Ugh, tell me about it. I downsized from rack servers to a bunch of mini PCs with the laptop-style power bricks and the rats nest went from “ugly but manageable” to “complete fustercluck”.
Recently splurged on some USB-C power-delivery adapters and the appropriate USB-C to laptop-style charger cables and that made things infinitely better. Wasn’t cheap (though not super expensive) but well worth it.
I host everything on one System76 Meerkat, 2 Pi’s (one OrangePi and one RaspberryPi), and a Synology NAS. I also have Unifi networking stuff (router/POE Switch/APs).
I’ve been wanting to dive into the 10" rack space for a while now. Even saw there were some designs I could mostly 3D print. I recently decommissioned my last 19" rack appliance, so I guess I’m closer than ever now though I’d need to find a 16 port switch that would fit (would prefer that to linking two 8-port switches).
Haven’t really hosted anything on a Pi (except Kiwix on a spare Pi Zero W2) since I have a bunch of thin clients that I got dirt cheap in a bulk drunk eBay purchase. They’re more capable (though the Pi 5 is close if not entirely surpassing them now) and a bit easier to shove together.
How are the Orange Pis? I’ve not messed with them, but the specs look too good to be true.
I’m very pleased with the OrangePi. I use it for my Jellyfin server. It sometimes struggles with real-time 4k transcoding, but I generally transcode videos before watching things anyways, so it’s not a problem.
being that compact, and being fanless, I’d worry about temps in the switch. It’s also a max 45watt total across all 8 ports, so it’s not great, but at $200, it’s not bad.
I’m very pleased with the OrangePi. I use it for my Jellyfin server. It sometimes struggles with real-time 4k transcoding
What model OPi do you use and what system image (Armbian, Diet Pi, OrangeOS)?
I’ve got the Orange Pi Zero 2W (effectively the OPi 3 in a different form factor) and also run Jellyfin on it, but there’s no stable GPU support in Armbian. It also doesn’t even transcode 720p at a usable rate, so I just pre-encode everything to something it can direct stream.
It’s not my primary JF server, but it is nice to have during power outages and such since I can run it all day from a power bank.
I got a ‘Orange Pi 5 Plus 16GB’, and have Armbian on it. I haven’t noticed any GPU issues, so I’m surprised to hear there may be no support. It seems to work well for me. I’ll have to read up on that. Maybe I should be running something else.
Ah. The 5 Plus uses a Rockchip SOC where the Opi 3 / Zero 2W use Allwinner. I’ve read Rockchip is better supported, so maybe I’ll look into one of those. I just wanted the Pi Zero form factor for this project so went with that one. I should also have clarified that there’s no stable GPU support in Armbian for the OPi 3/Zero 2W but there are for other models.
Even without GPU, I’m surprised it runs Jellyfin at all let alone quite well (lack of transcoding aside). That’s in addition to running everything else I threw on it at the same time, so I’m still genuinely impressed.
I didn’t realize they had different chips either (yay for not reading close enough).
For many years I was running everything on that System76 Meerkat (basically an old Intel NUC). IT was getting really old, so I thought I’d try that bigger OrangePi to see if I could host everything on the ARM chip (answer is yes). A new Meerkat is $700+, and the OrangePi 5 is like $250. So far it’s a win for sure.
I’ve been curious about those Pi Zero machines. I should get one just as a toy.
I got the 4 GB Orange Pi version of the Zero W2. The performance is there but I found it to be a bit quirky. That said, you might have better luck using the manufacturer’s images. Only reason I didn’t was that they were several years old and on an unsupported kernel. Took some doing, but I finally got Armbian working stable.
Tips:
Don’t enable zram for more than 50%. It’ll happily compress more than that, but allocating more than 50% causes all kinds of random weirdness and crashes.
The GPU either doesn’t work or isn’t stable. I gave up on it and just pre-encoded the media to a format that Jellyfin wouldn’t need to transcode.
Make sure the antenna is mounted away and perpendicular from the main board. Had a lot of weird EMF-induced crashes when the antenna was parallel to the board inside a case.
You will need a heatsink. Unless you underclock it below 1 GHz, a heatsink isn’t optional like it is on a Pi.
Unless you just need the USB A ports or the IR receiver, skip the expansion board. The ribbon cable that connects it exacerbates the EMF issues. The 3 buttons on the front do not work with the Armbian builds (and the overlay that enables them doesn’t seem to work on newer kernels and no one seems to be working on it). The analog audio, likewise, does not work on Armbian with newer kernels and, last I checked, there are no overlays.
I also have a 4 GB Banana Pi in the same “Pi Zero” form factor. I haven’t messed with it much, but the three things I’ve noticed so far is the wifi chip is much better than the Orange Pi (I think it’s a Realtek chip here), the Bluetooth doesn’t work in Armbian (though it’s close), and it has eMMC which makes the system much faster.
The cord rats nest is so real.
Ugh, tell me about it. I downsized from rack servers to a bunch of mini PCs with the laptop-style power bricks and the rats nest went from “ugly but manageable” to “complete fustercluck”.
Recently splurged on some USB-C power-delivery adapters and the appropriate USB-C to laptop-style charger cables and that made things infinitely better. Wasn’t cheap (though not super expensive) but well worth it.
I host everything on one System76 Meerkat, 2 Pi’s (one OrangePi and one RaspberryPi), and a Synology NAS. I also have Unifi networking stuff (router/POE Switch/APs).
I’ve been eyeing one of these (of various sizes): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CSCWVTQ7
But I don’t need it as the shelves holding everything works, but the rats nest is getting annoying.
I’ve been wanting to dive into the 10" rack space for a while now. Even saw there were some designs I could mostly 3D print. I recently decommissioned my last 19" rack appliance, so I guess I’m closer than ever now though I’d need to find a 16 port switch that would fit (would prefer that to linking two 8-port switches).
Haven’t really hosted anything on a Pi (except Kiwix on a spare Pi Zero W2) since I have a bunch of thin clients that I got dirt cheap in a bulk drunk eBay purchase. They’re more capable (though the Pi 5 is close if not entirely surpassing them now) and a bit easier to shove together.
How are the Orange Pis? I’ve not messed with them, but the specs look too good to be true.
I’ve been eyeing this switch as well (16 port, with 8 being PoE, and very compact):
https://techspecs.ui.com/unifi/switching/usw-lite-16-poe?
I’m very pleased with the OrangePi. I use it for my Jellyfin server. It sometimes struggles with real-time 4k transcoding, but I generally transcode videos before watching things anyways, so it’s not a problem.
8 PoE ports. Nice. I’ve got a separate 5 port PoE switch currently and wouldn’t be sad about getting rid of that.
being that compact, and being fanless, I’d worry about temps in the switch. It’s also a max 45watt total across all 8 ports, so it’s not great, but at $200, it’s not bad.
What model OPi do you use and what system image (Armbian, Diet Pi, OrangeOS)?
I’ve got the Orange Pi Zero 2W (effectively the OPi 3 in a different form factor) and also run Jellyfin on it, but there’s no stable GPU support in Armbian. It also doesn’t even transcode 720p at a usable rate, so I just pre-encode everything to something it can direct stream.
It’s not my primary JF server, but it is nice to have during power outages and such since I can run it all day from a power bank.
I got a ‘Orange Pi 5 Plus 16GB’, and have Armbian on it. I haven’t noticed any GPU issues, so I’m surprised to hear there may be no support. It seems to work well for me. I’ll have to read up on that. Maybe I should be running something else.
Ah. The 5 Plus uses a Rockchip SOC where the Opi 3 / Zero 2W use Allwinner. I’ve read Rockchip is better supported, so maybe I’ll look into one of those. I just wanted the Pi Zero form factor for this project so went with that one. I should also have clarified that there’s no stable GPU support in Armbian for the OPi 3/Zero 2W but there are for other models.
Even without GPU, I’m surprised it runs Jellyfin at all let alone quite well (lack of transcoding aside). That’s in addition to running everything else I threw on it at the same time, so I’m still genuinely impressed.
I didn’t realize they had different chips either (yay for not reading close enough).
For many years I was running everything on that System76 Meerkat (basically an old Intel NUC). IT was getting really old, so I thought I’d try that bigger OrangePi to see if I could host everything on the ARM chip (answer is yes). A new Meerkat is $700+, and the OrangePi 5 is like $250. So far it’s a win for sure.
I’ve been curious about those Pi Zero machines. I should get one just as a toy.
I got the 4 GB Orange Pi version of the Zero W2. The performance is there but I found it to be a bit quirky. That said, you might have better luck using the manufacturer’s images. Only reason I didn’t was that they were several years old and on an unsupported kernel. Took some doing, but I finally got Armbian working stable.
Tips:
I also have a 4 GB Banana Pi in the same “Pi Zero” form factor. I haven’t messed with it much, but the three things I’ve noticed so far is the wifi chip is much better than the Orange Pi (I think it’s a Realtek chip here), the Bluetooth doesn’t work in Armbian (though it’s close), and it has eMMC which makes the system much faster.