Hi eBlocker Team,
I'm looking for a HW recommendation to building a complete eBlocker box based on RaspPi and am looking for some information to bias my decision.
Questions:
- What is the expected power consumption/dissipation on platforms like Raspberry Pi 3 B+ or 4 (>=2GB), when running the current eBlocker V2.58 (or expected in V2.6)? Can a metallic enclosure/case handle the heat dissipation without a fan?
- Will Raspberry Pi 3 B+ be supported in future releases of eBlocker? (expectancy)
- Why would you recommend either Raspberry Pi 3 B+ or a 4, considering my requirements of lower power consumption, low cost and long support lifetime (SW and HW)?
- Is there a plan to support smaller, lower cost future HW platforms (roadmap plans)?
thank you for your engagement!
Danny
I have no idea about the power consumption, but I can help with most other questions.
Can a metallic enclosure/case handle the heat dissipation without a fan?
I run eOS 2.x on a Raspi 4 (4GB) in a fully closed original Raspi plastic case for about a year now: No fan, no heatsink, no problem.
Will Raspberry Pi 3 B+ be supported in future releases of eBlocker?
Yes. As soon as the bug in the underlying linux has been fixed by the Raspian team, we will support Raspi 3 again. Fortunately the bug is now „confirmed“ and we hope for the best...
Why would you recommend either Raspberry Pi 3 B+ or a 4, considering my requirements
We generally recommend Raspi 4 for long term support and 2GB is future proof.
Raspi 3 has 100Mbit/s Ethernet only. So this setup rather differs much in thruput but I can‘t judge about power.
is there a plan to support smaller, lower cost future HW platforms
With the core team we are committed to Raspberry Pi and feel Raspi 4 has optimal price/performance with eBlockerOS. „Downsizing“ is not on our list but we‘ll try to keep up with new Raspi HW releases in future.
Nevertheless, eBlockerOS is fully Open Source and other developers are happily invited to adapt eOS to a different hardware. The core is platform independent and should run on any linux.
Hope this helps.
@DannyS As savings from power consumption wont be more than a coffee at Starbucks per year, I'd personally recommend neglecting this "requirement". Other values (like throughput & bandwidth) are much more important for 99.9% of the users. For this reason I feel a "low power" should not be our focus.
So I'm with @Benne : Get a Raspi 4 and rather spend the time more wisely than looking for a "low power" version. It's not worth the effort.
THX!
Hi all,
I greatly appreciate your advises.
The background behind my power requirements were due to making it lean, small and fanless.
In search of appropriate HW, we now plan to evaluate the following Systems:
RaspPi 4, NanoPi R4S, NanoPi R2s, NanoPi NEO3, PiTray mini with Pi Compute Module 4.
Knowing that the China HW will have some stepstones, we'd like to also evaluate this path, simply due to cost.
If you have any concerns or lookout tips in any direction please let me know.
I plan to send some further questions related to SW support e.g. regarding SW update deployment and manageability, but will post in another appropriate Forum.
Best regards
Danny
@dannys Sounds as if you want to build a custom eBlocker hardware. Great!
One hint regarding memory requirements: 1GB is already the absolut minimum - but for sure too less for future features...
making it lean, small and fanless.
Raspi 4 runs fanless and is small. I don’t see a requirement to get „smaller“ neither in dimensions nor in power consumption. If you can strip out video/audio/usb of the Raspi 4 - then it‘s also lean - in terms of eBlocker application. But today these are all SOC sets and I doubt that a custom chipset would ever pay off...
Good luck anyways & THX!