Bounties, compatibility, and community info
Since I started my main project, Ive learned a whole load of things. I do my best to share what I've learned, and particularly recently, I've been steering people towards cheaper boards where I can.
This isn't some misguided crusade to keep the higher ram ones on the shelf for myself, I'm just a firm believer that outside of rising memory costs, we should be putting more effort into optimisation. It's especially relevant in a space like this, where so many builds are fuelled by nostalgia, and the things we're trying to run (writer decks, PDAs, emulation machines for old consoles particularly) often do have low compute power requirements.
I also think that the whole overkill thing is only a small part of the problem. There are I think two other issues that I want to address:
documentation for boards outside of the raspberry pi isn't brilliant. For RPI, you can find most compatibility out fairly easily. Stores specifically advertise how to get things running on raspberry pis (including which models), but outside of that, you're on your own, which means that if you find a non-rpi board with some specific features that'd be a perfect fit, it's a crapshoot as to whether or not it'll also be compatible with whatever else you want to do, be it with software or peripherals (screens especially), and requires experimentation, which is prohibitatively expensive.
because the projects under the cyberdeck umbrella are so diverse, there's no easy way to contribute to some wiki. For example, if I'm using 10 peripherals in my project, of which 3 or 4 I've had to do some custom work to make it do what I want, how do I know which of those things is worth writing up, and how do I write it up in a way that other people could easily find it _and more crucially_ figure out how to adjust it for their own uses? I only have so many hours of free time in a day, and I have my own aims with documentation, which might be very frustrating for someone 10 years down the line looking for solutions in old posts (I'm sure we've been there).
I'd like to propose a solution.
a community spreadsheet of SBCs. One index containing all logged SBCs with a general feature rundown. One page per SBC with more detailed info, and listing compatibility with features and peripherals. I2c sensors for example should well be compatible with just about any SBC. What about compute module baseboards? Screens? Software functionality? How many people here have been put off by lack of sleep mode? How many people here have managed to get sleep mode working, but didnt have the time or outreach to say how?
as you learn how to work with all this equipment, it becomes your normal baseline of knowledge. Figuring out what things other people don't know, AND don't know how to find is not easy at all. My solution here is a bounty system. This is tried and tested, and it's also a nice way to compensate people who've spent a bit more money so that you don't have to. There are a heap of boards I'd love to sub out my cm4 with, but I don't, because they cost twice as much as when I started out, and I can't change some critical parts of the design. I'm willing to bet there are others in the same boat.
I don't know that I'll get round to it today, but I'd love to kick things off myself if we can get a sheet or wiki pinned, and have people contribute as much as they can early on.
I'd also like to kick off the bounties if anyone has the parts to come and claim them and it's allowed. (mods, if you're listening, is there some bounty system that works over reddit? I'm not talking about gold, I want to pay people real money for information I need so that I dont have to spend more money to find it out myself, and I want other people to be able to do that too).
$20 for proof of a waveshare 6.25" dsi screen working with any rockchip 3588 or 3588s board. Additional $10 if you're using a compute module with these chips, and the carrier board you're using is a nano baseboard b
$10 for proof of sub 1 watt sleep mode in debian on any non raspberry pi zero form factor board. Additional $5 if that board has mipi dsi output. Additional $5 for some power draw measurements. If this required work to achieve, please show your working
$15 for a detailed table of power profiling on an orange pi zero 3w
Happy to pay with PayPal or any other protected payment method. Show your info first though, and may the mods strike me down and not allow me to be seen here again if I don't pay up (iirc there might be some service they use on xdadevelopers to collect bounties ahead of information coming out, so I need to look into that if people are happy with that).
Please also note, the point of these is to advertise shortfalls in community information. Once you've provided the information - and that's as much information as you're allowed to share, you're agreeing it's open source as far as it's allowed to be (I.e. please don't go open sourcing proprietary information, as much as I'd love to meet rogue members of the mipi foundation, I don't think turning into another warthunder type forum is what this community needs).
Lastly, you may also be eyeing this up and thinking "easy money, I've got links to this info, so this is just an expensive google". I can tell you with 99% certainty right now that it's absolutely possible to use a radxa cm5 with a waveshare nano baseboard b. I've found two reddit posts, and a random forum guide (can't remember which forum, but im sure I've got it bookmarked), and I'm more than happy to pay for someone else's googling - provided they have first hand evidence, detailed documentation, and they are happy for this to be publicly available information after a one time payment.
Once you factor in time spent hunting down this information, documenting your evidence, typing up your notes, and formatting everything, more likely than not, you'll have spent at least 30-60 minutes working. At which point, the money I've offered may even be less than minimum wage in some instances, or your regular hourly wage or fee for such work. I may not be open to some link that says "yes it can be done" I think just about every orange pi product page mentions sleep mode, but I am absolutely open to raising the price if needed, after all, running these experiments myself would cost me my time in addition to the cost of parts.