Okay, people who read this and want to go and buy the Orange Pi Zero: PLEASE read the following before purchasing!
> I can actually use an M.2 SSD with the HATs available for it
The NAS hat costs $7 extra plus shipping ($4 to EU for me). [0] And to my knowledge there is no case for the Ornage Pi Zero which can accommodate the NAS hat.
> and POE support
It doesn't support POE out of the box, and it's not 802.3af/at compliant. [1] You can use a passive PoE injector, but 5V in a CAT5/6 cable won't get you very far. You can use a higher voltage, but then you need to add a DC/DC voltage converter and unsolder some resistors from the PCB.
In short: it's a lot of work to get POE working. It's not really worthwhile.
Also the WiFi on the Orange Pi Zero is a piece of shit. [2] Performance is crap and there's high packet loss. Allwinner's driver is a steaming pile of shit and no one from Xunlong or Allwinner is working to make it any better. The stock images from Xunlong are using kernel 3.4!
Several people from Armbian are trying to improve the driver, but there's no public datasheet and the firmware of the wireless module is pretty crash happy.
Also it's 2.4GHz 1T1R (same as the Raspberry Pi W) so the performance is always going to be bad, even after (or if) Armbian manages to fix up the driver.
- *Does the Orange Pi Zero outperform the Raspberry Pi (Zero, W, 1, 2)?* Yes.
- *Should I buy the Orange Pi Zero for my project that needs WiFi?* No.
- *Should I buy the Orange Pi Zero for a project requiring USB and Ethernet?* Yes!
- *Should I use the images from Xunlong for my Orange Pi <whatever>?* Please no! Use Armbian ( https://www.armbian.com/ )
Images from Xunlong are using an ancient kernel and don't have proper power/thermal management for the SoC. With Armbian and the mainline kernel, temperatures are under control and you don't need a heat sink unless you're using 100% CPU all the time. Also, cores don't randomly shut off due to overheating.
> The NAS hat costs $7 extra plus shipping ($4 to EU for me). [0] And to my knowledge there is no case for the Ornage Pi Zero which can accommodate the NAS hat.
Sure, but your gonna be able to max out the ethernet port on an OrangePi Zero, whereas none of the Raspberry Pis can even fill half of a 100Mbps ethernet port. Printing a case isn't all that hard, or you could always build it from thin plywood, cardbord or something else if you want a case.
> It doesn't support POE out of the box
No, but you can wire it for any type of POE you want, whether that be 5v, 12v to 24v, or proper 48v POE. The traces are already there on the PCB, and at that price point I doubt anyone could fit in a buck converter to make it do 48v POE without increasing the cost by a few bucks.
> WiFi on the Orange Pi Zero is a piece of shit.
That and every other SBC, I've got a Raspberry Pi 3 on the shelf that I wrote off due to poor wifi performance. SBCs with small integrated antennas just aren't gonna have amazing wifi. Most of what was in the BSP is now mainlined in kernel 4.10 by the way.
Armbian is decent, I've been quemu-debootstrapping my own images though since I'm not a fan of all the modifications they make to Debian.
This is on a Raspberry Pi 2, which acts as a ClusterHAT controller. On a Pi Zero attached to it, which uses a virtual USB network adapter (bridged on eth0 of the controller), I get the following:
> No, but you can wire it for any type of POE you want, whether that be 5v, 12v to 24v, or proper 48v POE. The traces are already there on the PCB, and at that price point I doubt anyone could fit in a buck converter to make it do 48v POE without increasing the cost by a few bucks.
So, you can buy an extra buck converter^ and solder it yourself --removing additional resistors on the PCB-- and it still won't be 802.3af/at compliant, or you can just buy a proper PoE adaptor for $10. [0]
^ Please show me a buck converter that does 48VDC->5VDC for "a few bucks"
> What? You definitely don't need to remove any resistors onboard.
Yes, you do if you're using a voltage higher than 5V. Read the wiki page:
If you plan to use a buck converter at higher voltages, remove R135/R136 (75 Ohm) as they will dissipate a lot of heat and may burn out! See the picture on the right and below in the gallery for which resistors to remove. [0]
WiFi on the Chip is also a piece of shit. It's why mine is sat on a shelf doing nothing. Are there any boards like this which actually have decent wifi?
> Are there any boards like this which actually have decent wifi?
Doubtful. It's a race to the bottom for any SBC which isn't a Raspberry Pi or ODROID.
It's highly unlikely someone will make a board that costs $15 and has great WiFi, because everyone blindly buys the $8 board (because cheaper = better!) with shit WiFi and then complains about how crap all these Chinese SBCs are.
Especially when websites post stories about these board releases never bother to update their articles and essentially just give the manufacturer free advertising. [0] [1]
Hell even Intel tablets running Windows 8.1/10 are using shitty 2.4GHz Realtek SDIO based WiFi that still isn't supported in Linux.
In the race to the bottom, good software support is sacrificed first.
> I can actually use an M.2 SSD with the HATs available for it
The NAS hat costs $7 extra plus shipping ($4 to EU for me). [0] And to my knowledge there is no case for the Ornage Pi Zero which can accommodate the NAS hat.
> and POE support
It doesn't support POE out of the box, and it's not 802.3af/at compliant. [1] You can use a passive PoE injector, but 5V in a CAT5/6 cable won't get you very far. You can use a higher voltage, but then you need to add a DC/DC voltage converter and unsolder some resistors from the PCB.
In short: it's a lot of work to get POE working. It's not really worthwhile.
Also the WiFi on the Orange Pi Zero is a piece of shit. [2] Performance is crap and there's high packet loss. Allwinner's driver is a steaming pile of shit and no one from Xunlong or Allwinner is working to make it any better. The stock images from Xunlong are using kernel 3.4!
Several people from Armbian are trying to improve the driver, but there's no public datasheet and the firmware of the wireless module is pretty crash happy.
Also it's 2.4GHz 1T1R (same as the Raspberry Pi W) so the performance is always going to be bad, even after (or if) Armbian manages to fix up the driver.
Images from Xunlong are using an ancient kernel and don't have proper power/thermal management for the SoC. With Armbian and the mainline kernel, temperatures are under control and you don't need a heat sink unless you're using 100% CPU all the time. Also, cores don't randomly shut off due to overheating.[0] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Orange-Pi-Zero-NAS-Expansion...
[1] http://linux-sunxi.org/Orange_Pi_Zero#Powering_the_board
[2] https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/3243-orange-pi-zer...