hackable pocket router pt 2
part 2 of the project.
If I was going to do this, it would be interesting to compare hardware performance in a range of possible off the shelf boards.
I would want to avoid the trap of “raspberry pi with a usb nic”.
the pi trap
The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic single board computer with great support and a community supplying a billion off the shelf how-tos and guides for setting it up anywhere.
It’s also $90 USD for the 2gb model. Which isn’t baaad. But then you need a case and a power supply. +40 USD.
You also need the NIC via either an ethernet hat or a usb nic, which means that you need a specific case designed to house the additional port, or you accept a dongle hanging out of your router. Either way that’s another 10-30 USD, for about 150-160 total.
The craziest part is that there’s still the SD card, which is like 15 USD these days for a reliable one. Now we’re around 175 USD for the Pi, and we didn’t even buy the good one.
a couple alternatives
radxa cubie a5e
This is a neat little board. $23 USD for a Allwinner A527 with 1gb of ram. No eMMC at that price, but, it has two gigabit NICs built-in.
I wish it had more ram and eMMC. Those features are theoretically available, but no one has any in stock other than the base model. But the price is right, and the form factor is small and square, really emphasizing the fact that it’s a pocket device.
This one also needs SD card, case, and power supply, but at the price point that’s much more forgivable, especially if we’re going to deploy this across a fleet. For early prototypes, I would probably use 3d printed cases.
Bring-up on the board has been difficult. The factory install is fine, but I’ve been having issues with uboot.
friendlyelec nanopi r5s
This SBC is impressive. Three NICs, an rk3568b2, 4gb of ram, and 64gb eMMC for 148 USD! Since it comes with its own metal case, the only extra thing that is required is a power supply. Puts the total cost around where the Pi 5 is, but you get so much more with this option.
This board also has a slot for a full-size m.2 drive on it, no expanders or hats needed. 64gb should be enough space for most use cases but it could be nice to put a modest ssd in for FW image storage, tcp captures, or other small/local data storage needs.
The only downside is that it might be a little pricey to roll out to every single engineer. I think it’s worth it for the extra horsepower, but at the end of the day, the point of this is to make the network a better place to live. If we can carry a greater impact with the cubie instead then that would be better.
(to be continued maybe)