# No sticky for well-supported devices?



## poorandunlucky (Jul 18, 2017)

What's the best supported embedded devices out there?

Some things, like DNS, or maybe even Firewall would do well as embedded devices...  Low-power, compartmentalization, maybe even scaleable... idk...

I'm kind of interested, tho...  What's the basics to know, what's some good devices, what's the overall deal, experiences, pros, cons?

What do You do with FreeBSD on an "embeded"/micro, or _embeded_ device?


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## SirDice (Jul 18, 2017)

poorandunlucky said:


> What's the best supported embedded devices out there?


Probably anything ARM based. ARM (both 32 and 64 bit) is currently still at the Tier 2 stage but there's work being done to get it to a Tier 1 status. MIPS is also a popular embedded platform but that's still at Tier 3. 

Explanation of the different tiers: 18. Support for Multiple Architectures

If you want to start your best bet is a Raspberry Pi 1 or 2. Those should be fully working and are easy to come by, the Pi 3 is still being worked on so it may or may not work properly yet.


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## trev (Jul 19, 2017)

Is the current Raspberry Pi 2 v1.2 supported? It uses an ARM Cortex-A53 and Broadcom BCM2837 vs the original RPi2 which uses an ARM Cortex-A7 and Broadcom BCM2836. Unfortunately it is simply sold as an "RPi2 Model B".


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## Jov (Jul 22, 2017)

+1 for arm, I use raspberry b,b+,b2, all work well for FreeBSD. I have several orangepi zero, orangepi one board as well.

I use the old raspberry b(the oldest type, 1 core/256MB ram) as my host router/vpn gateway, works great!

my home router:

```
root@rpi-b:~ # uname -a
FreeBSD rpi-b 11.1-BETA1 FreeBSD 11.1-BETA1 #0 r319728: Fri Jun  9 14:15:37 UTC 2017     [email]root@releng2.nyi.freebsd.org[/email]:/usr/obj/arm.armv6/usr/src/sys/RPI-B  arm
root@rpi-b:~ # uptime 
 4:31PM  up 38 days, 18:15, 1 users, load averages: 0.06, 0.10, 0.10
```


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## Easter (Aug 2, 2017)

The UDOO X86 is a pretty decent platform to run FreeBSD from. I'm running 11.0-RELEASE on the basic model, with a cheapo M.2 ssd, and an Atheros M.2 wifi card for network connectivity. I initially envisioned this being a replacement for my raspberry pi, which I use as a hardware ad blocker (it functions as my internal network's domain name server, and has a huge list of blocked domains that are known spammers/ad servers). However I haven't set it up to do that yet.

It's a little on the expensive side because it uses an Intel/x86 SOC, and is ridiculously overdesigned. But being a 64-bit x86 system with a real time clock, it runs FreeBSD GENERIC amd64 great.


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## SirDice (Aug 2, 2017)

trev said:


> Is the current Raspberry Pi 2 v1.2 supported? It uses an ARM Cortex-A53 and Broadcom BCM2837 vs the original RPi2 which uses an ARM Cortex-A7 and Broadcom BCM2836. Unfortunately it is simply sold as an "RPi2 Model B".


Yeah, not too happy they kept the "2" model and changed the CPU. Support for the Pi 2 v1.2 should be on the same level as the Pi 3. It's being worked on and should work with -CURRENT. Not sure about 11.1, I think there's some support already but not everything may work yet.


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## Phishfry (Aug 2, 2017)

The Raspberry Pi2 version 1.2 does not work well last I checked on -CURRENT.
It seems to boot with the RPi3 images I made but no console output or HDMI.
There must be small differences between RPi2v1.2 and RPi3
I have seen on IRC that its being worked on.


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## SirDice (Aug 2, 2017)

I really need to get me some new Raspberry Pis. I only have a Pi 1 model B and a Pi 2 (the 'old' v1.1 version). I've tested FreeBSD on them several times since it became available and so far it has been working just fine. They are quite slow though, running `make buildworld` really brought me back to the 486 - FreeBSD 3.x era when it took more than a day to complete. I still have fond memories building XFree86 and completing three days later. It's funny to see people complaining about 600 ports taking 2 hours to build nowadays 

Has anybody tried the Pi Zero yet?


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## ralphbsz (Aug 3, 2017)

SirDice said:


> They are quite slow though, running `make buildworld` really brought me back to the 486 - FreeBSD 3.x era when it took more than a day to complete.


Were you using a local file system on SD card?  I was watching compiles, and they were *not* CPU limited in the slightest.  We know the SD card file system is laughably slow.  I tried my RPi3 as an NFS client, and even with 100baseT Ethernet it is faster than the SD card.

Unfortunately, the RPi3 project is on the back burner right now (the front burner is yard work and building a garden shed).  I may have a monitoring project that would be perfect for a Pi Zero W, because it needs very little (just reading two ADCs every second), but it needs wireless ethernet (which means Raspbian, not FreeBSD, unfortunately).


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## SirDice (Aug 3, 2017)

ralphbsz said:


> Were you using a local file system on SD card? I was watching compiles, and they were *not* CPU limited in the slightest. We know the SD card file system is laughably slow. I tried my RPi3 as an NFS client, and even with 100baseT Ethernet it is faster than the SD card.


Yeah, I was doing everything locally. I might give NFS a shot, see how that works out.


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## French Fries (Aug 25, 2017)

If you would like a modern computer in an embedded format (tiny board), try the PC Engines APU2/3. They offer an x86_64 quad-core, 4GB of RAM, SSD disk and three real network cards and consume around 12W-16W. In fact, this is a real computer. Works perfectly for Apache/database server. If you are buying a PC Engines board, buy directly from their shop, it is cheaper.

On the converse, to study system, ARM is very power efficient and works nice. I am running a couple of ARM boards (BBB, Raspberry Pie) and they would fit well in a firewall environment or to provide a service (DHCP, DNSSEC, etc ...). Though  ARM boards lack a good SSD disc subsystem, that make them hard to use with databases and web servers. But this will come, hopefuly. The interest is the very-low consumption.

To play, you may also buy the older version of PC Engines board, the ALIX2D13, which can be found at low prices on eBay, but sells very quickly. These are very resistant boards, which cope with any climate, even hot-jungle-climate and are nearly unbreakable. They consume around 8W-12W. no SSD.

It is sometimes funny to study the price of electricity. In France, it is around 1W/month = 0,10 EUR. So 100W=10 EUR a month.

You may also look at Supermicro computers sold on eBay. Some sell at very low pricing and are monsters, with recent and decent hardware. Put an ARM board on their serial console and use them only on demand to lower consumption. Drop everything in a garage and you are done.

I agree that something can be done around ARM with plenty of RAM and Gig ethernet. But if you need a database server, just don't think about it. The APU2 board is around 100EUR and cost twice as much as a Beaglebone and is WAY more powerful for web server/database.

Therefore, depending on your needs:
* Internet/database => APU
* Network devices / Embedded projects => ARM


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## ronaldlees (Sep 1, 2017)

French Fries said:


> If you would like a modern computer in an embedded format (tiny board), try the PC Engines APU2/3. They offer an x86_64 quad-core, 4GB of RAM, SSD disk and three real network cards and consume around 12W-16W.
> ....



For me, using ARM devices means I'm on battery power usually.  But, some of my software needs x86.  So, thinking along the lines of what you said, I purchased a Vortex x86 (1 GHz) board that uses only 2 watts!   It runs FreeBSD in text mode moderately well, but is too slow and short of memory for X windows (mostly it's a short memory issue).  

Still, it's hard to get around the computing-power / power-in-watts relationship, unfortunately.   For real horsepower using ARM, the XU4 is the only thing I have that can crank the wheel fast enuf to suit me ...


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## ralphbsz (Sep 1, 2017)

What is that x86 software that you need so much?  Is it something that can be run as an independent task without Xwindows, or does it need graphics and a complete OS install?  One option might be to find an x86 instruction set emulator, run it on ARM, and boot a tiny virtual machine in it.  Probably not a production-worthy approach but more a "science project", but it might work.


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## ronaldlees (Sep 2, 2017)

ralphbsz said:


> What is that x86 software that you need so much?  Is it something that can be run as an independent task without Xwindows, or does it need graphics and a complete OS install?  One option might be to find an x86 instruction set emulator, run it on ARM, and boot a tiny virtual machine in it.  Probably not a production-worthy approach but more a "science project", but it might work.



I have old nautical software for the PC.   I have a ton of packaged software archives for various x86 FreeBSD versions, some of which haven't yet been made to work on ARM devices.  But, I'm quickly weaning myself from x86 altogether, and in another couple years, I may be able to cut the lines, so to speak.


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