Switching the Home Box to Orange Pi

After running into too many roadblocks on this project (due to my tight design constraints) and burning out, I’ve finally come back to this project with renewed interest. The hardware space has improved since I left off, and I’m willing to make some compromises this time to increase the chances of following through to completion.

New constraint: no soldering or custom cable making. If I can’t buy a component off-the-shelf (besides the 3D printed enclosure), too bad, figure out something else.

Luckily I’ve found a new source of the sort of components I need: automotive computer hardware. It’s not uncommon for commercial vehicles to need onboarding computing, and that hardware is often compact and runs on low voltages. Thus I have found the answer to my power-supply woes: Mini-Box.com’s picoPSUs.

Initially, I wanted to be able to power the Radxa Rock5B by giving it 20V via the USB-C power port on the back. This took me down a rabbit-trail of trying to find low-profile right-angle USB connectors to keep the connection internal. It also forced me to use a 20V power supply for the overall system, which necessitated separate DC power convertes to get the 12V and 5V needed for the HDD/SSDs. That’s all going away now, because I’ve also switched SBCs.

Orange Pi 5 Plus 32GB

Instead of the Radxa Rock5B, I’m moving the design to the Orange Pi 5 Plus 32GB. This has a few serious benefits:

It only accepts 5V of USB power anyway, so no reason to power it via an external port because I can power it via GPIO instead.
No more 20V means a simpler power system, since only 12V and 5V are needed now. That permits a cheaper and more compact power supply.
It has two 2.5Gig Ethernet ports on the back, eliminating the need for a separate Ethernet module. Yay for fewer components!
Freeing up the M.2 port on the top means it could have integrated Wi-Fi instead.

I already have the power supply in-hand and have verified that the LEDs on the SBC light up when I connect it. The PSU’s built-in cables have just enough ports to connect to a SATA power splitter (currently on-order) and the SBC itself.

PSU bench test showing a power brick connected via barrel jack to a Pico PSU
which has an ATX jumper tool connected, and has a built-in cable extending off
for a molex connector that goes to the SBC and an extra SATA power
connector.

In addition to these hardware simplifications, I’m committed to making more compromises on the form-factor. Getting the parts in and out of the enclosure design I made before was enough to discourage me from working on it. It will still be extremely compact, but it’ll need a bit of breathing room necessarily to accomodate all of the off-the-shelf cabling now involved.

The current bill of materials is now as follows:

Orange Pi 5 Plus 32GB
Power Cable for CF200 (molex-to-header for board power)
PicoPSU-90, 90w output, 12v input DC-DC Power Supply
NVME to 6 Ports SATA Adapter M.2 to SATA Adapter M2 M Key 6Gbps SSD to SATA3 Expansion Card With SATA Cables For Desktop
Power Supply SATA Hard Drive Cable Ultra Short 1 To 5 PSU Expansion Cord 18AWG 11cm
- I want a version of this with 6 connectors instead of 5, but I can’t find it and I’m not making custom cables. I’m not making custom cables.
Silver Sata 3.0 Data Cable SATA III SATA 3 Cable 10cm-2m With Locking Latch Straight To Right Left Up Down Angle 90 Degree 6GBs

Next: 2024-05-05 — Designing the Orange Pi Enclosure