[luegen]

Surprised nobody has mentioned or compared it to the Radxa Zero.[0][1]

Spec of the Radxa Zero ($15):

    CPU: Quad Cortex-A53 1.8 GHz, 12nm process
    GPU: Mali G31 MP2
    RAM: LPDDR4 512MB/1GB/2GB/4GB
    Storage: eMMC 5.1 8/16/32/64/128GB and uSD card
    HDMI: Micro HDMI, HDMI 2.1, 4K@60 HDR
    Multimedia: H265/VP9 decode 4Kx2K@60
    Wireless: WiFi4/BT4 or WiFi5/BT5
    USB: One USB 2.0 Type C OTG, one USB 3.0 Type C host
    GPIO: 40Pin GPIO, ADC/UART/SPI/PWM
    Others: Crypto Engine, support external antenna, one button

Spec of the RPi Zero 2 ($15):

    CPU: Broadcom BCM2710A1, quad-core 64-bit SoC (Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1GHz)
    RAM: 512MB LPDDR2 SDRAM
    Storage: None, MicroSD card slot
    HDMI: Mini HDMI port
    Multimedia: H.264, MPEG-4 decode (1080p30); H.264 encode (1080p30)
    Wireless: 2.4GHz IEEE 802.11b/g/n wireless LAN, Bluetooth 4.2, BLE
    USB: 1 × USB 2.0 interface with OTG
    GPIO: HAT-compatible 40 pin I/O header footprint
    Other: OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 graphics, CSI-2 camera connector,
           composite video and reset pin solder points

The Radxa seems to be better value. I'm looking for a backup device for my RPi Zero W v1.3. The Zero has been such a amazing companion for me. I use it as Wi-Fi repeater on campsites such that we can all have internet simultaneously. Over the years I added temperature sensors, light sensors and an entire cooling system for the photovoltaic system. It now keeps track of the ambient temperature in the tent and fridge and sends me an SMS if the gets too high. Endless fun.

[0] https://forum.radxa.com/t/introduce-the-radxa-zero/6550

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huAKEbyPcBc

[PragmaticPulp]

> The Radxa seems to be better value.

The Radxa is a better value if pure performance is the only criteria.

But the real value of the Raspberry Pi products is the ecosystem and code support. It will be much easier to find tutorials and software support for the Pi Zero 2 W than the Radxa and the Pi will be supported for a long time after the Radxa has been discontinued.

[scottlamb]

> But the real value of the Raspberry Pi products is the ecosystem and code support.

Also in availability. I just clicked buy and will have a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W shipping to me in two days. I looked on seeedstudio for Radxa products; literally nothing is in stock.

[cwiggs]

That's an interesting setup, I'd love to hear more. Do you have a wifi antenna hooked up to the pi?

[luegen]

As client radio I use a cheap rtl8812au-based single-antenna Wi-Fi USB stick by Piaek with a ALFA APA-M05 7dBi antenna, and as access point I use the on-board radio of the RPi in master mode. I use iptables to set up NAT (masquerading), optionally via an OpenVPN tunnel. It can be an odyssey finding a cheap Wi-Fi stick for which there are good drivers available (Amazon reviews and answers do help), let alone one that can be run in master mode, and you often have to compile the drivers yourself, in my case (Arch Linux ARM) I need to pull the dkms package from AUR, change the PKGBUILD to build for Pi and it builds awfully slowly (around 1 hour).

As for long-range antennas, you can check out Yagi's or Cantenna, also very nice DIY projects. The longest range can be achieved by dishes. Though check your countries dBi limit that is allowed to be emitted in any direction and then reduce your tx power to stay below that. The directivity will still help reducing interference from other directions. I like the APA-M05 for its compactness.

For the cooling, I use DHT22s and simply run a bunch of fans via a PWM-driven MOSFET, directly from the Pi, roughly following the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ32CMxliCQ

I send notifications (actually, not SMS) via qpush.me.