Axzez Inteceptor

Quote from mi-hol

Please provide the measured power consumption of above hardware.

Only with this data a comparison can be made.

Otherwise its just arguing.

As I said, I don't want to argue, but I just wanted to understand why the two solutions are not comparable.

There is a noticeable difference in the cost of consumption, OK, I already knew that, since I have 3 other Raspberry PIs.

However, in a production environment, the cost difference of a single device is not as important as it could be if it is activated at home.

Also for availability, it is not just a current problem.

However, regardless of opinion, availability is now given "after August".

I'll wait.

Quote from ryecoaaron

Availability doesn't mean anything.

It does if you're the one selling the board of topic. I ordered 2 yesterday, but now I think I'm going to have to cancel that order as everyone is stating late September. Some places, like Microcenter, the sales rep. said they might not bother restocking them until next year... it's just January 11th!!!!

Give us review when you get the board, let us know what we missed :-P.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll let the others know!

Order one and it's scheduled to March so, still not able to make any detail reports about it.

All I know is that the support I've received via email as been spotless.

From my part, thumbs up to them.

Already got my 8Gb RAM CM4 (found one in Portugal although overkill because it's the WiFi and 32Gb eMMC model but was the only one available).

The purpose will be to migrate the 3 Pis (maybe all 4, if I decide to also remove the LibreELEC/Kodi from the TV) I have running into it so I can reduce further the power waste.

Although it's and added cost, the idea of getting an AIO mini(micro) ITX and get it on my living room, doesn't appeal in any way.

I think it would be nice if one makes a 3D printable footprint and backplate to mount this board in a standard micro-ATX or mini-ITX case. That way things migth became cheaper to get, or even free, if we consider using old stuff laying around.

But I am resigned that I won't see one of these so soon in Brazil.

Best regards

Quote from ryecoaaron

They already offer this - https://www.axzez.com/product-page/interceptor-board-adapter

Nice, but I still miss the backplate.

Best regards

Quote from Crawling Chaos

Nice, but I still miss the backplate.

Do you have the measurements? Grab some aluminum flashing, a chisel and some wood to punch out your own. The flashing can also be used for the adapter, although you'll need your own standoffs.

Quote from olduser

Do you have the measurements? Grab some aluminum flashing, a chisel and some wood to punch out your own. The flashing can also be used for the adapter, although you'll need your own standoffs.

Better not in my case. My OMV runs in a mini-ITX system and I have no intention to move it to a new hardware setup. Besides, as I have stated before, to buy these sort of things is not very affordable where I live, due to customs fees and exchange rates.

Best regards

Quote from Crawling Chaos

Better not in my case. My OMV runs...

Sorry, I thought you had an interest in this.

Does anyone know the lifetime writes of the eMMC on the CM4? While I need a 8GB RAM+WiFi version (nothing on rpilocator.com yet), the software I will run on it might/probably will require a lot of writes. I've read NVMe can be used too.

I'm afraid that corruption will happen too often. All of my usages in this realm have been with STMXX/ESPXX/Mega/etc. and the EEPROM's don't last long there so I'm wondering about MMC in general, especially with a full on "computer" (or at least a "SBC").

EDIT: Can you run sqlite in WAL without worry or is in :MEMORY: or some tmpfs approach mandatory?

Hello everyone. Sorry for my late participation here. Shannon from Axzez LLC here. A few notes:

1. There is an IO shield created by Jeff Geerling (thank you again Jeff): https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5252973 This along with our Mini-ITX Adapter should have you in pretty good shape for nearly any Mini ITX case.
2. We have an installation option where you can install the OS to any of the SATA drives. We still boot from either USB or eMMC, but the real work happens on the HDD/SSD. You can then still use the other 4 SATA drives for OMV. This should take the stress off of the eMMC if that is your concern.
3. For shipping to Brazil, we don't offer this yet, but the main reason we don't ship to a particular country is because we don't yet know/understand the laws for shippng there. If you want to work with us Crawling Chaos, we would certainly be open to that. Just email us at sales@axzez.com and we can start up a conversation. In some cases, we just ship it to you and you handle any additional costs (customs/taxes) upon receipt.
4. Just a quick update on the status of boards expected to arrive at the end of March. There was a COVID lock-down in Shenzhen, China (manufacturer home) that cost us a week and a half. The last message I received from our PCBA manufacturer was "Hi Shannon, the estimated shipping date is next Monday [4/4/2022], because for this order there are many parts that need to be arranged in the wave soldering line[.]". Depending on DHL, it can take 5-7 days to get here. Then we will test and mail the boards at the end of each day until all are sent.
5. We have another batch of boards coming near the end of April, btw. We're not setting up pre-order for these.

We really appreciate all of you and look forward to hearing about and seeing your Interceptor projects!

Where is the OS image for this on the homepage? The image existed a couple months back but now the download page and other pages are empty for me.

https://www.axzez.com/interceptor-os.img.gz

Quote from ryecoaaron

I use the Raspberry Pi OS image (64bit). The only thing that doesn't work is the network switch. Very stable.

I finally got mine to tinker (damn Portuguese Customs )

Have been franken-hacking some equipment to set everything prior to move everything on it.

Have you tried to use the kernel patch and swconfig to put the network switch to use on the Interceptor?

I would like some pointers on how to do it (don't really know how) and if I even need to have the extra 3 ports for my case scenario.

As for another issue, I'm using a microPSU 120w attached to a PS 12v/120w

I can't, for the life of me, shut it down. I trust this is a hardware problem since the microPSU doesn't have a +5VSB signal to switch off compared to a "normal" computer PSU.

Going to dissassemble everything again and use a 450w ATX PSU to see if it behaves differently.

In the meantime, I'm taking pics and notes of what I've been doing and when it's finally working as it should, I'll post them on the forum.

On a side note, I was quite surprised to see that the CM4 temperature, without any cooling (not even thermal paste) and running idle was showing ~60ºC

Mounted a small 12v fan circa 30cm away blowing air and the temp came down to ~40ºC

Going to hack a 5v Pi ICY Tower cooler to see how it will show as passive and as active.

The Interceptor Board, is looking really promising,

Quote from ryecoaaron

I'm not sure what else you would use this for.

I too don't have any use to it (ATM), Was just wondering if you had tried it.

Quote from ryecoaaron

My regular psu works fine although I don't shut it down normally.

My server will be always on also but this is just to test ALL possibilities.

Not only that but in case of a UPS shutdown and the UPS doesn't power cycle, all it takes is for the wife to push a button to start it again.

But now, I just found the hard way that I can't edit the bootloader while running the RaspiOS from the eMMC SOURCE:

Quote

N.B. The Compute Module 4 ROM never runs recovery.bin from SD/EMMC and the rpi-eeprom-update service is not enabled by default. This is necessary because the EMMC is not removable and an invalid recovery.bin file would prevent the system from booting. This can be overridden and used with self-update mode where the bootloader can be updated from USB MSD or Network boot. However, self-update mode is not an atomic update and therefore not safe in the event of a power failure whilst the EEPROM was being updated.

And since the Interceptor doesn't have the jumper to set the eMMC to RW, I need to redo the install to a USB stick and try to set the flags on the eeprom to shut it down as explained on Axzez.

I'll tag Shanzez since this also concerns them.

Maybe it's done with the Axzez OS straight away but I didn't ran it (the Axzez OS and was hoping I didn't had to)

From what I understand, even with the Axzez OS, it work's because the OS runs from USB and not from the eMMC.

Quote from ryecoaaron

I have this heatsink on it and just a 120mm case fan

I have similar (with 2 tiny fans but..., thanks for the tip) and going to use it, although now it's running <39ºC because I reworked the assemble: