It's a question of expectations. Me, I want a cheap, wifi-capable motion sensing camera on my LAN, behind a firewall, not on the public internet.
So I ordered the Orange Pi Lite and its camera module, altogether a smidgen less than $30 Canadian (a current model Raspberry Pi will set you back $50+ around here, and then another $10 or so for the camera module (or a clone of it) from China.
Not impressed initially. Not much documentation, so how do you know you even got it powered up right? No lights come on, no video signal comes out, nothing. Eventually hooked up a TTL USB/serial converter to the GND/TX/RX three-pin connector and hallelujah, it did boot and let me log in and set up wifi remote login. The only thing I found that booted was the Lite-specific Armbian distribution and yes, it uses a 3.4.x kernel, and I still haven't managed to get any HDMI output.
But on the plus side, "motion" was cinch to configure, works great with the camera in 800x600 mode (CPU temperature 43 degrees Celsius with no heat sink, board out in the open at room temperature) or 1600x1200 mode (CPU temperature about 48 degrees Celsius). That load also includes a script which periodically rsyncs the collected pictures to a server, and cleans up (I use /tmp in RAM disk to avoid SD card wear).
Happy? You bet. I'll probably order a couple more. Use this for direct internet facing stuff? No. Use this for general purpose computing where every feature has to work and the CPU performance is absolutely maximized? No. But for the specific application I want it for, peachy keen. At least it's been stable in two days of running and over a gigabyte of pictures taken and saved.
I've also got a Raspi and its camera module. All in all, the experience with the Raspi isn't any better, though the camera sure is, and now you can get an 8MP camera too (the OPi's camera is 2MP).
I don't know about the Orange Pi directly, but one of the other Allwinner boards I tried would only output on the HDMI if the display negotiated HDCP. So you had to hook it to a TV, not a computer monitor, to get the picture.
In general if you want something that just works, the Raspberry Pi is a much safer bet. These alternate boards always seem to have something stupid you have to fix before they work properly.
True, it's not a safe bet, but at the price it's a fun experiment. I've now concluded after further playing with mine that 1600x1200 mode effectively doesn't work (you get a picture, but it's mirrored horizontally and auto brightness/contrast doesn't work). Still at 800x600 good for the price.
So I ordered the Orange Pi Lite and its camera module, altogether a smidgen less than $30 Canadian (a current model Raspberry Pi will set you back $50+ around here, and then another $10 or so for the camera module (or a clone of it) from China.
Not impressed initially. Not much documentation, so how do you know you even got it powered up right? No lights come on, no video signal comes out, nothing. Eventually hooked up a TTL USB/serial converter to the GND/TX/RX three-pin connector and hallelujah, it did boot and let me log in and set up wifi remote login. The only thing I found that booted was the Lite-specific Armbian distribution and yes, it uses a 3.4.x kernel, and I still haven't managed to get any HDMI output.
But on the plus side, "motion" was cinch to configure, works great with the camera in 800x600 mode (CPU temperature 43 degrees Celsius with no heat sink, board out in the open at room temperature) or 1600x1200 mode (CPU temperature about 48 degrees Celsius). That load also includes a script which periodically rsyncs the collected pictures to a server, and cleans up (I use /tmp in RAM disk to avoid SD card wear).
Happy? You bet. I'll probably order a couple more. Use this for direct internet facing stuff? No. Use this for general purpose computing where every feature has to work and the CPU performance is absolutely maximized? No. But for the specific application I want it for, peachy keen. At least it's been stable in two days of running and over a gigabyte of pictures taken and saved.
I've also got a Raspi and its camera module. All in all, the experience with the Raspi isn't any better, though the camera sure is, and now you can get an 8MP camera too (the OPi's camera is 2MP).