replacement for Pi 1b+ needed

Yze · Wednesday at 9:02 PM

for years I am running small application on Pi 1b+, as it doesn't require much CPU nor memory. Since it is armv6 based the end will come with freebsd 13.5.
Therefore I am looking for a replacement, that runs ideally on arm64, has a similar size and most important, doesn't have noticeable more power consumption when idle as it is powered by batteries. Currently that Pi consumes about 1.1W. I have tested Pi4 and that draws about 2-3W idle which drains the battery 2-3x faster.

Features in use are:
- GPIO
- I2C
- Ethernet (100mbit)
- Console via serial TTL
- boot from microSD

Would be awesome if some could share your experience with SoC boards that are running FreeBSD and not consuming much power. So far from other threads Radxa Rock 3C looks promising but didn't find any data how much it consumes idle with FBSD running.

Thanks in advance,
Yze

covacat · Wednesday at 9:16 PM

i have a radxa zero3e which is pretty much the same thing as rock 3c
no idea how much it draws at idle but i can find out
can't you consider a poe hat ?
probably a rockpi s / arm a35 based will be the best but there is no support in the kernel (you need 3rd party patches)

Phishfry · Wednesday at 9:24 PM

I would have to recommend ROCK64 according to requirements.
Rock3C is nice but main feature is M.2 2230 NVe slot. Do you really need that?
Rock3E is nice as well but you can see from my strees tests it draws more power than stated numbers.

Post in thread 'Pi Zero format boards that are supported.'

Nov 26, 2024

I have a benchtop power supply with amp gauge and I am seeing green LED at 4.3VDC 0.1a load on Rock Zero 3E

Going to test with OS on microSD and cpu stress tests next.

Phishfry · Wednesday at 9:45 PM

I was just reading that RK3288 i actually a 32Bit chip? A-17. Some places call it AARCH32 but it resides within our AARCH64 family.
So confused...
Maybe RK3399 would be a better choice. Each generation does seem to bring more power draw and features.

covacat · Wednesday at 9:52 PM

a35 (rk3308) will be the best core but i don't know of any aside the rockpi-s

Phishfry · Wednesday at 10:01 PM

A well written perspective. What features does your single application need?

Why I sold my Raspberry Pi 4 for a Rock Pi 4

My experience of using a Raspberry Pi 4 for 6 months before selling it below market for the Rock Pi 4, and why you shouldn't buy a Raspberry Pi 4 today.

ikarus.sg

Phishfry · Wednesday at 10:24 PM

I got looking at my Arm Workbench and I think RaspberryPi 3 should be considered. The original one without wifi.

We have a KERNCONF for it with only single core. SMP not enabled. Lowest power possible on arch64 that I can think of.

I never tried any of the H3 based boards.

covacat · Wednesday at 10:29 PM

i have one of this

Milk-V Duo S - Mini RISC-V/ARM SBC, Sophgo SG2000, 512MB RAM, 8GB eMMC

Please take note: "PoE support" means that the product supports PoE (Power over Ethernet), but in reality, the product does not include PoE. If you want to buy Milk-V Duo S PoE HAT, please check the link below: https://arace.tech/products/milk-v-duo-s-poe-hat Milk-V Duo S is an upgraded model of...

arace.tech

and one of this
https://wiki.luckfox.com/Luckfox-Pico-Pro-Max/ (the max 256MB version)
but never unpacked them

maybe i'll hack some support for them oneday

bakul · Wednesday at 10:40 PM

Why not just stay with FreeBSD 13.5? Or switch to plan9 (9pi on Raspis). It will boot much faster as well! But some programming required!

Yze · Wednesday at 10:45 PM

covacat said:
i have a radxa zero3e which is pretty much the same thing as rock 3c
no idea how much it draws at idle but i can find out
can't you consider a poe hat ?
probably a rockpi s / arm a35 based will be the best but there is no support in the kernel (you need 3rd party patches)

thanks for lightning fast answer covacat! I did order now a zero 3E (rock 3C is out of stock), should be delivered by tomorrow. POE is not an option. Actually this Pi is in a small mobile rack. mounted on 10" Rack PI enclosure that basically can hold anything that is in Pi B format. 3E looks awesome, just need to see if I can mount it well. Battery-pack last about full day atm and swapping the old Pi with something similar would be easiest way. Application on it is mainly written in python so should be fairly portable. The Ethernet is needed to connect to 4G Router, so it can upload the collected data directly as FreeBSD is mounted read-only to protect the mircoSD the most.

Yze · Wednesday at 11:12 PM

Phishfry said:
I got looking at my Arm Workbench and I think RaspberryPi 3 should be considered. The original one without wifi.

We have a KERNCONF for it with only single core. SMP not enabled. Lowest power possible on arch64 that I can think of.

I never tried any of the H3 based boards.

That is very interesting! Just checked and looks like Pi3 should be armv8. But was there a non-wifi version? I call to remember there where some Pi2 with throttled PI3 CPU on it but not sure if that board is too wierd to run freebsd then

. Mainly I want to make sure running on latest aarch64 (e.g. armv8) architecture so I am not running into another EoL soon.

Yze · Wednesday at 11:16 PM

bakul said:
Why not just stay with FreeBSD 13.5? Or switch to plan9 (9pi on Raspis). It will boot much faster as well! But some programming required!

moving with the times. Well did consider that but over time ports will become outdated and maybe one day we need more recent port versions. Actually exploring the options atm how much effort it needs or if we take the risk to stay for now on 13.5.

Phishfry · Thursday at 1:08 AM

Yze said:
? I call to remember there where some Pi2 with throttled PI3 CPU on it but not sure if that board is too wierd to run freebsd then

Absolutely you can run Pi2 v1.2 on FreeBSD AARCH64. Same CPU as Pi3a.
You just need to check your board versions for the AARCH64 variant.

There are 2 versions of the RPi 2B, the initial release was ARMv7 BCM2836, whilst version 1.2 is ARMv8 BCM2837.

diizzy · Thursday at 6:55 AM

I would rather strongly advice to avoid anything ancient and RK3288, just go for RK3399 which works well in general although I'm unsure about I2C support. You can find several supported boards by Pine64, Radxa etc. RPi lacks crypto extensions (older ones) and are also kinda abandoned in terms of BSD-support.

Yze · Thursday at 8:13 PM

So Zero 3E just arrived and thanks to the u-boot port it was running OOB in few minutes. Just with microSD and Ethernet power consumption looks promising:

Booted up FreeBSD 14.3 aarch64:

Ethernet 1000mbit/s ~1.44W idle
Ethernet 100mbit/s ~1.23W idle

That's is pretty much I was looking for so awesome replacement for Pi1, not to speak how much better/power that tiny board offers.

By default I2C wasn't enabled for the RTC, and since it has more serials than Pi1 have activated UART4 too:

applying DTB overlay '/boot/dtb/overlays/rk3568-i2c3-m0.dtb'
applying DTB overlay '/boot/dtb/overlays/ds3231-rtc-i2c3.dtb'
applying DTB overlay '/boot/dtb/overlays/rk3568-uart4-m1.dtb'

Now, would have two USB devices to attach, and to avoid need of a HUB wanted to switch OTG port in host mode. Strangely DTB did not work:

applying DTB overlay '/boot/dtb/overlays/rk3568-dwc3-host.dtb'
failed to apply overlay: FDT_ERR_NOTFOUND

Even took the DTS from same Zero 3 sourcefiles as other three above. After some digging it seems Zero 3 first USB HUB is actually XHCI with reduced speed to 480mbit matchin USB 2.0 speed:

/boot/dtb/overlays/rk3568-host0_xhci.dtb size=0x241
[...]

root@zero3E:~ # usbconfig
ugen1.1: <XHCI root HUB Synopsys> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=SUPER (5.0Gbps) pwr=SAVE (0mA)
ugen0.1: <XHCI root HUB Synopsys> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=SUPER (5.0Gbps) pwr=SAVE (0mA)

now both USB-C ports can attach usb devices, however OTG port remains max speed 480 while other can go up to 5gbits for those who have interest on it. As I haven't found anywhere resource how to enable host mode for OTG port on the Radax Zero 3E (probably 3W) here is the DTS files I have crafted together in the last hour after reading Zero 3 source dtsi code:

create a new file in /boot/dtb/overlays/rk3568-host0_xhci.dts

// ZERO 3E USB OTG
/dts-v1/;
/plugin/;

/ {
metadata {
title = "Set OTG port to Host mode";
compatible = "rockchip,rk3566", "rockchip,rk3568";
category = "misc";
exclusive = "usb_host0_xhci-dr_mode";
description = "Set OTG port to Host mode.
Use this when you want to connect USB devices.";
};
};

&usb_host0_xhci {
dr_mode = "host";
status = "okay";
};

once saved, compile it with:

dtc -I dts -O dtb -b0 -@ -o rk3568-host0_xhci.dtb rk3568-host0_xhci.dts

Then enable it /boot/loader.conf. In my example for all 4 DTB's the added lines look like:

fdt_overlays="rk3568-host0_xhci.dtb,rk3568-i2c3-m0.dtb,ds3231-rtc-i2c3.dtb,rk3568-uart4-m1.dtb"
ds3231_load=YES

Hope this may find someone else useful. And thanks all for sharing your experience with other arm64 boards. Now I have only one hurdle to overcome, while that Zero 3E is really neat small board, it somewhat doesn't really fit into anything that was using before Pi layout format. Still thinking of getting a Rock 3c but if that really has same power profile as the zero? Maybe someone could measure what Rock 3c consumes with mircoSD only after booting fresh 14.3 or 15.0 aarch64 image.

Thanks everyone!

covacat · Thursday at 8:27 PM

do you have cpu frequency control / powerd running ?

Yze · Thursday at 8:35 PM

covacat said:
do you have cpu frequency control / powerd running ?

I kept the default:

sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq=900
dev.cpu.0.freq: 816 -> 816

still need to fiddle with powerd not sure if it does have a suitable profile for Zero 3E at all. Did upgrade Zero 3E to 15.0-ALPHA5 as I had issues with Ethernet eqos0 loosing connection once change media or state up/down as well it seems it has a floating mac address. So measures above where done on 15.0 at last.