A20-OLinuXino-MICRO, MOD-ZIGBEE-UEXT, MOD-WIFI and home automation + more

[cnerone]

Hi all,
I'm going to buy a SBC to run home automation server (openhab or home assistant) and a personal cloud (maybe owncloud/nextcloud), the server will be connected to internet/intranet router by WiFi)
I own ZigBee devices and I would like to use them.

I need a USB port available to connect hard disk to make periodical backups.
1 port for backup
1 port for WiFi dongle
1 port for ZigBee dongle
(nas HD will use SATA connector)

but A20 boards has 2 USB ports only... or OTG one can be used like an ordinary USB port?

I'm looking at A20 micro, because of it has 2 USB and 2 UEXT connectors... and I could use them (UEXTs) to have WiFi and ZigBee extensions without make USB ports busy.
But,
I read about WiFi speed and I read it's very low... 180Mbps, do you confirm that? if so... I have to use WiFi USB dongle...
and what about ZigBee extension? is it reliable for use in home automation server/hub?

what's your opinion about A20-micro as home-automation + cloud server?
I would like to use a osoh SBC... not raspberry, banana, or bigger nuc computer...

thanks in advance for your answer. sorry for my poor English.

go open source and open hardware!!

Cnerone

[LubOlimex]

USB-OTG can act as both host and device. It is a USB mini connector. But you can also use external USB hub to split one of the USB ports.

I don't know about ZigBee for home automation. If energy efficiency is required then it might be a good choice. Yet, if you want things to be easy, make sure to check ESP8266 and ESP32 products like https://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/ESP8266-EVB/open-source-hardware and https://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/ESP32-EVB/open-source-hardware are a good start for research and development. They use WIFI which makes the things a lot easier and also the chips had been very very popular and there are a lot of examples and tutorials available. Furthermore, ESP products can be programmed via USB and even via Arduino IDE.

>>> what's your opinion about A20-micro as home-automation + cloud server?

It is a very good piece of hardware for those purposes. The big thing is that the A20 chip has native SATA with good enough read/write speed, so you won't run out of storage. I've seen posts in this forum about clound servers. Check here, for example: https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=2665.0

Edit: USB mini connector (not micro).

Best regards,
Lub/OLIMEX