Having read this whole thread, my issue with the whole SBC universe is a naming problem. Everybody wants to grab hold of the Raspberry Pi’s coat-tails. Hence the use of Pi or another fruit in the name. That sets a level of expectation way beyond the capabilities of most of these producers. Indeed, RockPi 4 reviews pretty much concentrate on comparisons with Rpi4 as though it is the same product. Most of the arguments that ensue are of the form ‘it breaks/doesn’t install/can’t run X’ with responses (thanks Igor) of ‘what do you expect?/they’re only a iddy-piddy board maker’. Etc. If only the owners of these companies would come clean at the outset, most middling users (that’ll be me) wouldn’t touch them with a barge-pole - but that’s capitalism for you.
The failure of RockPi and every other SBC out there
Gotta weigh in here.
This product is trash please see below:
I’ve not had it running for less than two weeks, did a shutdown -r now via ssh this morning. Now it won’t boot. As far as I can tell, I need to reload everything again… Don’t get me wrong this can happen to the rpi but when actually getting it working in the first place is sooo hard, it 's infuriating.
Until RPI 4+ will not have a PCIe M2 and or EMMC onboard it will be still useless due SDcard Support only. Yeah you can attach Stuff via HATs PCIe > USB but since 4 Models they´re still sleeping
I´ll move to SOM-rk3399/SOM-rk3399V2 due it has all that and many more stuff onboard and has the power and Performance as Rockpi or even more.
For my Needs 4G/Voice/GPS (Quectel EC25) and 970 Evo Pro with Android this Board will be the best choice i think.
Project is a Android Car PC with CAN Interface
I’m sorry that ROCK Pi can’t boot. Without more detailed information, I don’t know how to help you.
But I have provided a new Penta install script that will allow you to install it faster if you have to rebuild it.
Exactly. Raspberry even in 2020 can’t have reliable storage. Not possible. Period. Now explain this to clueless believers …
Until RPI 4+ will not have a PCIe M2 and or EMMC onboard it will be still useless due > SDcard Support only.
Exactly. Raspberry even in 2020 can’t have reliable storage. Not possible. Period. Now explain this to clueless believers …
100% agreed. Just ran into this with a self-driving rover project in development that had an RPi 4 in it… it weighs ~11kg and can run up to 80 kph. Super dangerous when sdcard corrupts, hardware watchdog doesn’t work and motors don’t shutdown properly.
Wouldn’t use any board with rootfs on sdcard for anything serious or needing to be reliable.
That is because you are using sd which actually corrupts much less than some make out. Its actually very rare with modern SD.
It can do and you tools to mitigate that such as using overlayfs to load your root readonly and writes take place in a Zram upper which with writes stretches a long way with many just appends or overwrites of existing.
Its just a matter of using tools and libs correctly but its untrue a Pi can not have reliable storage and its also untrue that any storage you are talking about is mission critical or that is even needed.
I did some scripts that was more of a protest to the big ditsro’s about sorting out the zram-config package as its awful and outdated.
Seems to of been quite well liked and guess a few grab the ideas and use, maybe just use the utlity itself instead of zram config.
You can bind mount any directory to any storage you wish but I use zram.
Even have a emphemeral option that binds all and also on shutdown it can merge down from from to the lower so its write once on shutdown rather than read only.
Small manufactures are never going to have the support or userbase that raspberry has but often produce innovative and unusual hardware that for some can be very usueful.
There is no problem with the hardware apart from the expectations of some who wrongly think its going to be a polished general purpose board like a Pi.
Raspberry Pi is great RockPi4 was really great when there wasn’t a Pi4 its advantages are lesser now, but the PCI-e is interesting if you can find something.
Rockpi-S would be truly awesome if I could get I2S working with I2S mics sure eventually I will and for satellite voice-AI and is pretty perfect for that role.
The small manufactures are up against Raspberries economies of scale and often oversell as direct alternatives.
They are what they are and if that is what you want then they do their job but often tinkering and some work needs to be done just like a Pi does for relatively easy fail safe storage.
It doesn’t mean its flakey are that it doesn’t have its just the user hasn’t worked out what was te best way to use it or that was the best option to buy for a specific use.
Use as a raspberry utility of grab bits of the script for the use of bind mounts to whatever storage you need.
The real battle is not between Rpi and other small manufacturers but Broadcom/Microsoft vs Rockchip/Allwinner vs Nxp vs Amlogic …
ZRAM hack helps a lot and there are other things which you can apply as you suggested but bulk of Rpi users will never understand nor fix this.
There isn’t a battle its just how it is Raspberry in terms of user SoC based boards just have economies of scale that smaller manufactures will struggle to emulate purely because they don’t have the same resources.
There are a range of maker based boards available from a wide arrange of manufactures that often have unique features from the application they where originally targeted for.
Practically all are cast offs and adaptions as even the Pi4 was really a set-top box design hence why it has a 2nd mostly useless hdmi.
The bulk of Rpi users don’t need to understand this as like the script they can install as is, in the same many many other utils can.
Or can script tools themselves as generally that is the makers market and often its more technical than normal consumer grade goods.
Only Raspberry has the resources for a relatively complete general product (almost consumer) whilst lesser resources often have what could be said as a continuous work in progress as they smooth out rough edges.
That often when it becomes near complete its nearing obsolescence and often superseded with new.
RockPi4 is likely one of those as its niche against the Pi3 has been eaten away and likely will be replaced with whats new from Rockchip to a similar step up from the Pi4.
They are what they are often providing specifics to smaller niche markets for specific users.