Libre Computer Board ROC-RK3328-CC (Renegade) Mini Computer with Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 (4GB)

Edit Feb. 2024:I've now run a variety of the official Libre Computer Linux distributions across 5 of these boards (and still planning for more): Debian, Ubuntu, Raspbian, Armbian, LibreELEC and Lakka. I've encountered no issues booting into any of these operating systems, provided with the correct image for the board, using Rufus on my Windows PC to flash the microSD cards over a USB adapter.I've been flashing Debian lately for its stability and generally good support on a variety of hardware including Libre Computer boards.The Libre Computer documentation really does assume that you know the OS you are installing. Generally, all information that you need is online - for the most part, it's just like any other installation of that OS - you just need to search for it.I will mention this, in case you were planning to use one of these boards for streaming:This board does not come with dedicated decryption hardware.From my understanding after trying and failing to get 1080p Netflix to work without stuttering, instead, software packages like Widevine DRM will use the CPU for decryption.As a result, this board (or, rather, its CPU performing decryption) will struggle to stream 1080p content under DRM, such as Netflix, without stuttering.Streaming 720p content under DRM should be fine, with minimal background processes. 1080p for non-DRM content, such as free public YouTube videos, should also be fine - no DRM decryption necessary.I decided to re-image the board that I had planned for a HTPC (sadge!) and bought a Chromecast (4K) for streaming and media playback instead.That board is now my local network's NTP (chrony) server, which I connected a cheap GPS module with PPS over the pin headers to create a Stratum 1 server. The module is also USB-capable, but that adds lag and I want all the performance I can get! The board is mostly idle at the moment, though, with a lot of CPU and memory to spare.I created a DTOverlay that exposes pin 7 (GPIO, referenced as "CLKOUT" but I've turned it into "CLKIN") as a PPS input device, in my case taking input from the GPS's PPS pin. The DTSource is merged in the `libre-computer-project/libretech-wiring-tool` GitHub repo, but it may not be generally available yet from package managers (at least, it isn't available in my Debian 12 installations as of writing). You can build the tool yourself with that DTO compiled in.The other GPS data pins (TX and RX) use the already-compiled UART1 overlay on pins 8 and 10 (GPIO). Power (5V) and ground pins on the GPS each go to one of the obvious, dedicated pin headers on the board.Maybe I'll turn one of these boards into a retro console as a part of my media center solution, rather than the whole solution.---I found some software that fills a personal need, and which recommends 4 cores and 4GB memory, and decided to build a small system using a Raspberry Pi for it. But if you're here, I'm sure you know what the market is currently like for Pi boards.Renegade is comparable to a Pi 3B, and possibly even better in some regards, as a tiny home server. I paired it with a 128GB Samsung microSD (a bit overkill for the application; Raspbian Lite OS image is under 1.5GB), a 5.25V / 3.5A micro USB power supply (a bit overkill for this board, but I wasn't going to wait to find out later if there are power stability issues), and a compatible case.From unboxing to first Raspbian Lite boot took around 30 minutes, and most of that time was spent getting the board installed in the case I had bought for it - and also getting the board out of the anti-static bag without breaking a pin. Connected with ethernet, an initial "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade" took only a few minutes, and I was able to install Docker from its repo without any issues.As others have mentioned, it's recommended to have a good working knowledge of Linux because the official OSes are all Linux distros and you can do a lot with that knowledge alone. The website and general support seem to have improved a bit since some of the reviews here but it is still subpar to Raspberry Pi, and there is still definitely not as large of a community behind it.I have more to do with this project but so far I'm very satisfied with my purchase of the Renegade at 1/4 the current price of a Raspberry Pi 4B. I've also bought another board to tinker with and am already planning to buy a few more for running a k8s cluster on dedicated small hardware at home, rather than just tinkering with kind on my gaming PC. But having 1 or 2 of those 8GB models would be pretty nice, too.P.S. Amazon: The "Touch Screen" feature rating is a very poor choice for this product. It is a SBC with GPIO, not an integrated user environment. You can definitely connect a touch screen to it, but it alone has no touch screen.

to those having issues getting the device to boot with non-vendor operating systems, make sure to keep the first 32768 sectors free for the booter (this is hardcoded in rockchip processors)if=idbloader.img seek=64if=u-boot.itb seek=16384and if you need to access the console you need to use the uart pins at the bottom of the 40 pin connectorand just for fun, if you want the red and green leds to be functional, you need to modprobe pinctrl-rk805in my opinion, if you want to run this with a rolling release distro (kernel 6.10 and up), do itall the gpios are usable (generally rpi 40 pin compatible)generally well defined device tree (you will need to at some point modify this)pmic has a rtc built-in (but needs external power)uart ready (not the rpi uart pins, 1.5M baud)infrared recieverintegrated 10-bit adc (2 pins on secondary 3 pin header (one is hardwired to the button near the ir reciever), 0v - 1.8v, needs to be explicitly enabled)the rk3328-roc-cc revision b has more features than are enabled by the default upstream dts, most of what is in the rk3328-roc-pc dts can be used for this boardi use a canakit power supply with it (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MARDJZ4) and see no issuesmy opinion of the design flaws of this device are largely inherited from the rk3328 reference platform, such asusing i2c1 instead of i2c0 (consumers two pins that could have been used as hardware pwm, can't disable it because the pmic is hardwired into it)placing the hardware chip select of one (unusable) spi bus beneath the other to give the impression there are more hardware chip selects than there are (you only get one!)as for the roc-cc itself...the problems of making a pi-form sbc is that you can never get 100% pi-shaped layout so you don't have a good selection of casesand finally, the choice to use a 32k crystal the size of a grain of rice on the very back edge of the board, if it breaks off, it only affects the alarm function of the rtcbut generally, thumbs up

I'm a big fan of Libre computer's S905X boards (Le Potato) and have a bunch of them in service in 3D printers at home/have replaced RPis using them.This year, one of my projects was to build an SBC powered web terminal to allow viewing our security cameras in our Kitchen, and this seemed to be an excellent candidate... unfortunately the specs fell short for that task... even though it still gained a solid 4 stars in my book. Here are the pro's and cons:Pro: Price! $50 got me a 4GB quad core A53 @ 1.4GHz. You can't touch an RPi still for less than $140 thanks to the shortage.Pro: Quad core A53Con: Its clocked at 1.4GHz (an A53 can go up to 1.5GHz with the proper thermal managament)Pro: USB 3.0...Con: Only one USB3.0Pro: Gigabyte ethernet (unlike the Le Potato)Con: No wifi, no bluetoothPro: decent GPUCon: for some reason I had difficulty realizing the benefits of the GPU in Chromium/Ubuntu.Pro: decent power profile, miserly.Con: Poor documentation... which impacts every part of using this board.Ultimately, the Renegade proved too sluggish to serve as a web terminal that can view camera streams @ about 15FPS... so I dismantled it.This board appears to be a board of compromises... I think Libre put all their energies into the S905X. ignoring this product. Not having two USB3 ports, and not having wifi + bluetooth doesn't make this an alternative to the RPi.So... who should buy this board? If you need a bit more than the Le Potato can offer, especially if you need 1GBps ethernet, this is your board.