[fpc-other] Anyone using Orange PI

Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl.fpc-other at telemetry.co.uk
Wed Mar 1 15:31:23 CET 2017


On 01/03/17 12:30, Andreas Berger wrote:
> In our previous episode, Mark Morgan Lloyd said:
>>> I agree. Most of our RPis are actually running Debian, but in extremis
>>> it's always possible to roll back to Raspbian as a baseline
>>> configuration.
>>>
>>> There are of course other small boards: Olimex, Odroid and now Asus.
>>> However RPi does offer a fairly flexible and cost-effective range, and
>>> unless the OP is considering shipping hundreds rather than 10s of boards
>>> I suggest that getting onto both the Linux learning curve and one for
>>> minority hardware is quite simply not cost-effective.
>> The problem is that rpi has no fast storage interface (like SATA),
>> some of
>> the more expensive orangepis have sata. (though I'm not entirely sure
>> if it
>> is not bridged via usb)
> Storage is one of the factors the HW developers mentioned. The system
> using the Pi will be doing a LOT of information logging. I personally
> don't know if it is a factor since all log info in coming in on a 10MBit
> ethernet so it shouldn't overload the file system. We have a project
> using a Blackfin that save data (in similar proportions) on a SDCard.

I've got a normally very cautious engineer colleague who for the last 
two or three years has been saving CCTV frames onto an SD-Card without 
problem. I think he's still some way from filling it.

My understanding is that there are two issues that need to be considered:

i)  Each cell on that sort of device can only be written a certain 
number of times before its performance degrades. For FAT etc. that 
includes the directory area, which will be getting updated in situ even 
if the remainder of the filesystem is only being written (i.e. to virgin 
blocks).

ii) A power failure during a write or update is particularly risky.

So far I've had an eMMC module and a couple of (identical) thumb drives 
fail during normal operation, i.e. not through power removal.

The article below, from the well-respected Bunnie Huang, illustrates 
some interesting problems affecting what would be expected to be quality 
devices. https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]


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