Home Assistant runs on ARM as a Container or as HAOS. RK3588 handles both, but their capability boundaries differ completely. The form factor sets the ceiling Container: coexists with Jellyfin/NAS on one box; add mounts and go — most flexible, but no addon store; HAOS: dedicated system with Zigbee2MQTT, ESPHome and hundreds of addons — […]
RK3588 is the flagship and RK3576 the value option. Selection isn’t about the longer spec sheet but about whether your interface and compute needs are hard requirements. Compare dimension by dimension Compute: RK3588’s 6-TOPS NPU suits multi-channel video and heavier models; RK3576 fits single-channel or mid-size models; Interfaces: choose RK3588 when you need multiple PCIe […]
Most people get stuck at “installed but won’t transcode”. On RK3588 the fix is almost always one of three setup decisions made at the start. Three things before you deploy Use the official Debian 11/12 image: its kernel ships the rkmpp decode driver. Ubuntu/Armbian also work; avoid heavily stripped third-party builds; Deploy via the official […]
An industrial gateway isn’t just a networked board. Protocol coverage, no data loss on link failure and edge logic decide whether the project passes. Three hard requirements Protocol stack: Modbus RTU/TCP, OPC UA, MQTT and CAN are the big four — confirm SDK coverage first; Store and forward: local disk buffering with replay after reconnection […]
The user ran an x86 mini PC for home media and downloads with three problems: high power draw, noisy fan, and incomplete 4K hardware decoding. Requirement and constraints Migration: Jellyfin container plus qBittorrent and Samba, reusing existing SATA disks through a USB3 adapter; Results: idle power fell from 65W to 12W, 4K HDR transcoding moved […]
Idle, typical and full-load numbers side by side, plus thermals — how to spec by watts instead of TDP.
4K dual-display thin-client capability and a five-year TCO breakdown for ARM thin terminals.
Three RK3588 boards forming a k3s cluster — scheduling, networking and persistence measured in a real edge setup.
How DNS-level blocking works, deployment settings on RK3588, and the multi-VLAN home setup that makes it stick.
qBittorrent plus disk-sleep policies — a 2 W idle download box that costs pennies per year to run.