader, the totally messed around first stage loader, that all seems to be persistent till today. I guess I buy one of these and check my skills again. Really waiting for the Ethernet-PoE version.

[@betag24cn]

we are almost at a point wherr we can use a tiny sbc like this on as daily driver, it is mind blowing i think

[@ExplainingComputers]

Agreed.

[@hankhulator5007]

Hi Christopher, next step a Beowulf cluster with 250 of this SBC !😋 Nice piece of hardware (although a power consumption test would also be welcome) with many possibilities :)

[@MicrobyteAlan]

Interesting new board. Good episode, Thanks.

[@johnhunt1725]

I would like to see KZbin at 720p on this device. Personally, I think you should find the resolution that does not drop frames on these devices, as I do not think 1080p looks much better to my eye than 720p. I usually watch at 480p due to bandwidth limitations, and I think that still looks pretty good. Granted I come from the old school broadcast TV generation, so....

[@ExplainingComputers]

I am in much agreement with this. I generally watch streaming content in 720p, as from a standard lean-back distance, my eyes cannot tell the difference, even on a large screen. Resolution is often overkill.

[@kevingallineauii9353]

I have a Zero 2 W but this seems to be a viable canidiate, especially if the MMC can be fixed and MIPI connector works like the Pi 2 Zero W. I use these for running my 3D printer.

[@markconger8049]

There is a way to run the OS from eMMC. Better speed would result. You need to do the intial boot from SD and then chroot to the eMMC. It’s somewhat complex to do it but it can be scripted so it is automatic. Yeah, you have to leave the SD card in but it only gets used on initial startup then it’s dormant.

[@igfoobar]

On machines which can only boot from sdcard, my favourite trick was to leave /boot on sdcard and move the root FS to "good" storage.

[@JazzTechie]

Geniatech makes the XPI-3566 zero which is also an RK3566 zero form factor SBC… except it has NO sd card slot.

[@andrewwoods456]

Quick note: At 2:05pm (UK time) Sunday PiHut in the UK has stock of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W albeit without the prefitted header

[@CyberDunk2077]

Pimoroni has had good stock of the rpi zero 2 w for a few months now too, limited to 5 per customer. maybe this video was recorded last year when availability was not so good?

[@dank9561]

​@@CyberDunk2077Video was filmed on 5th January, date stamp was at the top right corner of the desktop.

[@dank9561]

I've been checking the Pi Hut weekly for the last 6 months looking for stock of the Pi Zero 2W with pre-soldered header. It's never come into stock.

[@matcha6710]

Imagine the 8/64 variant in place of a RPi Zero W in any project, that power would be awesome

[@ExplainingComputers]

Would be very nice.

[@BruceHoult]

It's good to see. Having quad A53s with only 512 MB of room to play in is the craziest thing about the Pi Zero 2. That, and still using the 12 year old A53 when the much better A55 (as used here) has been out for almost 7 years (and almost 4 years since the Odroid C4 came out with it). The A53 may be very cheap to license at this point.

[@jankomuzykant1844]

@@BruceHoult The same with (outdated now) Nanopi Fire 3 - Samsung S5P6818 octa-core ARM Cortex-A53 1,4 GHz with only 1 GB RAM

[@PS_Tube]

Sunday Greetings. Great review video.

[@ExplainingComputers]

Thank you 👍

[@kazriko]

Surprisingly, the Zero2W is now in stock in my country.

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@esra_erimez]

I wonder how it compares to a VAX 11/780. Yet another excellent video but lacking ducks.

[@SunKing2]

on a pi, you don't get "opcode reserved to digital". That's a bonus. And worth the downgrade.

[@BruceHoult]

Compared to a VAX 11/780, this is at least a thousand times faster (per core, and it has four), and has 1000 times more RAM than the 780s I used.

[@Sven_Dongle]

Certainly competitive in FLOPS per watt.

[@tsalVlog]

it's almost like we've come full circle and now we have DIY thin-clients that can run their own OS.

[@Nza420]

Love you, man. You always make me laugh somehow.

[@CCoburn3]

Chris, you might provide the link to the B4 version in the description of the video. That way anyone who buys this SBC can download the correct version without having to search for the post you found. Great video. I'm sure the Radxa people will get the EEMC problem sorted soon. This looks like a decent board. And it IS available.

[@squelchstuff]

The b4 download is directly below the b3 release if you follow the download links from the Radxa main site.

[@CCoburn3]

@@squelchstuff Thanks

[@gregholloway2656]

Thanks for another video, Chris. When testing these vendor supplied OS images, could you please run “uname -a” so that we can see what kernel version they are running? In my experience, many of these images have hopelessly outdated kernels that they are tied to. 👍

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

Define "outdated kernel", please? The latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and 8 are running 3.10 and 4.18 kernels respectively - why would you consider that a problem? Too many people suffer from the illness of "latest and greatest" software versions all of the time - probably as a result of Microsoft indoctrination and the fact that Windows is so rubbish anyway that is has to be constantly updated. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

PS. The kernel version doesn't really tell you a lot anyway - because features and updates from later kernels may well have been back-ported to earlier kernel versions. You'd need to see the full kernel configuration to see what a specific kernel does and does not support.

[@gregholloway2656]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 I’d consider Red Hat a different situation. RH has the resources to backport any security fixes from future kernels to their stable kernel, and in this environment, stability and predictability are key. With these Arm boards, development and improvement continues to happen, but many of these vendors don’t bother to update their kernels, you’re just stuck with what they originally shipped. Imagine if RHEL 7 were still running 3.10.0-54.0.1 and you were stuck with that.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@gregholloway2656 "I’d consider Red Hat a different situation." What you consider is your own affair - but we are talking about one core set of kernel sources that are compiled for multiple architectures and platforms. "H has the resources to backport any security fixes from future kernels to their stable kernel, and in this environment, stability and predictability are key." Who mentioned "resources"? I simply talked about the mistake you made in believing you can make ANY assumptions about a kernel just from the kernel version. Do try to keep up and stay on topic. "With these Arm boards, development and improvement continues to happen, but many of these vendors don’t bother to update their kernels, you’re just stuck with what they originally shipped." Utter made-up nonsense that means nothing. "Imagine if RHEL 7 were still running 3.10.0-54.0.1 and you were stuck with that." I have no idea what that means. You're "stuck" with something in the Linux world only if changing it would break a system or, in the case of Red Hat, might break an SLA in a support contract - again, a completely meaningless statement on your part with no relevance to my core point that you cannot assume functionality just from a kernel version.

[@BruceHoult]

As someone who has been using Linux since the late 90s (2.0.x kernels, 2.2 was a big upgrade) I really don't understand the obsession with having to have the very latest kernel instead of a 6 or 12 or (gasp) 24 month old one on a mature architecture such as ARM or x86. The by far more important thing is to have the devtree and drivers for the hardware on the board, and that is exactly what only the vendor OS has -- until they upstream those and they eventually make their way into standard distros, which can easily take a year or two.

[@send2gl]

Amazing what we regard as laggy now 😎 The old Spectrum you'd go and make a coffee whilst programs were loading.

[@ExplainingComputers]

:)

[@SprocketN]

And a couple of slices of toast.

[@parrotraiser6541]

The "zero" boards could be described as"matchbox sized". Maybe not the standard safety match, but IIRC, a Swan Vesta box would do.

[@briankleinschmidt3664]

If they don't have that file you need, I bet they will soon. It must be nice to have such sway in the industry.

[@thewatcher5271]

You Are The SBC King, No Doubt! Too Bad It Won't Boot From A RAM Drive & I'm Surprised There's Not More Hacks For That In General. What's Faster Than A RAM Drive? Thank You.

[@temyraverdana6421]

Very useful video. Thanks a lot and see you next

[@AMDRADEONRUBY]

I love theses mini pc great job and video on this one mini pc are the future .

[@hugocardozo8685]

Very interesting. I kinda wish I could try and (partially) install the distro on the eMMC. Like, boot from the SD card but having /usr and all that important stuff on the eMMC, so that I could compare how much faster it boots and runs 🤷‍♂️

[@dfbess]

Another great video Chris!

[@sbc_tinkerer]

Nice little board. Shame about the eMMC not being available, yet. When do you expect Stanley the Knife and Mr. Scissors to return from their holiday? 😁

[@ExplainingComputers]

Mr Scissors is involved in the opening of the Orange Pi Zero 2W, to upload a week on Sunday. :)

[@johnbee1574]

It’s a nice board I really like the zero form factor I guess the software issues are not so much of a problem in more niche applications . I’ve got big hopes for the pi zero 3

[@lorderectus1849]

Chris sees Sbc Zeros galore!

[@joeburkeson8946]

Nice detective work, thanks.

[@bertblankenstein3738]

I have a pi zero 2w. it is too slow for any desktop purposes (for me), no surprise there. For gpio stuff I use cheaper and more available esp32 devices, and so my pi zero 2w is not seeing any action.

[@filthyfrankblack4067]

There are alot of copies being thrown around these days. This coming out right after the LuBanCat zero doesn't leave us with any suprises. I see the rk3566 getting alot of support going forward as its everywhere.

[@damvcoool]

I would love to see some benchmark comparison between all of these Pi Zero Clones.

[@ExplainingComputers]

I am planning a mass zero-form-factor SBC review. :)

[@JoeEbitDa]

Is there a table of the alternative Pi boards showing which of these are still being supported? I have a pile of unusable Pi wannabees the most disappointing was the Asus Tinkerboard. Thankfully the raspberry pi zero 2W and others are now in stock again, available in at least 4 resellers in the UK!

[@judsonleach5248]

Good Morning Sir! - We are up, ready, coffee is brewing! - For once I didn't screw this up! LOL - Can't WAIT to watch and get smarter! - Cheers! - Judson & Buddy! 🙂

[@ExplainingComputers]

Greetings my friend.

[@Jah_Rastafari_ORIG]

What you say about the availability of Raspberry Pi Zero2W may have been true 6 months ago, but I see them everywhere for the original price now. That aside, I'm not an optimal person to evaluate these newer SBCs as they get ever-increasingly more powerful; my main use scenario for SBCs is for amateur radio applications like like Allstar and MMDVM, where (with the exception of the original Pi Zero for Allstar alone) are total overkill, in terms of horsepower and features. I need to find a new project!

[@harrkev]

Your experience with getting WiFi and EMMC working shows why Raspberry Pi continues to do well. You are not just buying hardware; you are buying into an ecosystem. Microcenter has the Zero 2W in stock. Extra RAM would be nice, but not worth the hours spent trying to get stuff to work.

[@y2ksw1]

For me, insuccess is as valuable as success. I hate to try things in the belief I might succeed, while in reality I can't 😊

[@firepowerg]

Hey! It must be 14:00 on a Sunday!

[@christianaylward7997]

From an off-grid perspective, it would be nice to know the power draw at idle and under a common workload for each of these SBC's. Do you have a USB power meter?

[@christianmontagx8461]

Great. When the GPIO is Raspi compatible it should be perfect and enough for a HIFIBerry module with MPD as a music server installed.

[@iowahank1]

How about cloning the SD card to the EMMC drive?

[@drabjan]

Hi! Did you run the board without the cooler the whole time? What was the temperature? I didn't see it anywhere. Didn't it throttle? I awaited a snappier response. Certainly not so laggy in the menus. Thanks

[@pluto9000]

I would like to see a heat test and comparison to the Pi Zero 2W

[@richcurtin9540]

Brilliant SBC and video - thx

[@delwoodbarker]

Chris, I think you could survive on Mars by repurposing the landers, like the movie!

[@marcse7en]

EC ... "Explaining Clearly" 👍

[@sharonwolff1]

Can you remind us what the use case is for these machines is again. You showed that it is only so-so using a GUI linux, which isn't a surprise. So other than a retro game machine game console, what other use case would be using the screen connector? Others have said wireless routers and other connecting usage but they again wouldn't be using the hdmi beyond setup. Also, are there any options to run a display but not load it up with a GUI? Something that just boots it up much faster than the 30+ seconds, which others seem to take as an acceptable time for start up.

[@BruceHoult]

Naturally you can boot into a text console instead of a GUI. But most of my SBCs have never had anything plugged into their HDMI, not even for setup -- I just flash an OS to sd card or eMMC (newish boards often use Android's "fastboot" tool for installing the OS over USB) and then SSH in. If they don't have ethernet then I might need to boot to a console using USB serial, or temporarily use a USB to serial adaptor (FTDI etc) to run nmcli to set up the WIFI.

[@Praxibetel-Ix]

Good morning! 😊💕

[@ExplainingComputers]

Greetings!

[@Praxibetel-Ix]

@@ExplainingComputers CHRISSY!!!! 🥺🥺🥺 HI!

[@mykofreder1682]

The problem with this vs Pi is support, I run a web server on a Pi B, and updated it one to the next version of the standard OS. I eventually installed enough packages to mess up the OS to a point where the update fails and it is in static OS state. These bords are like a non-name Android phone I own, has 1 version of OS and 5 years later that is it, Raspberry and Windows get to that point but not almost immediately. They should make a less custom Unix with plugin features in compilation, the board maker follows the rules on the plugin 5 year from now you can compile a more recent version and if you have an accelerated graphics plugin module it still will work with this compilation.

[@minigpracing3068]

It looks like Armbian might have support for the Orange Pi 2w, I didn't see another for the Radxa 3w.

[@tradermonk9403]

Another impressive SBC. May I humbly ask the good professor to try a ProxMox and OMV install?

[@jameswatson6608]

Great video Christopher! Please review the Radxa X2L. Low cost X86 SBC, it looks promising.