So now I’m reading up on getting the ODROID-C2… and upon a revist to Raspberry Pi, I’ve found out there was a new model of Raspberry Pi with a lot of competitive features… Raspberry Pi Model 3B+. Almost all the missing features you could have longed for from the previous Raspberry Pi models.
- Power over Ethernet (via additional HAT)
- USB boot
- Network Boot
- SD card no longer required to boot
20180814/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi
20180814/https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-plus/
Also intersting is that.nowadays Raspberry Pi has an official power supply. However, I wouldn’t recommend it simply due to its size, which means surely it must not be as efficient as the mass market smartphone power supplies.
20180814/https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-universal-power-supply/
So how to you setup network boot? You have to write a value to one-time programmable memory: Network boot is disabled by default. So once you enable it, you cannot disable it.
20180814/https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bootmodes/net_tutorial.md
So the ODROID-C2, is it obsolete? Well, looks like it. Raspberry Pi Model 3B+ has faster Gigabit Ethernet than ODROID-C2, though the CPU is still slower. Also, Raspberry Pi Model 3B+ looks like it might demand a little bit more power from its power supply: 2.5A is recommended over 2A.
But that’s not all. In the meantime, yet another powerful competitor board has come out, Asus Tinker Board. Alas, the main problem with this board, at least for my concerns, is that it consumes too much energy to get that compute power. So it’s a no-go.
20180814/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Tinker_Board 20180814/https://www.amazon.com/Tinker-Board-Quad-Core-connectivity-Motherboards/dp/B00FS83U42/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1534301016&sr=8-3&keywords=ASUS+Tinker+Board
Okay, now let’s take a careful look at power consumption.
20180814/DuckDuckGo raspberry pi 3 use 2a power supply
20180814/https://www.wirelesshack.org/what-is-a-good-power-supply-for-the-raspberry-pi-3.html
20180814/https://raspi.tv/2018/how-much-power-does-raspberry-pi-3b-use-power-measurements
Verdict: I think Raspberry Pi 3B+ consumes too much power for my taste, and unfortunately this is probably due to the Gigabit Ethernet adapter having a higher idle power consumption than the older, slower 100 Mbps adapters. With that in mind, I would go for a slower Ethernet interface. Finally, the question comes down to this: Raspberry Pi Zero with USB Ethernet adapter or Raspberry Pi B+? I think there may be wasted power overhead if you use a physically separate adapter compared to the one built onto the board. Besides, both adapters connect via USB, so you might as well go for the more efficient out of the two.