Hi,
I like to build an ARM SBC based server. What are proven boards and which of them have low specified SOC. My intention is to use something like a Pi zero, but is 512 Mb or 1 Gb sufficient? Also, what is a good low recourse Linux build to use? Initially, it will be used with the IC-718.
Best 73’ and holiday greetings,
RonL
Hi RonL,
I have been running wfview on my Inovato Quadra (a $35 SBC). I’ve experimented with both the command-line wfserver version and the GUI wfview that we are all familair with. I’ve also recently tried the IC-7300 as well as my usual IC-718. It works really well. With the 7300 and the spectrum data, CPU usage for the GUI version is about 25% with an active opus client. CPU usage for the command-line wfserver is even lower at about 10-11%.
The Quadra is not a beefy SBC. Performance is similar to the Raspberry Pi 3, I am told. Given the 10-11% CPU usage, I suspect even a Pi 2 would be ok.
–E
de W6EL
With regards to ram, the quadra has 2 GiB ram, but I see that memory usage, with the full xfce GUI desktop running and the command-line server running, is 443 MiB. htop reports that wfserver’s resident memory size is 28KiB and shared memory is 19KiB. Yes, not even a MB.
A pure-server install without a desktop would of course use even less total memory.
Storage space increased by about 100MB when I installed all the required libraries and tools to build wfview. If you’re cross-compiling you would need even less since you wouldn’t need all these developer tools and libraries.
–E
Hi Elliot,
Thanks for the interresting tip about the Inovato quadra. I found a clone for €34 here in Europe as the original is not on sale here.
(https://www.amazon.de/-/nl/gp/product/B07T2H4FFF/ref=ask_ql_qh_dp_hza)
Which Linux distro did you mount on it? The Inovato shows only an Armbian version available. Anything I must respect to get an Linux OS mounted and the XFview software running? Are the guidelines on doing a factory restore on the Inovato forum sufficient?
Hoping to get things running soon.
73’ Ron
on2ron
armbian soud be fine Ron
Mine is running armbian based on debian bullseye.
I wrote it all up here:
https://wfview.org/wfview-user-manual/inexpensive-remote-server/
And here:
https://wfview.org/wfview-user-manual/headless-server/
I haven’t needed to reflash or restore yet — I used the OS outbid the box. You’ll have that challenge with the box you linked to, but I think it will go fine. There is a tutorial on the forum somewhere.
Let us know how it goes.
—E
de W6EL