Hi, in a previous video you've seen these Orange Pi ones that I've got.
I've got like ten of these things for use as potentially a Raspberry Pi, in this case orange pi, uh, little ARM supercomputer.
And these are actually quite popular projects with where people get Raspberry Pi's and cluster them all together.
you know it's so to speak make a super
little ARM supercomputer with them i
mean it's not nearly as powerful as you
know the latest modern Intel CPUs and
things like that but it's fun and this
one in particular this is the Orange
Pi 1 model and it's got a 4 core ARM
processor in it and it's not a bad
little basis generally speaking faster
than the Raspberry Pi and it does a
reasonable job and it's fun but most
importantly it's cheap this is only 10
US dollars for a 4 core 1.2 gig or 1.3
gig is it
I'm ARM cortex-m processor in it so it's
a little bit of a beast to especially for
the money
ten bucks and so I thought it'd be fun
to make a little are WOPR computer
yes I might even not sticking inside
like I something that looks like the
water that would be fantastic
so i thought i had started out with just
a video outlining my concept art for
this thing I haven't built it yet but
hey let's have a look at the ideas
because it could be quite interesting
now quite a lot of people have built
these at Raspberry Pi cluster or
supercomputers before and they generally
all that involves is basically a case
you know some people laser cut their own
acrylic cases and stuff like that and
they'll either map and they look all
fancy and everything else and hey I
could do this in a day no problems
whatsoever all i'm going to do is
basically i get a whole bunch of these
stick them together maybe with some much
standoffs or you know something like
that and then I get power for each one
there's a little DC jack for each one so
you just apply power hook it up to a
pretty beefy yeah power supply like a
UPC power supply or something like that
and then just hook up the ethernet get
yourself one of these ethernet
which is here you know you don't need a
fast one just a 10/100 type one and Bob's
your uncle basically you've got yourself
a class the computer so it's just
basically just arranging these are
physically there's nothing special there
at all but i thought hey you know that's
not very elegant you got the ethernet
cables hanging out and you got routing
problems and dinky little DC jacks and
things like that wouldn't it be nice if
actually designed like a custom
motherboard like this and these can just
plug in you can just have a whole bunch
of a plug-in no cables
no nothing that would be fantastic so
let's take a look at doing that and yes
before you mention it I know this is not
going to be as powerful as a modern
Intel CPU and GPU and things like that
for like for my intended application
running our boy incarnate and doing that
said he and other computer research I
know it's not as powerful as that in
terms of dollar per watt potentially and
in terms of performance / what is
basically one of the more are critical
things for this sort of thing but hey
these things are fun so I'm just gonna
have some fun with this i know it might
not be the most efficient thing you know
an Nvidia GPU card will likely kill this
array in terms of our performance per
watt
but hey I want to do it just because
that's it just because now the first
thing to note is that the Orange Pi 1
is not compatible with the Raspberry Pi
2 in terms of its physical plug-in
ability why because the header connector
here is actually reversed its the same
pin out and functionality but its
reverse they physically reversed it so
that the shield things that hats or
whatever they are I'm go actually don't
sit over the board like this like they
do on the rise reply they're sitting
here this one actually reversed it so
they sit outside here and the reason for
that is a smaller form factor board and
the ethernet and USB connectors actually
getting in the way here so that's really
annoying so any solution we make where
we can plug these into I'm any sort of
motherboard or something like that it's
not gonna be compatible with the
Raspberry Pi the connectors going to be
four
physically back-to-front bomber now of
course the first thing is how do you
plug this into a motherboard now you
know we can put it upside down maybe and
have a 14 vertical head on the board and
then you can stack them like that but
that takes up a lot of board space
that's a lot of physical space on your
motherboard actually wasted if you've
got multiple boards side-by-side that
like that you know your motherboard this
big you might only be able to fit five
in but if you mount them vertically like
this you can potentially get much
greater density for a given motherboard
sighs and that's what we want now
unfortunately this thing comes out with
the header pre-sold it on like this so
you know we're not going to go suck off
the header and put a right angle one in
on there that would have been awesome if
we had a right angle could just went
bang bang bang bang bang on a
motherboard that would be fantastic but
we're not going to go suck those out so
we have to come up with some other
solution if we want to use this Orange
Pi 1 or arise reply for that matter
it's just because the pinouts different
they both got these vertical headers on
them now you can actually get right
angle female header sockets for PCB so
instead of plugging in vertically it
like the connector will be like this he
is a true image of it i'll get an image
and then you just plug it in on the side
like that so you might think hey there's
our solution but that trap the young
players you'll notice that this header
sits significantly off the board like
that and this is actually if you go look
at the data sheet for the header that
it's actually i'm going to be much
smaller than this gap here is either
have to grind off some of the board and
be careful not to get the traces in you
know hit any traces or short out any
ground planes or anything like that or
cut any ground planes and so you don't
want to do that that's just a ridiculous
solution all we've got to come up with
some other way to get these things
physically lifted off the board now of
course you could get the header
connector female header connector for
the board put something under it and
then you know right lift it off the
board or something some sort of space
set yeah that's a solution but there's
another way to now please excuse the
crudity of this model I didn't have time
to build up the scale auto paint what
you do is you have your right angle
female header connector actually you
know through hole could be well probably
not surface map because they're going to
have the pins coming out the side which
is going to be troublesome so probably a
through-hole version here and they've
got the holes basically on either side
of the connector and then you just ran
out pass like this on one side of the
connector and you get your board and
then you just put it into the slot like
this so that it goes down into the board
and then slide it in like that Bob's
your uncle beauty but of course it's not
as dense a solution as it could be
because the width of this has to cater
for the fact that you've got to put this
in and then slide it across like that so
you know the slot actually doesn't have
to come all the way up and you could use
the surface mount one actually the pins
coming out here and here
this sides not a problem but coming out
this side the slot doesn't have to go
right up to the connector like this you
can have the right at the surface mount
pins coming out like that and then the
slot only because you've got a distance
in there so you actually see there's a
thickness of the plastic base of this
header so it doesn't actually come all
the way in so you've got so the pins on
here can actually see any surface mount
pins and the slot can actually be
further out from the connector than what
I've shown there so you don't have to
sit and put it in and then slide it in
like that so you know the slut basically
has to be the width of these opinions so
to speak set out somewhat and then the
distance between boards is going to be
set by these pain-in-the-ass ethernet
connectors and USB which we're not going
to use so it's not the densest solution
but it's better then flipping this board
upside-down plugging it into a verdict
into a vertical head out like that and
then having two three like you know on a
board that size we're only going to get
three in there but this one we can
potentially get one, two oh yeah 1 2 3 4 5 and I'm
just eyeballing this but I basically
double the density
easy now a nice solution to this is
the rise Raspberry Pi Zero now it's only five
bucks
it's half the price of this but in terms
of our dollars per what
and it's not as good this is a fork or
1.3 gig processor or greater than one
gig and the Raspberry Pi Zero is only
one gig at with a single core but it
comes with the header connected not
populated so you can sold it in your own
right angle header connector and then
you can use those vertical standard
vertical connectors and you wouldn't
need two are putting any slot like this
so in a just bein bay and you can get
and because they don't have the big
ethernet connector and USB connector on
there there much thinner and you can get
double the density again so the
Raspberry Pi Zero it's not too bad if
you can get twice the density for half
the cost but you lose ultimately going
to lose like half of your performance in
the end so yeah I don't know which one
do you go for
hmm the Raspberry Pi Zero is nice a
solution could be lower power because
hey it's you know it's not running any
of the ethernet are functionality and
it's just generally a lower power board
then this one I believe but this
motherboard idea it's all gonna come to
naught unless we can actually get
internet connectivity through these
header pins and the Orange Pi 1
ethernet over to hear these ethernet
pins do not come these physical ethernet
pins are do not come down to this header
it doesn't have it so we're in trouble
there but uh huh i think i found a
solution for this
as luck would have it if you have a look
at the pin out for the Raspberry Pi it's
the same on the Orange Pi 1 here there
is an SPI port that actually comes out
on these pins so uh huh can we convert
the SPI into an ethernet interface
yes we can now as it turns out the
Raspberry Pi Linux build i believe has a
built-in driver for the microchip
ENC28J60 SPI to Ethernet converter
chip so all we need is to put one of
those chips on our board for each one we
can have one for each one and these
things are cheap they're available from
digi-key there are only a couple of
bucks we can solder those are nowhere
motherboard here and bingo we can get
connectivity to each one of our boards
be an Orange Pi 1 or a Raspberry Pi Zero
or whatever other our board that we want
to plug into the system beauty and
although i haven't tried this I believe
that all you gotta do is adding one law
into the boot config file in your build
and then bingo it just automatically
works this um ENC28J60 tip
just handles that you plug into ethernet
and away you go
now of course it's not gonna be the
fastest solution by the spi by she can
change the speed in the configuration
and stuff like that but it's not gonna
be nearly as fast but you know this
thing is basically i compute system you
know it's not really I you know
high-throughput a high beam with typepad
system so hey you know a few make bits
or something is fine or pick-up line of
cabinets as fine as long as we got an
ethernet connection especially for the
use i want to make it to its just gotta
download stuff from the . server it can
do that slowly in this just going to
report its results back and things like
that
not hi bandwidth stuff most of the time
it's basically not talking at all so we
just need an ENC28J60 chip for each one
of our modules like this just wire that
in no worries but I of course we need an
ethernet switch up here to connect all
these ones into so we don't want to use
a physical ethernet switch like that
because well that's just ugly because we
got the cables again we'd have to have
like I you know an rj45 on they're going
off for each one and then up i got that
it ruins your nice solutions so we take
a look at a typical 10/100 ethernet switch here
you see that this bugger all in these
things we've just got the main ship said
here this is a real quick one and then
got the magnetics you can see the see
their differential traces going off
their two pairs for each ethernet port
this is an eight port chip it's only one
is a power supply and the main ship and
that's it there's no e squared problem
there's no programming l though these
things are programmable and they just
work by default i believe anyway I've
never actually are designed and Ethan it
i switch into something before but hey
and then the legs just hook up there for
the monitoring and everything else so
all we need in theory is and one of
these ethernet switch chips and yes you
can just buy from DGK you can't get this
realtek one
yeah and you can't buy this chip from DG
case i'm not going to use this realtek
one but a microchip have one other other
companies have similar sort of chips
just got to choose one that is a design
for standalone application so it doesn't
need boot configuration and all that
sort of stuff and it's got to have the
far i built in as well but what do we do
with these pesky magnetics here doing
need the magnetics i don't think so i
think we can get away because we're
going directly this chip would be
directly on our board over here and
there will be parent site or four
depending on how many are you needed how
many you designed to have on your
motherboard there it's going directly
chip-to-chip as like these are current
driven differential outputs so all we
need is to is some output resistors tied
to ground basically i see couple of the
ground and then we should get a wife
should be able to get away without the
magnet magnetics there are only designed
for driving the lines now once again
I've never actually tried this but I i
think in theory it should work but I
stand to be corrected
so in theory what should need is just
some termination resistors on the line
he often these RAC coupled down the
ground but you have to read the
particular our data sheet that you're
actually i got and we should be able to
connect the ethernet switch directly
through the ethernet switch chip
directly through to our spi to a the net
interface so they go then we've got one
two three then we got out SPI bus come
get out of there into well connector and
bingo we should be able to get a
low-bandwidth internet connectivity
through the wage board on the
motherboard and we can do this pretty
cheaply and then of course you have your
rj45 your external internet connection
coming into the ethernet switch and of
course you know we want a decent number
of these on a born eight or ten or
twelve or so even more depending on the
density that we cannot get in here and
you know power requirements and things
like that and what we can of course
we're gonna have our Ethernet switch
just going off to yet another one and
then that just drives more and they are
Kaskade from the one like that so you
might actually have the one ethernet
switch driving like you know two or
three other ethernet switches now of
course these boards have a lot of other
io on them as well and you might still
want to use those depending on you know
how you want this thing to work so you
might actually have some and of course
you want some LED status leds or
something so you might have some leads
and these all going to hear and you
might actually have another header next
to each one or something so that you can
actually I'm it like some io on and get
some io in and out of each one saying
because you might want this either it's
like a super computer computer module
and everything just goes self-contained
you don't look anything else up to it or
you might use it as I you know a a 25 or
50 processor that thing that's our
processing that's doing I oh and stuff
like that and basically just a big
embedded computer that controls 40
separate things or 50 separate things or
whatever you might have a processor for
each task I don't know
use your imagination for something like
that but i don't really want any of that
time I Oh staff although i might add it
just for kicks i just want this thing to
actually be an arm supercomputer cluster
right thing about Bob and that's the
thing this is not really a supercomputer
as such h process on here or each board
it because this is a 4 call one here but
let's just say each one has a
single-core they're running their own
linux OS and everything else they're
entirely separate the only way they can
communicate
is via the ethernet switches here so you
might have like at some it may be some
dip switches on each one that can sit in
a dress for each one or you could that
program them in of course individually
stuff like that so that have h board
would have its own name on the network
and stuff like that and they're all
networked together you can talk like
that or we could potentially try and tie
some I/O between them
perhaps maybe you can have a bus running
between them if you want to do something
fancy like that but then we get him into
basically multiple processor computer
architecture and stuff like that and
that's not really what we're what I'm
trying to achieve here anyway I just
wanted a nice a solution than just
whacking these in a box and wiring up
the power and the ethernet I just want
to put the pair in the ethernet
basically all 121 motherboard just to
make it neat and then if we have a look
at our power consumption here in the
previous video I actually measured this
running with the full four cores at a
hundred percent running city processing
on the blank engine and always get it
was drawing about 3.7 what's so that's
.75 amps and 5 volts roughly so if
you've got a motherboard with that 10 of
these Raspberry Pi Zeros on it
you need a 7.5 amp ah 5 volt capable
supply and well you can get those in
various solutions you could use like a
little tiny pc what is it a micro ATX
power supply or something like that
perhaps but probably better to use some
sort of off-the-shelf are customized
well after shell fire power brick or
something like that perhaps you can
actually get modules that will i do that
you know 240 volts in five volts out
basically just depends on our price
availability and form factor because we
haven't even talked about like a case
for this thing i was thinking maybe it
would be nice to have say a big extruded
aluminium case that this whole
motherboard just lead into on the rails
you know something like this already a
photo here and you know i don't know if
you can actually you can probably get
them this big and you know it sliding
that just look really sexy but then you
know you probably are
now you can have all leads at one end or
something like that and I don't know
that would be makers we gotta talk about
power dissipation as well this thing
gets quite hard i can't remember the
temperature I've done in the previous
video but it was too hot to touch
I think and you've got a basically will
arm glue on with some are thermal
adhesive just hating on the h1 and then
you know just passive a larger shades
heatsink we don't have to then couple
that hating out to the external
aluminium our case we can probably just
let the know let the thing passively do
that should work ok anyway I like the
idea of the Raspberry Pi zero because
it's super cheap it's only five bucks
each yes it's only a one call one gig
processor on the thing not nearly as our
grantee as this fork or at 1.2 gigs but
you know there and that they're nice and
small form factor they only draw about
points7 what's each I believe somebody's
actually have measured the Orangemen the
Raspberry Pi zero and running at full
tilt and about points7 what so they're
about so you know it is potentially
lower power than this one but near not
as powerful but the density you can get
in there are beauty and of course for
this sort of carrot you'd need a big
beefy traces on there like it found out
evil one big bus running along like that
you know huge traces on there you
probably you know you wouldn't need like
to announce copper anything like that
for this sort of character couldn't just
run little piece and traces over 2h
connected you get dad too much drop on
the things so yet nice big fat buses
there and maybe dropping off like that
or you could a star arrange it depends
on how much a space head on the board
layout something like these slots a bad
thing about having slots in your board
like this is that it just kills your
routing spacecraft around everything
around it powered at everything else it
you know it can become a real pain so if
I was to do this elegantly in terms of
our power i would get a like a proper
PCB mount power brick or something like
that or a module that actually you could
mount on the boards have this one big
board as I said maybe slide into an
extruded aluminium case and
the power supply would melt on the end
of it like this and you have like 240
volts coming in one in and then give you
the five volts at you know 10 amps out
or whatever and then that just why is
directly into the board then you have
the huge buses running here and that it
all just slide in as one big solution
into the extruded aluminium case that it
would be like a nice sexy solution so
there you go i hope you enjoyed that and
this is just like a first thought kind
of thing of how i would integrate these
into a you know a Raspberry Pi
supercomputer array or an Orange Pi
supercomputer right and like it which is
a bit more elegant then the solutions
other people have done where they're
just physically wired these together
with the ethernet have a switch and
everything else and the wires running
everywhere they can look funky your line
them all up they're big and they're
bulky and you know this is if you can do
it like on one big motherboard like this
you can get some quite high density in
these things depending on the type of
board you use and you could use some
other computer module for example
there's lots of compute modules on the
market but you basically got to get one
that is armed that has ended compatible
United plug-in type things so even like
an SODIMM based our system yes
Raspberry Pi do make the Raspberry Pi
computer module but it's like you know
25 30 bucks each and it's basically just
like a an original rosary pie it's not
that great so in terms of our banker
back it's very very poor these Orange
Pi 1 absolutely kills it for ten bucks
for the four cores at 1.2 gig so yeah
those computer modules unless you picked
him up for a song and I don't think they
ever sold really well i mean i just
checked out fine l have a element14 have
like you know tens of thousands of these
things in stock or something I don't
know thousands in stock so yeah I don't
think they sold too well that was a bit
of a file that the Raspberry Pi computer
module but the idea the concept really
good if you just getting just had an
SO connector on their bang bang bang
bang and the density you can get is
absolutely incredible but nobody's you
know if you know of any
I'm linux you know that sort of is
compatible like what that has a linux
billed for it like Raspberry Pi's
probably got the best and most refined
build out there because there's so many
people using that they got so many
people working on it etcetera as I saw
as you saw in the previous video for the
Orange Pi 1 and the software builds for
it out that great and up-to-date and
stuff like that we can make it work
I've yet to know if the spi one will
work for the Orange Pi 1 the microchip
in ENC28J60 but I'm I believe it does
work and people have done this and it
does work for the raspberry pi so no
worries but yeah if you know of any
other our computer modules that might be
more suitable at a low cost you can get
them you've been able to get these
computer modules i was using them back
in the nineties and is nothing new about
these things that plug in my computer
modules in so in DIMM module format
and stuff like that they go way way back
and but the problem is the price you
know the good thing about that say they
read this or inch by 1 or the Raspberry
Pi Zero five or ten bucks per board I
mean it's so compelling
I mean you're going to add a couple of
bucks for these are SPI to ethernet are
encoded ships because you're not buying
I mean you know a hundred thousand ten
thousand volume or something like that
so yeah it had significantly but i think
that's a nice could be a nice elegant
solution so hopefully i get the time in
the motivation to actually start laying
out this thing and get something working
so i can enjoy it if you and discuss it
links down below all that sort of stuff
catch you next time the broadcom
processor used on the raspberry pi 2
famously can't get the data sheet for
you to sign an NDA and all that sort of
crap but with the allwinner h3r chipset
here they're both cortex a7 by the way
so the same arm cortex accept your
winner a 3 is actually are faster now if
you take a look at the orange pie
website are very briefly it looks kind
of impressive at the top surface but
that's pretty much where it stops I
found a lot of issues with this thing
trying to set it up
