All the same size screws, nice, flat surfaces, small and power efficient, multiple mounting points and flexible IO options... why can't we all have nice things?
I cant imagine all the youtubers in another countrys are common friends while in my country some youtubers are hate each other having more subscriber than theirs😅
Very common size / design in digital signage and commercial media applications. Frequently these are based on an Intel industrial NUC motherboard with an internal PSU, I have a couple of those including one that I salvaged from a junk pile completely disassembled... put it back together and it works great.
I’ve noticed you minimize your electrical skills. However, you’ve helped me learn a whole bunch and that’s helped me in both my home lab as well as my career.
I wish I could reassemble the PCs I take apart with a clap. That's kind of an awesome use for that little PC. You find the coolest stuff out there. Thanks so much!
As someone who works in digital signage using this exact model amongst many other Senecas, it's cool to see someone use them for more than showing menu boards for gas station pizzas and sandwiches. I prefer the AMD variant of the Element because of its EDID capabilities, but the intels are also decent little boxes too. I wish I knew more about the GPIOs being used on these, but from my understanding in the DS world they can be used with certain screens to power them on/off, or sensors to detect customer presence to display targeted ads. My company hardly uses them (if at all) and seems to rely more on IoT solutions instead.
Customers can have an arbitrary number of IoT GPIO devices that can be anywhere within network range. Imagine if a customer wanted two different GPIO devices and they had to use the pins on that motherboard connector. They would either need a custom cable, or use individual jumper wires going on to the right pins. That sounds like a customer support nightmare.
@@hamjudo now that you mention it. We used to service outdoor menu boards for a popular food chain, and it used a weight sensor to detect vehicles pulling in which hooked up to a little circuit board. We used USB instead of GPIO, but on the circuit board it connected to gpio pins. We only supported the USB cable, a 3rd party vendor supported the rest. Unplug the USB and plug it back in to power cycle, if data wasn't received then we called the vendor to send someone out to repair it.
@@franticpanic4036 Thanks for sharing all of this information. This seems like a pretty interesting gig. I'll keep it in my mind for future employment opps.
This is exactly the kind of weird embedded hardware I regularly enjoy tinkering with and discovering the limits of - glad to see I'm not alone in the madness :) Subbed to see what else you get up to!
5:19 For the two different NICs, the I219 is built into the PCH for Intel 11th gen, but it only supports a single port. The I211 is functionally identical but a fully stand-alone NIC + PHY in one.
Probably also because it's (i219-v) a bundled deal when you get the PCH from Intel and will be cheaper than separately purchasing another i210/ i211 and PCH.
@@ckbwtf You're actually REALLY close: the V219 can support vPro (only NICs built into the PCH can), but the -V model in this computer has it disabled. The V219-LM found in the Q and W series PCHs does have vPro though.
The i210/i211 can actually do more at the playground of PTP and GPIO-based timing antics. Those 217/219 LOM's do have some HW timestamping capability for packets (ethernet traffic) but in my practical experience they tend to be inferior to a discrete i210 (of which the i211 is a sibling, stripped of some features that are irrelevant in this context). The LOMs' timestamping tends to be quirky (the driver throws a timeout waiting for a timestamp every now and then), and their residual jitter tends to be worse. There's also the i225 which is even more capable, at least on paper, and has had its childhood maladies sorted out by now hopefully, but is short on the technical documentation front. As far as I'm concerned, long live the i210 :-)
Before pulling the trigger on a BI license, give Frigate a try. I switched over a few months ago and have been pretty happy. It's got a steeper learning curve but development is much more active and the price can't be beat.
I was about to say the same thing so I definitely concur. The development has been super active and they even redesigned the entire WebUI very recently with functionalities that make it a really good competitor compared to alternatives. And the AI object detection works really well with a Coral, and if your CPU has hardware video decoding (like Intel Quick Sync for example) you really don't need super fast hardware.
Man 4 HDMI ports? Dual NICs? That'd make a helluva battlestation KVM with quad screens for ALL the terminals and dashboards! Talk about being locked in :D
@@schmolck I guess I didn't assume they were all coming from the CPU? You can stick discrete graphics chips on a board, just like discrete NICs or USB controllers or whatever.
You can use GPIO to power the fan and control its speed. (PWM) You need to check if gpio can provide adequate power though. If not, use gpio just for control, and get the power from the weird SATA power port.
That would make a great system to use for remote control of your home lab or as a home assistant PC. It might also be fun to control a home brew robot.
@@HardwareHaven It all begins with the question: is there anything to steal uberhaupt? The avarage quick burglar crackhead would not be interested in unbolting a 4090 or lugging a 65 inch OLED. I get the idea people these days highly overrate their stuff, especially with the minimal "we do everything on our iPhone" attitude. Which leaves stealing options to be roughly equal to what we had as students: once 2 crates of beer and veggies from the fridge were stolen, en some half-rotten bicyles from the garden.
I've used a whole lot of digital signage PCs. This is a really nice model. Back ten years ago, I was a part of a large format digital signage company (LED billboards), and we started using Logic (now OnLogic), and later switched to BrightSign because the BrightSign players had exposed GPIO ports on the back, which are typically used for syncing multiple displays, whether large billboards or smaller HDTVs. It's really cool stuff. I've actually never seen such a small GPIO header, but that's probably just because of the industry I was in. Cool video! Liked and subscribed.
Funny. I won Intel Core i5-1135G7 2.4GHz | 256GB M.2 | 8GB RAM for US $95.95 from the same seller. Great computer, the only downside is a realy LOUD fan. I didnt dig deep in to it but it seems to me it blows constantly with no RPM regulation.
@vencdee there is no "better model", it is not standard computer fan and you cant just buy Noctua one and replace it. You will not know another chinese fan is better or not too. So when I buy device I want to power it on and be a happy user and not searching for a dozen new fans in a hope that one of them will be better. And I am pretty sure the problem is not in fan itself but in bad fan speed managment. As I remember, there is no fan speed profiles in BIOS.
@@OstJoker right but another fan at 100% could be silent. if it's a 40mm fan, noctua does make them, but if it's smaller, you're kinda stuck unless you can figure out how to control the fan. Since it's not in the bios, you may consider adding a potentiometer knob inline to control the voltage of the fan that way. it's not pretty, but it works. Good luck.
I bought x3 of those Seneca PCs but with AMD Ryzen CPUs V1605B for $150, crazy deal. So far I have tested with OPNsense and run with no problem, except i couldn't get the working LTE module.
It's perfect for a tech company to take to trade shows. Can be configured to simultaneously be a mobile router with VPN, server for file share/database/web, and also product demonstration/digital signage.
I219 is built into the chipset, I211 is on the PCIe bus. The chipset does not offer dual Ethernet, hence the need to add one. Adding one is cheaper than adding two just so they're identical chipsets.
You are literally the only other commenter to get this right. Everyone else keeps coming up with other reasons about drivers or compatibility, but you are 100% correct. Thank you.
On Ali-express, I have seen HDMI display "combiner" or "aggregators" to take 4x HDMI 1080p signals and break them out into 4x quadrants of a 4k screen. This seems useful for a cheap 4k TV that doesn't have 4x picture by picture option to be used for monitoring server hardware OR possibly for surveillance. Although, to be fair, you could likely just use some type of tool designed to snap desktop windows to specific locations... I guess the advantage of the aggregator is... it's cheap ands you can connect separate signals to each quadrant.
The Dual NIC controller setup with there exact two model is standard for embedded systems, where you want the maximum compatibility with most OS’es and hypervisors.
@@OPM_Viking Not quite correct. The I219 is an integrated NIC, part of the PCH, but the PCH only supports a single port. The I211 is a standalone NIC. Feature-wise it's identical to the 219, but it's fully self-contained.
@@SpencerN.C.Ok. But this is the config the enterprise manufactures stick to. You’ll find this on most Supermicro boards for embedded applications - so you’ll be fine with this combo 😊
@@OPM_Viking Yes, that is mostly correct, most embedded or workstation boards do use this combo of the I219 with a second stand-alone NIC (although sometimes swapping the I211 for a I210), but I've found the I219-LM variant (with vPro) to be the more common one in commercial and industrial enironments (included in C/W/X/Q series PCHs). The system in the video must be using a consumer-grade PCH (B/H/Z series). But also, while lots of workstation and embeded boards do use the built in I219-LM a lot of server boards you'll find a pair of I210's alongside a dedicated IPMI port instead of a vPro-enabled 219. I used to build networks for corporate and industrial clients.
Thanks 👍 Now you mentioned it, I got it wrong. I DO remember now that the 219-V had issues with ESXi 6.x. - and it is the LM I have on the two SuperMicro boards I am using.
Ahoy, Great video on a subject I love: Industrial computers. A couple years ago I almost bought a Seneca with an older AMD CPU. Instead I bought an Onyx MedPC (used for Kiosks in hospitals) for $50.00 total. It had a lowly J1900 4-core Baytrail CPU. I installed Batocera and used it as my Retro Gaming system until last month when I got a Pandoras Box type system for half price on Prime Days. Still keeping my MedPC though! Thanks again and cheers, daveyb
This thing looks alot like the Lenovo liter PCs. Love those for their compact size and the power they pack. We have an old i7 M93 for a kitchen computer for recipes and music. Each TV is driven by a P320 with a P1000 card handling video duties. Lastly, for the mobile theater we have a maxed out P330 with a P1000/ 8GB card and external bluray burner for playing disks if we are not streaming. Used they are reasonable off of Ebay as are all the parts to upgrade them. Great little video.
Nice video! Yellow wires normally indicates 12V - a safe bet at least The 2 different ethernet interfaces is likely the I219 being integrated into the chipset, and the I211 being an external controller linked via PCIe.
As for mini PCs in general, they really are fun little boxes. I got my HP mini for something like $75, and it can potentially go as low as 9.1 W (though it's more like 35 W typical, which is a cost of about $75/year assuming it's running 24/7). If you can consolidate all of the little services that you run "because there's room for it" on it, you could find yourself running idle/sleep mode or even outright shutting stuff down when unneeded much more often. I've been consolidating my setup over the past year, so much so that I can now switch most of my machines off when I'm not actively using them for something - which _did_ see a reflection on my power bill...
for the half size cards we built little extenders to make them bolt nice into the full slot - after a while suppliers started making them so we could just buy them off the shelf. that was a while ago so you'll have to check on your own but they're only like 5 bucks or so.
As for a server application the *28W power consumption of i3 11 Gen CPU* is the greatest concern as it makes the system running cost 2 - 2.5 times higher that let's say the similar system based on N100 CPU.
I bought the most powerful pc i could with the money at my desposal, and I use it to watch UA-cam. So I think it is really cool thaat there are people out there making the most of what they have and finding new ways to use tech. :3 I planned on Playing games on my PC but most of the time it is a Social Media machine.
Nice little thingie. Could be useful as a NDI codec for webcams and monitors. The CPU should handle a few simultaneous feeds. Then just use a PC to do all the recording and editing, and it can be in a different location than the filming setup.
That type of PC + BlueIris is what is currently running 47 camera channels on my home NVR system. (I have microwave network bridge links to my other houses in the area) . No tenant has problems with the CCTV coverage and the fact that it has centralised recording. If anybody has not heard of BlueIris, I would very strongly recommend it as it has an incredible amount of functionality built-in as standard. Its not free, but it is by far not the not most expensive NVR software you could buy.
@HardwareHaven - I am in a similar situation and starting to set up an NVR with ~10-ish (mostly Reolink) cameras - including their Wired doorbell. I might be getting couple Odyssey Blue (v2) computers that you are using for your router for this purpose as well as the Coral TPUs. Have you compared Blue Iris with Frigate for NVR duties? Is one easier to set up / maintain than the other? In watching few videos (Apalrd(?) - thanks for reference to his channel in previous video), ti appears Frigate has good built-in support for the Coral TPUs (as well as other hardware - like Nvidia GPUs, OpenVINO, etc. for object detection). Not sure how easy or hard it might (relatively) in Blue Iris to setup some of the same functionality. Great video regardless. Keep it up.👍
I haven't spent enough time with either to really provide much feedback. Frigate seems to be missing some functionality I like, such as recording schedules and a timeline viewer. BI has those and also seems to have a ton of other features in an easier to use interface. Getting object detection was a bit odd as I had never used BI or Code Project AI, but once I got it working it seemed to do just about as well as Frigate. Once again, very little experience with both. I might do a video on BI here soon.
@@HardwareHaven I was under the impression that Frigate did allow recording schedules. But you are right, it does not have that functionality built in; the person I saw using schedules with Frigate had created the recording schedules in Home Assistant. And yes, BI is likely a more mature product - I was hoping though to keep the NVR bit more 'lightweight' without needing to install full fledged bloated install of Windows on the Odyssey. Perhaps, it might not be too bad if it uses a lighter / "Tiny" version of Windows as the base OS. Anyway, look forward to video if you decide to move forward with it. I know Rob (The Hook Up) had done a video on BI and even one with setting up AI based detection but that was a while back - so yours might have updated / more current information.
5:28 I was told that there are ways of setting up the different nics that makes it easier to have 2 different ones for driver support and network configuration. Most of my workstation will have 2 intel that are the same and a different model nic for the other 2
Could you use the GPIO with an intermediary 'thing' to create a physical disconnection from drives before/after a backup? I could see it being amazing for a backup NAS to be able to have it's drives hard-disconnected as a defence against encryption viruses, and requiring an 'all clear' signal before connecting them.
I have camera's at my house. I run my DVR at my girl friends house. Neat!! If someone breaks into my house, there is no way to steal the DVR. I also run BlueIris.
to me, it seems like its more of a CCTV box, to monitor many things on several displays. As it uses the onboard gpu rather than having a dedicated one, which is more common for digital signage if im not wrong
If small physical size is required, that is a good deal. I created some touchscreen info kiosks at an observatory. Had a hidden PC driving a touchscreen monitor. Only external requirement was power. Used a desktop PC inside a custom cabinet.
Been a PC gamer for 10 years, Gaming PC builder for 5, but this year is the year I got into homelab stuff because of you, Colten! Great content that you crush everytime. Keep it up, my guy
personally i have all of my wifi cameras in one subnet and then i use pfsense to block that subnet from reaching out...i can still get to the cameras from the shinobi interface and the live feed from home assistant which is on the interwebz...and if i need to get to recordings, I wireguard in...but my point is i just straight up blocked them from the internet with a simple rule using that subnet without needing vlans since that's kinda excessive for my little house...works nicely....did the same for my roku TVs since they CONSTANTLY phone home
One of the great features of Blue Iris is that you can automatically upload alert videos and images to a remote server via SFTP. So even if someone does steal your NAS and the Blue Iris server, you can still have a copy of the video in a remote location.
This thinking is amusing. Steal your NAS? Who does that? Are you in sight of the mossad? Do you have a 1M Van Gogh sketch on the wall? Do you have police that actually cares about surveillance footage for your own beer burglar? Maybe if you are bycatch for a bigger case, but not for some laptop/phone theft, which is highly unatractive anyway thanks to bitlocker, findMy and bottom low second hand prices.
At 3:30 is this really a Serial port connector on the mainboard ? I'm looking for a cheap pc with a dedicated serial port because of some very old software, sadly I can't use PCIe or USB adapters.
Btw the Tiger Lake series is great for power efficiency and CPU features and has become a budget option. i have an 1135-G7 cpu laptop w/ 16GB RAM (soldered) that I got for $110 with no ssd drive (Lenovo model 14ITL05) the 1115 is the cutdown cpu version. I am very interested if they have more of these for $100, but I would really like the better CPU for my uses. The case and form factor is great! Good io
What were your response times on the coral TPU? That i3 can probably also handle it, especially if you're offloading all the cameras to the iGPU / quick sync
what PoE switch have you used for your surveilance cameras? In my scenario I have a bunch of HiKVision PoE cameras but the NVR died and i'm looking to build my own system;
Thanks for the coverage! Unfortunately, Arrow Electronics discontinued the Seneca line earlier this year (2024) but hopefully there’s still old stock available for some time. Do you know if some other company bought the product family from Arrow?
Why does it have a threaded power port? I have several 45W to 180W AC adapters used for laptops, why would they prevent users from using those types of adapters?
If it’s GPIO could you run a little display off of it? What are the pins limits, like raspberry pi’s have data and analog and power and spi, etc. what are those pins able to do?
I love small PCs like this Seneca and could see using it to replace my, comparatively, huge HTPC! You tested it against the RPi4 but am wondering how it stacks up against the RPi5?
ASRock Jupiter X600 has an AM5 socket and isn't much bigger than that little computer. I've used the ITX tower version DeskMeet X600 as a comically fast NAS, normally I have a 2x10gbit NIC in it but I once had a spare 100gbit NIC in it, got 48gbit transfer speeds.
The front panle also have a HDD/Storage LED. You should have gone to Ceneca and try to buy the missing parts, or at least check which ones should come and buy them from other sources
Some thing like that may be _designed_ for a single purpose but that they are usually good for more than one thing. One guy had some sort of video conferencing thing based on Chrome and you would think it is only good for one thing. The fact is that it really is a computer with an Intel Processor. It is just more similar to a Chrome box but looks like a router. I forget what they call them but they are not that cheap pricewise.
Why did you go with blue iris vs frigate? Im using frigate with a gpu and home assistant and it's great work 2 floodlight cameras and a video doorbell with 2 way audio
Looking to get a Desktop Pc, what Processor we need to get, to support 20GBPS Thunderbolt Type C port, ▪︎ can we get 2 Thunder Ports on it ? ▪︎ what part is important to get 20GBPS Thunderbolt Type C, is the Prossecor or....
For 3,5" HDD's, try to solder a wire, from the barrol jack pin, to the 12V pin of the Sata Power connector, and maby connect the two ground pins in the middle with an solder tin blob. 👍
Hi, note that it could easily become a NAS by adding dual 3"1/2 HDD docks stations on USB 3.0 w/ external power supply (12V/3A), 4× USB 3.0 ports = 8× HDD, so up to 192 TB raw capacity. (NB : works like a charm without any speed reduction under Linux w/ ZFS :)
Hey Hardware Haven, I was wondering if there are any budget NAS you would recommend that could be stored in a little home office, and AREN'T horrible on the eyes? I know there are dozens of UA-cam videos about budget/DIY NAS that usually are old PCs and aren't the most flattering to look at. I ask this because my mother wants a place to store our old family photos that isn't on an external drive. I would like to get her one for Christmas or something, but I don't see her enjoying a janky old pc sitting in her office lol. I see some old NAS on Ebay that usually go for ~$6o. Would these be good just for storing and accessing photos? I don't see my mother spinning up a VM or plex server lol, so she doesn't need something top of the line.
Just get something like a 2Bay Nas from Synology. If all she does is store some files, everything should be good enough. And as a ready bought device it should work without fiddling with anything. But get a 2bay and at least mirror all files
Can you do a full tutorial on Blue Iris? I came across a box of Xfinity wired Ethernet powered cameras that can replace my discontinued Dropcam cameras.
Picked up myself a little fanless Seneca system earlier this year on ebay. its 5th gen intel nuc based machine that I got for £20 cheaper than the comparible standard nuc but came with the fully fanless case and an integrated psu as well as all the accessories and such. Threw in a network card and its now my router.
Last time I looked for a micro-PC with 2x Ethernet adaptors there simply wasn't any such device available (not where I live, anyway, and importing from the US can easily double the cost of something like this, so definitely not worth it). Even today, they are super scarce. The closest I have yet come is a "Giada" box with a pre-installed WiFi card in the m.2 slot - I removed that and fitted a 2nd Gbit Ethernet card, and it works, but if I'm going to install it in this configuration I'll have to drill & file a hole in the chassis for it. Which will involve completely stripping the computer (including doing the squeaky clean CPU thing, which I'm not keen on because... well, because I'm tired of that job). So my laziness means I'm still running a full-size 200W PC as my Internet router / firewall, which is... wasteful) 😭😭
All the same size screws, nice, flat surfaces, small and power efficient, multiple mounting points and flexible IO options... why can't we all have nice things?
Why have any of those things when you can have “AI” in the name?
I cant imagine all the youtubers in another countrys are common friends while in my country some youtubers are hate each other having more subscriber than theirs😅
I would love to see a comparation to raspberry 5 . Maybe you'll help him....
Very common size / design in digital signage and commercial media applications.
Frequently these are based on an Intel industrial NUC motherboard with an internal PSU, I have a couple of those including one that I salvaged from a junk pile completely disassembled... put it back together and it works great.
@@thimirawishvajith3935 INDIA
If you are using this computer for video surveillance, you can use GPIO to trigger an alarm if something is noticed that requires your attention.
I'm a fan of this idea
Another good use for GPIOs is automatically rebooting misbehaving hardware, with the help of a relay board.
A siren!
@@TayschrennSedai Or something like this ua-cam.com/video/EWqrlnNckSk/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared&t=30
Can it play the Doom OST? Asking for a friend 😅
Hardware Haven isn't a normal tech channel, and I love it!
You're quick on these man haha!
@@HardwareHaven Can't say no to a Hardware Haven video!
So do I!
Agree
Me too!
I liked the tone and humor in this video a lot. Nicely done. Not overly goofy but hilarious enough
I’ve noticed you minimize your electrical skills. However, you’ve helped me learn a whole bunch and that’s helped me in both my home lab as well as my career.
Some industrial PCs live in clean rooms (to whatever standard)
They're cleaned before they go IN
But all the other industrial PCs make fun of them for not getting their hands dirty.
@@AlexSwanson-rw7cv 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I wish I could reassemble the PCs I take apart with a clap. That's kind of an awesome use for that little PC. You find the coolest stuff out there. Thanks so much!
As someone who works in digital signage using this exact model amongst many other Senecas, it's cool to see someone use them for more than showing menu boards for gas station pizzas and sandwiches.
I prefer the AMD variant of the Element because of its EDID capabilities, but the intels are also decent little boxes too.
I wish I knew more about the GPIOs being used on these, but from my understanding in the DS world they can be used with certain screens to power them on/off, or sensors to detect customer presence to display targeted ads.
My company hardly uses them (if at all) and seems to rely more on IoT solutions instead.
Customers can have an arbitrary number of IoT GPIO devices that can be anywhere within network range.
Imagine if a customer wanted two different GPIO devices and they had to use the pins on that motherboard connector. They would either need a custom cable, or use individual jumper wires going on to the right pins. That sounds like a customer support nightmare.
@@hamjudo now that you mention it. We used to service outdoor menu boards for a popular food chain, and it used a weight sensor to detect vehicles pulling in which hooked up to a little circuit board.
We used USB instead of GPIO, but on the circuit board it connected to gpio pins.
We only supported the USB cable, a 3rd party vendor supported the rest.
Unplug the USB and plug it back in to power cycle, if data wasn't received then we called the vendor to send someone out to repair it.
@@franticpanic4036 Thanks for sharing all of this information. This seems like a pretty interesting gig. I'll keep it in my mind for future employment opps.
This is exactly the kind of weird embedded hardware I regularly enjoy tinkering with and discovering the limits of - glad to see I'm not alone in the madness :)
Subbed to see what else you get up to!
5:19 For the two different NICs, the I219 is built into the PCH for Intel 11th gen, but it only supports a single port. The I211 is functionally identical but a fully stand-alone NIC + PHY in one.
I was actually guessing one was for vPro OOBM, but this makes more sense
Probably also because it's (i219-v) a bundled deal when you get the PCH from Intel and will be cheaper than separately purchasing another i210/ i211 and PCH.
@@ckbwtf You're actually REALLY close: the V219 can support vPro (only NICs built into the PCH can), but the -V model in this computer has it disabled. The V219-LM found in the Q and W series PCHs does have vPro though.
The i210/i211 can actually do more at the playground of PTP and GPIO-based timing antics. Those 217/219 LOM's do have some HW timestamping capability for packets (ethernet traffic) but in my practical experience they tend to be inferior to a discrete i210 (of which the i211 is a sibling, stripped of some features that are irrelevant in this context). The LOMs' timestamping tends to be quirky (the driver throws a timeout waiting for a timestamp every now and then), and their residual jitter tends to be worse. There's also the i225 which is even more capable, at least on paper, and has had its childhood maladies sorted out by now hopefully, but is short on the technical documentation front. As far as I'm concerned, long live the i210 :-)
@@xrysf03 Actually the most important thing they stripped from the 211 that the 210 has is: Server OS drivers support.
Before pulling the trigger on a BI license, give Frigate a try. I switched over a few months ago and have been pretty happy. It's got a steeper learning curve but development is much more active and the price can't be beat.
I've considered this mainly because it seems to have better Ai integration. CPAI isn't doing the best from what I've seen the last year.
I was about to say the same thing so I definitely concur. The development has been super active and they even redesigned the entire WebUI very recently with functionalities that make it a really good competitor compared to alternatives. And the AI object detection works really well with a Coral, and if your CPU has hardware video decoding (like Intel Quick Sync for example) you really don't need super fast hardware.
I third the Frigate recommendation.
Man 4 HDMI ports? Dual NICs? That'd make a helluva battlestation KVM with quad screens for ALL the terminals and dashboards! Talk about being locked in :D
Right? I don't need 4k h.265 decode on every screen, I just need SHITLOADS OF XTERMS. It'd be nice to find out the max hdmi res of each port, though.
@@myself248 intel will usually do 4k30 on all ports, but it may cause slowdown if theres too much going on
just use containers and tmux, KVM and several moniotors is too overkill if you just want a bunch of isolated terminals
How is the CPU supporting 4 hdmi-ports? I thought 2 is the maximum with both intel and amd cpus?
@@schmolck I guess I didn't assume they were all coming from the CPU? You can stick discrete graphics chips on a board, just like discrete NICs or USB controllers or whatever.
You can use GPIO to power the fan and control its speed. (PWM)
You need to check if gpio can provide adequate power though.
If not, use gpio just for control, and get the power from the weird SATA power port.
Really great mini pc and it can be used for a lot of proyects!
Also you can use any 2.5´ SATA drive if you want. 2.5´ drives only need 5V.
That would make a great system to use for remote control of your home lab or as a home assistant PC. It might also be fun to control a home brew robot.
Home brew robot made me imagine either a coffee making robot or a craft beer brewing robot. Now I want both.
@@HardwareHaven , don't tell Jeff at Craft Computing or he will want one!
@@ewasteredux another great channel
The layout of this board is cool
Agreed
2,5 inch drives only need 5 volt, only 3,5 inch drive motors need 12 volts
yes thats what he said
I think that the hiding place for the mini pc isn't hidden anymore.
Well if you break into my house I guess I'm screwed... lol
@@HardwareHaven It all begins with the question: is there anything to steal uberhaupt? The avarage quick burglar crackhead would not be interested in unbolting a 4090 or lugging a 65 inch OLED. I get the idea people these days highly overrate their stuff, especially with the minimal "we do everything on our iPhone" attitude. Which leaves stealing options to be roughly equal to what we had as students: once 2 crates of beer and veggies from the fridge were stolen, en some half-rotten bicyles from the garden.
I've used a whole lot of digital signage PCs. This is a really nice model. Back ten years ago, I was a part of a large format digital signage company (LED billboards), and we started using Logic (now OnLogic), and later switched to BrightSign because the BrightSign players had exposed GPIO ports on the back, which are typically used for syncing multiple displays, whether large billboards or smaller HDTVs. It's really cool stuff. I've actually never seen such a small GPIO header, but that's probably just because of the industry I was in.
Cool video! Liked and subscribed.
So you were the one who bought that! you and I were bidding against each other lol
the eBay bidder she tells you not to worry about:
Funny. I won Intel Core i5-1135G7 2.4GHz | 256GB M.2 | 8GB RAM for US $95.95 from the same seller. Great computer, the only downside is a realy LOUD fan. I didnt dig deep in to it but it seems to me it blows constantly with no RPM regulation.
@@OstJoker Easy... Replace the fan with better model...
@vencdee there is no "better model", it is not standard computer fan and you cant just buy Noctua one and replace it. You will not know another chinese fan is better or not too. So when I buy device I want to power it on and be a happy user and not searching for a dozen new fans in a hope that one of them will be better. And I am pretty sure the problem is not in fan itself but in bad fan speed managment. As I remember, there is no fan speed profiles in BIOS.
@@OstJoker right but another fan at 100% could be silent. if it's a 40mm fan, noctua does make them, but if it's smaller, you're kinda stuck unless you can figure out how to control the fan. Since it's not in the bios, you may consider adding a potentiometer knob inline to control the voltage of the fan that way. it's not pretty, but it works. Good luck.
I bought x3 of those Seneca PCs but with AMD Ryzen CPUs V1605B for $150, crazy deal. So far I have tested with OPNsense and run with no problem, except i couldn't get the working LTE module.
did you cover the friendlyelec cm3588? im just gonna watch all your videos to check
While I LOVE your strategy, I have not haha
One of your better videos lately! Great creativity with the 3D printing, multimeter/GPIO, addins. Really enjoyed it.
And the m2 slot was reinforced slot
All these for 100 dollars was amazing 😮
It's perfect for a tech company to take to trade shows. Can be configured to simultaneously be a mobile router with VPN, server for file share/database/web, and also product demonstration/digital signage.
12 pin but only 8 as gpio means that 2 of them are ground and 2 are vcc 5v or 3.3v
Exactly what I thought.
I bought that exact fan for cooling a 9300-8e HBA inside of a Minisforum MS-01 - it is indeed... not quiet. But it does the job pretty well.
I219 is built into the chipset, I211 is on the PCIe bus. The chipset does not offer dual Ethernet, hence the need to add one. Adding one is cheaper than adding two just so they're identical chipsets.
You are literally the only other commenter to get this right. Everyone else keeps coming up with other reasons about drivers or compatibility, but you are 100% correct.
Thank you.
On Ali-express, I have seen HDMI display "combiner" or "aggregators" to take 4x HDMI 1080p signals and break them out into 4x quadrants of a 4k screen.
This seems useful for a cheap 4k TV that doesn't have 4x picture by picture option to be used for monitoring server hardware OR possibly for surveillance. Although, to be fair, you could likely just use some type of tool designed to snap desktop windows to specific locations... I guess the advantage of the aggregator is... it's cheap ands you can connect separate signals to each quadrant.
The Dual NIC controller setup with there exact two model is standard for embedded systems, where you want the maximum compatibility with most OS’es and hypervisors.
@@OPM_Viking Not quite correct. The I219 is an integrated NIC, part of the PCH, but the PCH only supports a single port.
The I211 is a standalone NIC. Feature-wise it's identical to the 219, but it's fully self-contained.
@@SpencerN.C.Ok. But this is the config the enterprise manufactures stick to. You’ll find this on most Supermicro boards for embedded applications - so you’ll be fine with this combo 😊
@@OPM_Viking Yes, that is mostly correct, most embedded or workstation boards do use this combo of the I219 with a second stand-alone NIC (although sometimes swapping the I211 for a I210), but I've found the I219-LM variant (with vPro) to be the more common one in commercial and industrial enironments (included in C/W/X/Q series PCHs).
The system in the video must be using a consumer-grade PCH (B/H/Z series).
But also, while lots of workstation and embeded boards do use the built in I219-LM a lot of server boards you'll find a pair of I210's alongside a dedicated IPMI port instead of a vPro-enabled 219.
I used to build networks for corporate and industrial clients.
Thanks 👍 Now you mentioned it, I got it wrong. I DO remember now that the 219-V had issues with ESXi 6.x. - and it is the LM I have on the two SuperMicro boards I am using.
Banger video man. Appreciate your efforts and curiosity
Ahoy, Great video on a subject I love: Industrial computers. A couple years ago I almost bought a Seneca with an older AMD CPU. Instead I bought an Onyx MedPC (used for Kiosks in hospitals) for $50.00 total. It had a lowly J1900 4-core Baytrail CPU. I installed Batocera and used it as my Retro Gaming system until last month when I got a Pandoras Box type system for half price on Prime Days. Still keeping my MedPC though! Thanks again and cheers, daveyb
You would need a floppy controller however most 3.5" floppy drives only use 5v not 12v.
You keep teasing us with the sd card slot. Bro, this is a travel router dream!
Could be a nice NVR box with a Google Coral and some dedicated storage.
Maybe as a complete remote setup running Proxmox with pfSense and Frigate.
This thing looks alot like the Lenovo liter PCs. Love those for their compact size and the power they pack. We have an old i7 M93 for a kitchen computer for recipes and music. Each TV is driven by a P320 with a P1000 card handling video duties. Lastly, for the mobile theater we have a maxed out P330 with a P1000/ 8GB card and external bluray burner for playing disks if we are not streaming. Used they are reasonable off of Ebay as are all the parts to upgrade them. Great little video.
You know I think it never hurts to replace the thermal paste when you get a machine like that.
True!
Nice video!
Yellow wires normally indicates 12V - a safe bet at least
The 2 different ethernet interfaces is likely the I219 being integrated into the chipset, and the I211 being an external controller linked via PCIe.
How come you use blue Iris over other nvr software such a frigate?
As for mini PCs in general, they really are fun little boxes. I got my HP mini for something like $75, and it can potentially go as low as 9.1 W (though it's more like 35 W typical, which is a cost of about $75/year assuming it's running 24/7). If you can consolidate all of the little services that you run "because there's room for it" on it, you could find yourself running idle/sleep mode or even outright shutting stuff down when unneeded much more often. I've been consolidating my setup over the past year, so much so that I can now switch most of my machines off when I'm not actively using them for something - which _did_ see a reflection on my power bill...
2.5" drives don't need 12v, they only require 5v. (both ssds and hdds) hence the usb adapters you can find
for the half size cards we built little extenders to make them bolt nice into the full slot - after a while suppliers started making them so we could just buy them off the shelf. that was a while ago so you'll have to check on your own but they're only like 5 bucks or so.
As for a server application the *28W power consumption of i3 11 Gen CPU* is the greatest concern as it makes the system running cost 2 - 2.5 times higher that let's say the similar system based on N100 CPU.
I bought the most powerful pc i could with the money at my desposal, and I use it to watch UA-cam. So I think it is really cool thaat there are people out there making the most of what they have and finding new ways to use tech. :3 I planned on Playing games on my PC but most of the time it is a Social Media machine.
Nice little thingie. Could be useful as a NDI codec for webcams and monitors. The CPU should handle a few simultaneous feeds.
Then just use a PC to do all the recording and editing, and it can be in a different location than the filming setup.
That type of PC + BlueIris is what is currently running 47 camera channels on my home NVR system. (I have microwave network bridge links to my other houses in the area) . No tenant has problems with the CCTV coverage and the fact that it has centralised recording. If anybody has not heard of BlueIris, I would very strongly recommend it as it has an incredible amount of functionality built-in as standard. Its not free, but it is by far not the not most expensive NVR software you could buy.
That I/O can be used for lighting control. _besides a single LED_
But getting the full pinout would definitely be necessary.
@HardwareHaven - I am in a similar situation and starting to set up an NVR with ~10-ish (mostly Reolink) cameras - including their Wired doorbell. I might be getting couple Odyssey Blue (v2) computers that you are using for your router for this purpose as well as the Coral TPUs.
Have you compared Blue Iris with Frigate for NVR duties? Is one easier to set up / maintain than the other? In watching few videos (Apalrd(?) - thanks for reference to his channel in previous video), ti appears Frigate has good built-in support for the Coral TPUs (as well as other hardware - like Nvidia GPUs, OpenVINO, etc. for object detection). Not sure how easy or hard it might (relatively) in Blue Iris to setup some of the same functionality.
Great video regardless. Keep it up.👍
I haven't spent enough time with either to really provide much feedback. Frigate seems to be missing some functionality I like, such as recording schedules and a timeline viewer. BI has those and also seems to have a ton of other features in an easier to use interface. Getting object detection was a bit odd as I had never used BI or Code Project AI, but once I got it working it seemed to do just about as well as Frigate. Once again, very little experience with both.
I might do a video on BI here soon.
@@HardwareHaven Frigate's new timeline viewer seems pretty nice to me!
Oooh I'll have to check it out
@@HardwareHaven I was under the impression that Frigate did allow recording schedules. But you are right, it does not have that functionality built in; the person I saw using schedules with Frigate had created the recording schedules in Home Assistant.
And yes, BI is likely a more mature product - I was hoping though to keep the NVR bit more 'lightweight' without needing to install full fledged bloated install of Windows on the Odyssey. Perhaps, it might not be too bad if it uses a lighter / "Tiny" version of Windows as the base OS.
Anyway, look forward to video if you decide to move forward with it. I know Rob (The Hook Up) had done a video on BI and even one with setting up AI based detection but that was a while back - so yours might have updated / more current information.
5:28 I was told that there are ways of setting up the different nics that makes it easier to have 2 different ones for driver support and network configuration. Most of my workstation will have 2 intel that are the same and a different model nic for the other 2
I just bought the uGreen 15W. Its lists as 69.95, as a prime member it was 48.95. Wicked deal. Thanks.
Indeed a cool little PC, thx for the review!
13:21 :O How do you stream your PC to the TV? I guess you connect the PC to the Seneca via WIFI somehow.
I always like finding little gems like this and seeing what I can do with them.
imagine running custom realtime computer vision AI on it and have it control lights or motors or devices through GPIO. This mini PC is sick
Could you use the GPIO with an intermediary 'thing' to create a physical disconnection from drives before/after a backup?
I could see it being amazing for a backup NAS to be able to have it's drives hard-disconnected as a defence against encryption viruses, and requiring an 'all clear' signal before connecting them.
Hmmm... that seems like quite a project, but I guess it could be possible with some relays or something?
I have camera's at my house. I run my DVR at my girl friends house. Neat!! If someone breaks into my house, there is no way to steal the DVR. I also run BlueIris.
to me, it seems like its more of a CCTV box, to monitor many things on several displays. As it uses the onboard gpu rather than having a dedicated one, which is more common for digital signage if im not wrong
If small physical size is required, that is a good deal. I created some touchscreen info kiosks at an observatory. Had a hidden PC driving a touchscreen monitor. Only external requirement was power. Used a desktop PC inside a custom cabinet.
The different NIC is probably an embedded one used for vPro/AMT which would let you power it on/off remotely among other things.
You emailed, they replied fairly quickly with correct information. Somehow that surprises me positively. Nice little computer!
Been a PC gamer for 10 years, Gaming PC builder for 5, but this year is the year I got into homelab stuff because of you, Colten!
Great content that you crush everytime. Keep it up, my guy
personally i have all of my wifi cameras in one subnet and then i use pfsense to block that subnet from reaching out...i can still get to the cameras from the shinobi interface and the live feed from home assistant which is on the interwebz...and if i need to get to recordings, I wireguard in...but my point is i just straight up blocked them from the internet with a simple rule using that subnet without needing vlans since that's kinda excessive for my little house...works nicely....did the same for my roku TVs since they CONSTANTLY phone home
Do either of the LAN jacks support PoE? That might explain the lack of power adapter.
One of the great features of Blue Iris is that you can automatically upload alert videos and images to a remote server via SFTP. So even if someone does steal your NAS and the Blue Iris server, you can still have a copy of the video in a remote location.
This thinking is amusing. Steal your NAS? Who does that? Are you in sight of the mossad? Do you have a 1M Van Gogh sketch on the wall? Do you have police that actually cares about surveillance footage for your own beer burglar? Maybe if you are bycatch for a bigger case, but not for some laptop/phone theft, which is highly unatractive anyway thanks to bitlocker, findMy and bottom low second hand prices.
time to break in finally we know where the little $100 minipc is hidden!
At 3:30 is this really a Serial port connector on the mainboard ? I'm looking for a cheap pc with a dedicated serial port because of some very old software, sadly I can't use PCIe or USB adapters.
Btw the Tiger Lake series is great for power efficiency and CPU features and has become a budget option.
i have an 1135-G7 cpu laptop w/ 16GB RAM (soldered) that I got for $110 with no ssd drive (Lenovo model 14ITL05)
the 1115 is the cutdown cpu version. I am very interested if they have more of these for $100, but I would really like the better CPU for my uses. The case and form factor is great! Good io
can you compare it to the elitedesk 800 g3 pls?
If you deside to upgrade the cpu on the Senica would you make the video of you doing that, also the easy way to access the components?
What were your response times on the coral TPU? That i3 can probably also handle it, especially if you're offloading all the cameras to the iGPU / quick sync
It looks like the side of an old car stereo. That being said, can I put it in place of my car stereo? Do I just fold the little tabs out?
what PoE switch have you used for your surveilance cameras?
In my scenario I have a bunch of HiKVision PoE cameras but the NVR died and i'm looking to build my own system;
Oh wow I actually had a summer job with them in college back in the early 00s (looks like they got bought by a larger company since)
Thanks for the coverage! Unfortunately, Arrow Electronics discontinued the Seneca line earlier this year (2024) but hopefully there’s still old stock available for some time. Do you know if some other company bought the product family from Arrow?
Why does it have a threaded power port? I have several 45W to 180W AC adapters used for laptops, why would they prevent users from using those types of adapters?
If it’s GPIO could you run a little display off of it? What are the pins limits, like raspberry pi’s have data and analog and power and spi, etc. what are those pins able to do?
10:20 so this board does not have a cellular modem already? Than why does it have a sim slot?
I love small PCs like this Seneca and could see using it to replace my, comparatively, huge HTPC! You tested it against the RPi4 but am wondering how it stacks up against the RPi5?
ASRock Jupiter X600 has an AM5 socket and isn't much bigger than that little computer.
I've used the ITX tower version DeskMeet X600 as a comically fast NAS, normally I have a 2x10gbit NIC in it but I once had a spare 100gbit NIC in it, got 48gbit transfer speeds.
The front panle also have a HDD/Storage LED.
You should have gone to Ceneca and try to buy the missing parts, or at least check which ones should come and buy them from other sources
Some thing like that may be _designed_ for a single purpose but that they are usually good for more than one thing. One guy had some sort of video conferencing thing based on Chrome and you would think it is only good for one thing. The fact is that it really is a computer with an Intel Processor. It is just more similar to a Chrome box but looks like a router. I forget what they call them but they are not that cheap pricewise.
Love your videos man, keep up the good work and please keep making videos about mini pcs
You could ask the Senaca (or people who bought them out) what the target market was for that PC. That may tell you why it has the features it has.
Why did you go with blue iris vs frigate? Im using frigate with a gpu and home assistant and it's great work 2 floodlight cameras and a video doorbell with 2 way audio
Looking to get a Desktop Pc, what Processor we need to get, to support 20GBPS Thunderbolt Type C port,
▪︎ can we get 2 Thunder Ports on it ?
▪︎ what part is important to get 20GBPS Thunderbolt Type C, is the Prossecor or....
For 3,5" HDD's, try to solder a wire, from the barrol jack pin, to the 12V pin of the Sata Power connector, and maby connect the two ground pins in the middle with an solder tin blob. 👍
Hi, note that it could easily become a NAS by adding dual 3"1/2 HDD docks stations on USB 3.0 w/ external power supply (12V/3A), 4× USB 3.0 ports = 8× HDD, so up to 192 TB raw capacity. (NB : works like a charm without any speed reduction under Linux w/ ZFS :)
Not sure why this video was recommended to me but I'm really glad it was. Good stuff--that mini-PC was a sick find on ebay.
Hey Hardware Haven, I was wondering if there are any budget NAS you would recommend that could be stored in a little home office, and AREN'T horrible on the eyes? I know there are dozens of UA-cam videos about budget/DIY NAS that usually are old PCs and aren't the most flattering to look at.
I ask this because my mother wants a place to store our old family photos that isn't on an external drive. I would like to get her one for Christmas or something, but I don't see her enjoying a janky old pc sitting in her office lol. I see some old NAS on Ebay that usually go for ~$6o. Would these be good just for storing and accessing photos? I don't see my mother spinning up a VM or plex server lol, so she doesn't need something top of the line.
Just get something like a 2Bay Nas from Synology.
If all she does is store some files, everything should be good enough.
And as a ready bought device it should work without fiddling with anything.
But get a 2bay and at least mirror all files
Use one of the GPIO's to switch on/off the fan, depending on the CPU and/or SSD temp.
Really nice piece of hardware! What is the max resolution you get simultaneous out of the 4 hdmi ports?
i actually used to build these for work! pretty powerful little things
As you suggested that we can make a dual bay nas out of this, I wonder how do you suggest to power the HDD?
Can you do a full tutorial on Blue Iris? I came across a box of Xfinity wired Ethernet powered cameras that can replace my discontinued Dropcam cameras.
Very cool and great video! These are used at my job to run radio station automation software. Very nice little machines.
Is there a big latency if you input a video signal in a computer then output it to a screen ?
Picked up myself a little fanless Seneca system earlier this year on ebay. its 5th gen intel nuc based machine that I got for £20 cheaper than the comparible standard nuc but came with the fully fanless case and an integrated psu as well as all the accessories and such. Threw in a network card and its now my router.
Is the Uno a cheap switching power supply that puts out a lot of noise?
Last time I looked for a micro-PC with 2x Ethernet adaptors there simply wasn't any such device available (not where I live, anyway, and importing from the US can easily double the cost of something like this, so definitely not worth it). Even today, they are super scarce. The closest I have yet come is a "Giada" box with a pre-installed WiFi card in the m.2 slot - I removed that and fitted a 2nd Gbit Ethernet card, and it works, but if I'm going to install it in this configuration I'll have to drill & file a hole in the chassis for it. Which will involve completely stripping the computer (including doing the squeaky clean CPU thing, which I'm not keen on because... well, because I'm tired of that job). So my laziness means I'm still running a full-size 200W PC as my Internet router / firewall, which is... wasteful) 😭😭
my first question was - wtf is hdmi input and what is it good for?