• Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Whilst that’s a nice slogan, in Electronics “open source” doesn’t mean anywhere as much as it does in Software because it’s generally just knowing which components go into the circuit, which is but a fraction of the work (laying out the board is a massive chunk of work, in some cases most of it, and at high enough clock speeds circuit design is an art in itself).

      Mind you, I like the Orange Pi and Banana Pi guys, and the idea of an SBC designed for being an open source router is pretty appealing, though nowadays maybe pfSense would be a better choice than OpenWrt.

      Finally this thing having only 2 ethernet ports + WiFi makes it little more than a regular $70+ SBC board + a box - something easy enough to put together by any technically inclined person - which isn’t exactly exciting.

      • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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        6 hours ago

        pfSense would be a better choice than OpenWrt

        I heard pfSense had a hard time with wireless radios, and that’s where OpenWrt shines comparably. Is that not true?

        • ikidd@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          Yes, FreeBSD doesn’t handle many wireless cards. Same applies to OPNsense, my preferred version.