PROGRESS IN MARCH – CUSTOMIZED DUAL SATA CABLE / VISITING FACTORIES

THERE IS TOO MUCH TO SHARE

In the past month, we have a lot of content to share with you. To make it easier for you to digest, the team will split those content into 2-3 different updates sharing our gratifying progress , in-depth product testing and more ideas.

This first update mainly focuses on sharing solid progress related to product development and production, which covers below topics:

1. We have visited several providers of power adapters and heat-dissipating molds. (For PCBA suppliers of ZimaBoard, we have already built  long-term cooperation partners for over five years, so we did not redevelop suppliers).

2. Customized Y-type dual SATA Cable (support 2.5″ HDD and SSD).

3. Revised PVT, compatible with at least one channel 3.5″ HDD, design optimization for the supply of key components.

4. Plex Streaming performance review for 1080p and 4K movies.

We hope you guys find it useful.

XINSAI TECHNOLOGY-CHINA’S TOP 5 12V POWER ADAPTER SUPPLIERS

We paid attention to Xinsai Technology because we purchased power supplies from more than three different power adapter manufacturers, cut their cords, and disassembled their adapters. During the process, molds of Xinsai products impressed us. The overall quality of PCB materials and assembly is higher than the average ordinary counterparts. Therefore, we made a special visit to the Xinsai factory to understand their production control and operating conditions.

Indeed, during the exchanges , our evaluation of Xinsai Power is excellent. According to the sales staff, “Xinsai has hundreds of thousands of shipments in the Raspberry Pi market every year. ” Sure enough, lol…

The production process of the power adapter is not much different in the industry. The only thing that needs to be paid attention to is the core testing process.We have studied the working principle of the Xinsai test equipment, the standards of the aging test and the operating specifications of the test in a targeted manner.

WENEXT FACTORY-HIGH-QUALITY 3D PRINTING AND CNC SERVICE PROVIDER

In passive heat dissipation, we plan to make a comprehensive selection after visiting 2-3 die casting and CNC suppliers. The first choice, of course, is the service provider we have been cooperating with for many years, the Wenext  Factory. Wenext Factory is a 3D printing service provider in China, a service provider with the high-quality and cost-effective services in terms of 3D printing. The team sampled a large number of structural samples through the Wenext Factory. Although CNC and die casting are not their main business, they have very professional internal quality control of processed products significantly reduced the risk of communicating quality issues back and forth between customers and processors. From the field situation, it can also be seen that the professionalism of the Wenext factory team. In April, we will continue to visit 1-2 similar providers to select one of these as our passive cooling molding partner.

CUSTOMIZED Y SATA CABLE – PURE BLACK

A month ago, @Michael Waiblinger mentioned in the Comments that he wanted a Y-shaped SATA cable. The existing design of the ZimaBoard can directly expand the 2-way SSD (low power consumption). Therefore, we have specially opened a mold for cable connector with the supporting wire factory and customized this set of wires! The mainstream SATA cable color matching on the market uses three colors of yellow, black, and red, which also made us very troubled, so the team spent a lot of time finding a supplier who is willing to cooperate with us to customize the color of the wire.

Last week, when we were testing Proxmox, we used this custom Y-type SATA Cable, which was able to carry 2 Channel 2.5″ HDD without any problems. And in the revision of this version of PVT, we will allow ZimaBoard to take 1 or 2 channels of 3.5″ HDD directly. This function adjustment, I believe it will bring better convenience to you who want to set up FreeNAS or Unraid.

Once again, thank you, @Michael Waiblinger, for this suggestion and idea. There is no doubt that we will include this set of SATA cables in your package.

With the Y-type Cable, of course, we also hope to have a good bracket for hard drive bays. Let’s take a look at this bracket.

If you think the above accessories are suitable, please give us feedback in the comments, and we will put them on the zimaboard.com store.

PLEX AND JELLYFIN PERFORMANCE

@Kenny Johansson, lmame, Ken, and several backers mentioned in the exchange the performance of ZimaBoard running multimedia servers such as Plex and Jellyfin, scenarios to which the team attaches great importance. So we have very in-depth and detailed tests for this area. In short, let’s talk about the conclusion first. ZimaBoard can smoothly support real-time streaming of more than six 1080p and 4K( H.264 ) video channels. Supports 4k H.265 and AV1 encoded video playback through Samba sharing with Coreelec and Libreelec. However, 4k H.265 and AV1 formats need to be pre-transcoded on Plex (ZimaBoard can directly transcode); after transcoding, real-time streaming is possible.

TO SUM UP

Just like at the beginning, the actual progress in March is too much. We will continue to have you informed through coming updates. Regarding the above content, please feel free to communicate with us in the comments!

By the way, one last thing, zimaboard.com is undergoing revision. We will launch the new version of zimaboard.com this month to support the community and e-commerce functions. Everyone is welcome to join! At that time, we will also have the first ZimaBoard giveaway event, and we hope everyone can join and have some fun together.