Looking to ditch Amazon Firestick sideloaded with Chome for UI3 purposes. Which Rasberry?

[Holbs]

As some folks know, I was in a rush to get some home automated security camera + outdoor PIR on home security notifications to auto-turn on my smart tv and display UI3. I had a Amazon Firestick on hand and found a way to make it work.
However, once a month, the Firestick throws itself back to the main Amazon screen, or can't load UI3 for memory issue or this or that. So now, I am looking to replace with a Rasberry.
I know a Rasberry Pi 3 or 4 would do it, but seems overkill to only display UI3.
What of the Rasberry Nano or whatever else is out there for $20-$25?

 

[Teken]

As some folks know, I was in a rush to get some home automated security camera + outdoor PIR on home security notifications to auto-turn on my smart tv and display UI3. I had a Amazon Firestick on hand and found a way to make it work.
However, once a month, the Firestick throws itself back to the main Amazon screen, or can't load UI3 for memory issue or this or that. So now, I am looking to replace with a Rasberry.
I know a Rasberry Pi 3 or 4 would do it, but seems overkill to only display UI3.
What of the Rasberry Nano or whatever else is out there for $20-$25?

If this deployment is intended for the long run it makes sense to run this on a Raspberry Pi 4 with at least 4GB of RAM ~ 8GB even better. You will struggle to view anything on the current Pi Zero W2 as it uses the older RPI-3 quad core chip set and extremely limited 512MB of RAM.

A RPI-3 would be a good compromise but in my mind makes very little sense given the small difference in costs between the two units. That is until you go with the higher capacity RAM units that offer 4~8GB RAM that is still worth it.

 

[TonyR]

@Teken or others...I've been aware of Pi's for quite a while but never took the plunge.
For @Holbs 's need what about the Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop - Computer?
It's only $70 at Adafruit for the Pi in a keyboard.

For $100 you also get a 16GB SD card with O/S, a mouse, a micro-HDMI to HDMI cable, UL-listed 5VDC @ 3 amp power supply with type C USB plug and more, also at Adafruit.


Technical Details & Features:

• 1.8GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 CPU​

• 4GB LPDDR4-3200 DRAM​

• VideoCore VI graphics (OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan)​

• 4kp60 HEVC decode​

• True Gigabit Ethernet​

• 2 × USB 3.0 and 1 × USB 2.0 ports​

• 2 × micro-HDMI ports (1 × 4kp60 or 2 × 4kp30)​

• USB-C for input power, supporting 5V 3A operation​

• Raspberry Pi-compatible 40-pin horizontal GPIO connector​

 

[Teken]

@Teken or others...I've been aware of Pi's for quite a while but never took the plunge.
For @Holbs 's need what about the Raspberry Pi 400 Desktop - Computer?
It's only $70 at Adafruit.

For $100 you get a 16GB SD card with O/S, a mouse, a micro-HDMI to HDMI cable, UL-listed 5VDC @ 3 amp power supply with type C USB plug and more, also at Adafruit.


Technical Details & Features:

• 1.8GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 CPU​

• 4GB LPDDR4-3200 DRAM​

• VideoCore VI graphics (OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan)​

• 4kp60 HEVC decode​

• True Gigabit Ethernet​

• 2 × USB 3.0 and 1 × USB 2.0 ports​

• 2 × micro-HDMI ports (1 × 4kp60 or 2 × 4kp30)​

• USB-C for input power, supporting 5V 3A operation​

• Raspberry Pi-compatible 40-pin horizontal GPIO connector​

Great system but if you're looking for a small form factor and easy placement a key board style computer is a little hard to hide or hang on to a wall.

The keyboard style system is absolutely great for kids or those who just need another computer to put around with. This whole global chip shortage has resulted in extremely limited supply while demand for the same is ever increasing. The lead time to just purchase a RPI board is anywhere from 4-18 months right now.

I was lucky enough to scoop up sixteen units in various capacities for a large project currently underway. The first wave arrived a few weeks ago as seen here.

The next wave came this week.

I'm hoping the last wave of RPI-4 @ 8GB RAM will arrive mid week. But had lots of time to image dozens of Micro SD, SSD, nVME, M.2 drives that span 128GB ~ 1TB.

 

[TonyR]

Great system but if you're looking for a small form factor and easy placement a key board style computer is a little hard to hide or hang on to a wall.

The keyboard style system is absolutely great for kids or those who just need another computer to put around with. This whole global chip shortage has resulted in extremely limited supply while demand for the same is ever increasing. The lead time to just purchase a RPI board is anywhere from 4-18 months right now.

True, but also probably good for someone like me ( a big kid) to get started with AND....they're in stock.

 

[pete_c]

What of the Rasberry Nano or whatever else is out there for $20-$25?

Here went cheap $50 Android TV box (4Gb RAM, BT, WLAN, Gb) and Octocore CPU. Wiped Android and replaced it with CoreElec.

You can find really cheapo $25 Android TV boxes on Ebay and all of them typically have WLAN, Ethernet, Bluetooth and run OS on an EMMC. 16Gb, 32Gb, 64Gb and 128Gb eMMC drives.

It is smaller than an RPi and is my standard STB now...streaming OTA TV from HD Homerun boxes, NAS music and videos, streaming services.

Then added a Kodi CCTV RTSP / ONVIF plugin that is a service with a full screen or multiple view cameras and a camera screen pop up on motion of the camera.

Built a combo automation box here using Armbian on another el cheapo TV box. IE: runs Home Assistant and Homeseer on Ubuntu 20.04 (Armbian)

I do have an RPi in the attic connected to a USB SDR downloading weather maps from NOAA satellites works nicely for a DIY NOAA satellite connection.

 

[Teken]

True, but also probably good for someone like me ( a big kid) to get started with AND....they're in stock.

I thought you meant for the OP! Yes, by all means that would be a great starter all in one.

 

[Teken]

What of the Rasberry Nano or whatever else is out there for $20-$25?

Here went cheap $50 Android TV box (4Gb RAM, BT, WLAN, Gb) and Octocore CPU. Wiped Android and replaced it with CoreElec.

You can find really cheapo $25 Android TV boxes on Ebay and all of them typically have WLAN, Ethernet, Bluetooth and run OS on an EMMC. 16Gb, 32Gb, 64Gb and 128Gb eMMC drives.

It is smaller than an RPi and is my standard STB now...streaming OTA TV from HD Homerun boxes, NAS music and videos, streaming services.

Then added a Kodi CCTV RTSP / ONVIF plugin that is a service with a full screen or multiple view cameras and a camera screen pop up on motion of the camera.

Built a combo automation box here using Armbian on another el cheapo TV box. IE: runs Home Assistant and Homeseer on Ubuntu 20.04 (Armbian)

I do have an RPi in the attic connected to a USB SDR downloading weather maps from NOAA satellites works nicely for a DIY NOAA satellite connection.

Pete,

As always your insight and guidance is really appreciated. Now, you're going to make me spend money I don't have - again! I haven't check the hardware you mentioned but can / do they support the different flavors of Linux distros like Arch, Ubuntu, Kali, Wine, etc??

 

[pete_c]

Wine no.

That said I was able to run Windows XP on the second generation RPi.

That said I am using PlayOnLinux (which is Wine) on Intel based computers running Linux.

Rather than running a Windows VB on my Ubuntu Laptop to run Windows software use PlayOnLinux. Everything works that I have tried.

Have a read over at the Armbian web site.

Here trying to install mono on a micro router running OpenWRT (Lua). It's been done before. I am currently running a full Python package on it and it does well.

The tiny and cheap TV boxes have been reverse engineered and my preference is to run Linux rather than Android on them.

Here is a TV box that I am using to stream 4k from my home NAS.

~ # lscpu
Architecture:        aarch64
Byte Order:          Little Endian
CPU(s):              8
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-7
Thread(s) per core:  1
Core(s) per socket:  4
Socket(s):           2
Vendor ID:           ARM
Model:               4
Model name:          Cortex-A53
Stepping:            r0p4
CPU max MHz:         1512.0000
CPU min MHz:         100.0000
Flags:               fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 wp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tlsi vfpv4 idiva idivt

Used this one to test run Homeseer with Mono and or Home Assistant.

Here is a Rock 64 running Homeseer and Home Assistant with Armbian. (and Docker, MQTT broker)

|  _ \(_)_ __   ___ / /_ | || |
| |_) | | '_ \ / _ \ '_ \| || |_
|  __/| | | | |  __/ (_) |__   _|
|_|   |_|_| |_|\___|\___/   |_|
                               
Welcome to Armbian 21.08.6 Focal with Linux 5.10.60-sunxi64

System load:   23%               Up time:       7 days 7:57  
Memory usage:  40% of 1.94G      Zram usage:    13% of 0.97G      IP:           172.17.0.1 192.168.245.140 172.30.32.1
CPU temp:      39°C               Usage of /:    44% of 29G      

[ General system configuration (beta): armbian-config ]

I have a BeeLink BT3 TVBox with an Intel CPU and OS on a 64Gb eMMC. It was Windows 10. Wiped it and replaced it with Ubuntu Linux.

 

[JNDATHP]

We have one of these and it has been working great for a couple of years or more now.

It boots Win 10 with auto login and then runs Chrome in full screen kiosk mode pointed to UI3.

RCA 12.2 Inch Windows 10 Tablet/PC 64GB Storage HD Touch Screen | eBay

The unit is reloaded with the new firmware and all user data are removed.

www.ebay.com

 

[bradner]

I've been lucky having 5 FireTV's (not firesticks) running UI3 fantastically. Have to change the timeout to 0 so it doesn't go to a blank screen. They run 24/7 and only glitch out when my overtaxed BI computer (older i5 with 30+ cams) hiccups and hangs, not too often though that happens. My household acceptance factor reached a 52W high when I got them all working. I have one of them working where it autostarts Chrome and loads the UI3 when powered on but I can't get the other four to do that unfortunately. They're all different makes and sizes of FireTV's.