Any Suitable alternative to the Raspberry Pi?

A Former User · 1 Nov 2020, 14:15

@jens55 said in Any Suitable alternative to the Raspberry Pi?:

Ok, to directly address your question: No, to my humble knowledge, limited as it may be, all SBC's on the market today require a stable source of power which unfortunately seems to escape your grasp.

And again flogging a dead horse with regards answering an un-asked question, as the ACTUAL question was about ANY SUITABLE REPLACEMENT for the Rpi NOT how much power (or the stability thereof) the SBC's Require. And still that fact escapes YOUR GRASP

Power Supply isn't (or shouldn't be) an issue which is why I never mentioned anything about power, I try to carry out my due diligence to the best of my abilities and decide what I am required to do to complete the required task successfully.

I run the same core components in all my printers, it makes things simple in numerous ways, Although I am a Mechanical Engineer, H/V electrics has always been an interest and doing things the "right-way" always been a personal pride.

So I only use the following core components

Duet Boards
Meanwell LRS-450-24 PSU’s.
E3D 40Watt hot end Heaters
Filafarm Silicone A/C Bed Heaters
Croyden SSR's
My Motors always come from Stepper-On-Line (been using them for years with good results)
Decent Quality Silicone wire

And more recently adding Raspberry Pi's to the mix

From the above I recon i'm pulling around 50 to 60 watts from a PSU rated to supply 450 Watts.

I only used The Rpi-3B+ becuase it is listed as requiring a PSU supply of around 2.5 amps,
and listed as pulling 2.1 watts max with no peripherals attached (and I dont attach anything) so the power requirements are less than the Rpi-4

Now if there is any issue with how Duet-3 supplies the SBC in the recommended way via onboard 5V rail and jumper settings to supply the SBC then that is a design fault, but I dont think that is the problem.

I did make a discovery today that i dont know if it is relevant or not.

I am building another Core-XY and its in the stage of laying out for component placement and wire routing, I pulled another new Duet 3 off the shelf to connect it to the Rpi and from having just pulled the dead one out of the other printer just a few days ago I noticed that the supplied ribbon cable on the newest board was shorter than the one I pulled the other day.

So I went for a look at the rest of the printers with Duet-3’s now I don’t know if it makes any difference but both printers that the Rpi’s died in both have the longer ribbon cables and the others that have been running with no issues all have shorter ribbon cables. All the Ribbon cables were supplied to me with the Duet-3's

The shorter cables are all about 50mm shorter

@DC42 would there be any reason for this to be a factor?

kvi94 · 2 Nov 2020, 08:50

This post is deleted!

dc42 · 2 Nov 2020, 11:08

@CaLviNx said in Any Suitable alternative to the Raspberry Pi?:

So I went for a look at the rest of the printers with Duet-3’s now I don’t know if it makes any difference but both printers that the Rpi’s died in both have the longer ribbon cables and the others that have been running with no issues all have shorter ribbon cables. All the Ribbon cables were supplied to me with the Duet-3's
The shorter cables are all about 50mm shorter
@DC42 would there be any reason for this to be a factor?

We were originally using off-the-shelf ribbon cables so we accepted the length that that came in. When they went out of production, we switched to custom made cables, so we have them made to the length that we consider optimum. I can't think why ribbon cable length would be a factor. It's possible that the shorter ones might support a slightly higher SPI frequency.

How many Duet 3 boards do you have? Are they all the same board version?

A Former User · 2 Nov 2020, 11:45

@dc42 said in Any Suitable alternative to the Raspberry Pi?:

@CaLviNx said in Any Suitable alternative to the Raspberry Pi?:

So I went for a look at the rest of the printers with Duet-3’s now I don’t know if it makes any difference but both printers that the Rpi’s died in both have the longer ribbon cables and the others that have been running with no issues all have shorter ribbon cables. All the Ribbon cables were supplied to me with the Duet-3's
The shorter cables are all about 50mm shorter
@DC42 would there be any reason for this to be a factor?

We were originally using off-the-shelf ribbon cables so we accepted the length that that came in. When they went out of production, we switched to custom made cables, so we have them made to the length that we consider optimum. I can't think why ribbon cable length would be a factor. It's possible that the shorter ones might support a slightly higher SPI frequency.

How many Duet 3 boards do you have? Are they all the same board version?

I have 6 Duet 3's , 1 is a 0.6 pre-production board and the other 5 are 1.0.1 revisions, it was 1.0.1 boards that had the Rpi's that died in them.

I have shortened all (long) my ribbon cables of any unnecessary material.

I just purchased a banana pi bpi-m3 as allegedly it has the same pin-out as the Rpi and again will allegedly run Raspbian OS out of the box, so we will see what it does when it arrives.

oliof · 27 Dec 2020, 20:54

Raise, topic!

Following an idea by @Dougal1957 I will test a RaspberryPi Compute Module with eMMC and the RPiCM IO board. The latter means I can run the whole setup from my 24V PSU (as long as I don't intend to fry the PCIe port, and maybe not use the fan port except with a 24V fan). I will report how that fares.

My Raspberry Pi4 is rock solid since I run it off the RPi Power Supply, but I want to get rid of that.

o_lampe · 4 Feb 2021, 14:01

I was looking for alternatives to Raspi too and just want to ask if anyone has tried the Odroid N2?
I'm not sure if it has a 100% compatible GPIO connector, but I have one laying around and only serve as host for my MCU-node experiments.
I also used it to make my TV smart and it served me well with it's noiseless huge heatsink.
It runs from 12V and can use eMMC modules, which I highly recommend.
(don't ask me,how many genuine Sandisk SD-cards for my MCU node I had to replace)
It runs on Linux and Android, which might be an alternative?

jay_s_uk · 4 Feb 2021, 14:19

have a look at this https://teamgloomy.github.io/dsf_on_armbian.html

oliof · 4 Feb 2021, 14:24

I have an RPi Compute Module and the IO Board ready to replace the RPi4.

Advantages: eMMC memory instead of SD card should be more resilient; you can use the PSU to power the board without a buck converter.

Disadvantages: Higher price, larger footprint, requires the smaller thin film connectors for camera/screen.

o_lampe · 4 Feb 2021, 14:32

@jay_s_uk
If it's listed on the armbian page, does it mean,the GPIO-connector is compatible, too?

The AMlogic S902 is listed, but the N2 has S922X.

cad405 · 4 Feb 2021, 14:33

My 5 cents: 6 months now with a Duet3 & RPi3. It is powered by a Meanwell 5V 2.5A with a good cable (3A capable). Have good SD card and proper cooling - no worries whatsoever. Oh, it is a Debian box (minimal) only with duet packages. It takes 30sec to boot. Do not even bother to clean shutdown.

jay_s_uk · 4 Feb 2021, 14:34

@o_lampe you may need work out the correct pinout for the board but give it a whirl and see what happens