RPi Alternative

Pis are really scarce and expensive, especially the 4. so I was looking at alternatives, and I came across a small computer, Libre Computer Board,is it capable of running OctoPi, says it's as capable as a pi, and even though the reviews say it doesn't work, I didn't see anyone using it for OctoPi. Has it been successful for anyone? I have an E3V2 by the way.

A very similar topic opened yesterday:

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The board you mention will probably work with a manual install of OctoPrint (after you install a compatible operating system).

OctoPi is a Raspberry Pi image with OctoPrint pre-installed. This won't work on the board you mentioned.

If you can find an RPi 3B, 3B+, or Zero 2 for a reasonable price, all three will run OctoPi / OctoPrint.

Hi,Try the Orange Pie zero made in China. That's what I use. At present, it can operate stably. And can support WiFi connection

are there Orange Pi Zeros from other countries that cause problems?

I think he meant "Try the Orange Pi zero, which is made in China.", not "Try the Orange Pi zero, but only the ones made in China."

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Sorry, I use Baidu translation, which may not be accurate for my meaning

Because I'm in China and I use made in China. I use Baidu translation, which may not accurately express my meaning

Alrighty :slight_smile:

I'm in England and frequently use 'made in China', as does a much of the world.
I note that on AliExpress these are about half the price that Amazon lists at. Delivery time is the same and overall they look to be a well specified board for the price.
Which OS are you using ??

I have never used the board you mentioned. But I used another solution: a TV box. You can find some TV boxes that can be rooted (foreign trade TV boxes are all rooted), then try to install the armbian system, and finally you can manually install Octoprint. If you are in mainland China, you can contact me dgpower AT qq.com

BTW,The price of the TV box is only less than 1/3 of the Raspberry Pi with the same performance. The only downside is the lack of GPIO

I have two Opi zero 2 and cant get either to boot in general rather successfully put opi on them. I do have an orange pi 4lts that i was able get to boot but have yet to have any luck with octoprint.

I have just abandoned the idea that using an RPi for OctoPrint is a good thing. Its not the right tool for the job. Additionally, they are now more expensive than a lot of other options that can run Linux with little to no additional effort (I think less). For me the RPi has always presented as finicky and unreliable for an always on appliance. They are really not meant for this. I have found that using a simple off the shelf mini PC for around $110 US has a lot more power and it is stable(Not running from an sd card, does not have power supply issues, Heat issues etc.).

Display options include small HDMI driven touch screens as well as SSH. I can see where some will say what about the IO. You can do most(all) things with MQTT/http and a small inexpensive iot device. Likely you can integrate that with OctoPrint by using on of the many plugins out there.

An other thing to consider is that one can also use a very inexpensive USB camera $10-20 with really good results. I find that by the time you do all the case making and accessory buying needed for a RPi, you spend a lot more than you think just in things. Now consider your time mucking with something that is not reliable.

I am currently running 6 instances with a similar setup. It is very rare that I even think about the compute devices.

The Allwinner H2/3 often killing the sd card.
I would not use one of those boards.

我有两个建议的替代方案。一个是利用闲置的安卓手机,要求安卓内核大于4.4,安装octo4a这个app就行
但是这个方案需要解决手机只有一个USB口,要同时兼顾接入打印机和充电的问题。所以我推荐另外一个方案,用TV-BOX,将它刷新为armbian固件,然后就可以手工安装octoprint。

第一个手机的方案几乎不用钱(只需要一条Y型电缆,一头接手机,一头接打印机,一头接充电器)。

I have now replaced the host computer. Embedded computers that have been eliminated are now used. The CPU model is J1900, and the system uses ubuntu (if you want to use it normally on ubuntu, you need a lot of programming, but at least I succeeded, and I summarized a Chinese version of the tutorial, it should be available). It has 2G of running memory and 16G of storage space. After installing octoprint, the usage rate is below 20%. The average price of this embedded computer on the second-hand market in China is about 150 RMB, which is about 22 US dollars in US dollars. The above uses Google Translate

I don't have pi zero2, but I successfully installed opi on pi 2B. There have been no problems in use. But now I have replaced the pi 2B. Use a used embedded computer. See my other reply for details. The above uses Google Translate

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I just received a Libre-Computer AML-S905X-CC which reasonably priced and available. Before I deploy it for its intended use, I decided to install and configure OctoPrint.

It has about the same computing power as a Raspberry Pi 3B. Four USB 2.0 ports and 100mbit Ethernet but no built in WiFi. I'm using a USB WiFi adapter. It does have an optional eMMC slot in addition to the microSD slot. It does not have a camera interface like the Raspberry Pi so a USB camera will be the only option.

You will probably need an HDMI monitor and a USB keyboard to get things started. I installed Raspbian Bullseye (with a desktop) but there is a Lite image available as well.

Once I enabled SSH (via raspi-config) I removed the monitor and keyboard and finished configuring the system via SSH (PuTTY) and SCP (via WinSCP). I installed xrdp after I discovered that vnc requires a license.

OctoPrint was installed via this script.

There are some bundles available from https://www.loverpi.com. I purchased a case, a heatsink, and a 32GB eMMC (5.x). Getting the OS on the eMMC was a bit of a challenge but once I found the correct instructions, I was successful.

Another relatively new alternative is an Orange Pi 3B. I bought this one from Amazon with a 256GB eMMC but there are other options like this which includes a power supply.

I installed Debian-Bookworm (12) but Bullseye (11) is also available.

OctoPrint was installed using the octoprint_deploy script