I've been one of the early supporters of the Kickstarter Project and got one of the first available white cubes these days.
I stopped using it a few years ago...
Question: Is this hardware (no idea what was exactly in the box these days) still powerful enough to run the current versions or would you recommend to get a state of the art Raspberry?
Thanks!
@psvirtual Hi psvirtual,
if this whitecube has a Banana Pi M2+ board in it, it is still powerfull and can be used for eBlocker. Easiest way with a fresh flashed micro sdcard with the BananaPi M2+ image on it.
As long as this is working for you and your needs, there is no need to buy an raspberry pi for this.
Another solution is to run the eBlocker VM Edition, which can be used on servers which are actually running, like QNAP or Synology.
Regards
Just opened the old cube and it says PBi M2 Plus V1.1 on the board.
Besides that I've a Thecus NAS running.
@psvirtual So this should work for you with this cube and the image.
Don't know this NAS, but if this is able to run virtual machines you can also try the eBlocker VM version 🙂
regards
@psvirtual @calimero All White Cubes have a Banana Pi M2+ board and they can be updated via the user interface to the latest eBlockerOS version. There is no need to install an SD card / download the image. Please read what it says on the download page to update the White Cube. It‘s all there. 👍
@psvirtual To answer your question regarding performance: The White Cube comes with a 100Mbit/s Ethernet interface. This physically limits thruput to about 30-40Mbit/s for Internet access. If you have higher bandwidth needs get a Raspi 4 with 1Gbit/s interface. Also the Raspi’s CPU is much faster. In case you consider using VPN or eBlocker Mobile a lot (where the CPU encrypts/decrypts the traffic) I‘d definitely opt for a Raspi 4.
Nevertheless, I‘d recommend to get started with the White Cube. Then you can export most of the settings and import to Raspi when you are ready to migrate.
THX!
Unfortunately, I have to disappoint random. The cube has gigabit ethernet 🙂
Banana Pi BPI-M2+ - Banana Pi Wiki (banana-pi.org)
@psvirtual
And since you probably haven't updated the cube for a while, it can happen that it makes the grit during the update, so the current image on SD card is the easier and faster variant. Nevertheless, you can first try to get the cube with the updates to version 2.10.3.
Just make sure that the device gets enough air, because it gets pretty hot with the larger updates!
Greetings
@calimero Thanks for clarification regarding the network adapter! I had in mind the 50Mbit/s limit of the White Cube was due to the interface, but it's probably rather due to CPU limitation.
Nevertheless, I feel in support we should always KISS: Keep it simple and stupid. Which is in this case just update the cube. And btw: A cube that wasn't much in use has an intact eMMC still. Hence, no need for the extra SD burden.
@psvirtual In case you speak German, there are simple to follow instructions to upgrade the White Cube here.
THX!
Thanks for all the hints!
I'll try to update it first and in parallel look into an affordable Raspi 4 as it has to manage quite a few devices and traffic...
(They are quite costly with all this 4K HDMI adapters and such I wouldn't really need.)
I still have a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B SBC somewhere... is this more powerful than the white cube?
I still have a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B SBC somewhere... is this more powerful than the white cube?
No sir. The Raspi 2 is much worse than the White Cube (very slow CPU & 100Mbit/s adapter).
THX!