What Windows platform are you using for Cortex?

Just to confirm that Cortex does run on Windows 11. With the Pro versions of Windows I believe there are ways to prevent automatic updates via the Group Policy Editor but this isn't available on the Home versions. If you have the inclination to go a bit off mainstream you might install Windows 10 LTSC which I have personally done on a few deployments. Possibly reduced junk in this though I've not done a like for like comparison of any effects on performance relative to Pro but also can be prevented from doing automatic updates and reboots.

As far as hardware is concerned, as usual depends on what you are doing in Cortex and how big your installation is. For the general automation functionality and the average installation I doubt you will notice much difference during run time as this is relatively lightweight processing, but at the low end of the hardware scale with Atom type platforms using eMMC you may notice it being somewhat sluggish when you browse in to the Cortex mobile server and you are for example pulling up history data graphs and such. Also obviously if you are doing any video stuff. That being said I personally am a fan of fanless :-) and low power. I have deployed some such low end BeeLink platforms in the past and whilst these continue to run fine I have heard from someone else that theirs gave up after a while. In any case these (BT3 Pros) are now obsolete as far as I'm aware. However there are quite a few more options in that category now and more often with SATA SSD at a similarly low price point if you chance the imported variety. One thing to be aware of is to select something which has the ability to auto boot on power resume (usually but not always via a BIOS option). I recently acquired some XCY units which advertised this capability but then found I had to open them up and enable via a hardware link rather than BIOS, though that being said the auto boot then worked more reliably than some other platforms I've had issues with. In the fanless category I have also tried a Gigabyte BACE 3160 with SATA which performed better than the aforementioned but more expensive.

On the other hand, at a somewhat different fan/power/cost permutation, probably some NUC variant might be a better and more reliable source choice. Haven't got personal experience but I am aware there are some people using these.

Thanks for the comprehensive wrap up of the state of things. I wasn't aware of Win10 LTSC even, so that's fab to hear, though I see it's supposed to be corporate licensed, min 5x only.


Also I definitely find the BIOS enabled power on resume to be flaky across a variety of platforms, so the xcy mini PC sounds like a winner - have you got an example link to one?

The XCY boxes can be obtained here: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003330185279.html. As you will see they are somewhat industrial format (which may not be a bad thing - interesting to see an RS232 port again :-) ). The cost is really quite attractive (I just have the 4GB/64GB N2830 variants) but one caveat of this is that although it comes with Windows 10 Pro installed this appears to be a 'corporate' licence and the disk partitioned to 44/20GB sections for some reason, so my inclination would be to wipe and re-install perhaps to LTSC. Yes LTSC is not for standard off the shelf PCs but licences can be obtained at not too high a cost.

I haven't yet done much with the O/S on the XCY boxes beyond start up and set up the auto boot, oh and install Cortex to gauge how fast it feels relative to the BT3 Pros for example. I have to say they feel quite a lot faster, boot up much more quickly and web browsing to Cortex quicker. probably mostly to do with SATA vs eMMC. The box does get quite warm though (measured surface around 43C, don't yet know what core values are until I install some utility). I noticed that XCY do other fanless box formats with more fins and even with i7 options I think! Wonder how warm they would get...

I guess with such low cost imports there are always elements of doubt but at that kind of price seems difficult not to explore.

Thanks for reply Karam, and WOW that is extraordinarily cost effective. And RS232 aside, VGA monitor is needed too I notice! Surprised 4GB is sufficient for a Win10 - you didn't opt for 8GB?

Thanks for info on warmth of the box, that's good to know. I suppose fanless does mean one less thing to fail (I've just had my Thinkpad Cortex fan die just now ironically).

The XCY boxes have both VGA and HDMI, 2 external antennas and 2 ethernet sockets as well as separate speaker and mic sockets. So you might describe as 'old fashioned' but then they are I think more targetted at industrial applications. In some senses that could be more ideal for an automation application but they don't look as neat if in a visible location. I don't think I've got any machines using anything much more than 4Gb of RAM so can't really comment on the difference 8Gb would make. I suspect not much as compared to the nature of the hard disk (to speed).

I was running Cortex on a BT3Pro that fried itself at the back end of last year - the 'spare' that I had turned out to be the non-Pro version and really wasn't up to the job.
I purchased a refurbished Dell Optiplex system in January, 8GB RAM and a 128GB SSD, for about £120 on eBay - I installed Windows 10 LTSC so there are few unused/unwanted features (I had to install Edge).
It is relatively small, quiet, *so* much faster than the BT3Pro and only seems to be consuming a little more power - and it's a fairly standard unit so should be very easy to support going forward.

Thanks for reply, sounds like a good option. Does the Optiplexes have a reliable boot-on-power do you know? Also I guess you have the space to have monitor and keyboard?
Also any pointers to acquiring a Win10 LTSC license and download? I can't get my head around the varying prices at various keys (can't tell if they might be illegitimate and I end up with a frozen system)!!

The Optiplex units can run headless, so monitor and keyboard are not required in normal use; it's quite small, only 180mm x 180mm and 40mm deep (plus space for connectors) - it has an external power supply (small brick).
They can be set to auto-boot when AC power is applied; I've just checked and it works perfectly (although I don't need it that often as mine is on a UPS).

I'm happy to let you know where I purchased my LTSC licence, it cost less than £15 from a website that I am satisfied is legitimate (not eBay) - I'll send you a PM.
I chose Windows 10 2019 LTSC as it will be supported until 2029 (2021 LTSC is different and will only be supported until 2026).
I like LTSC as you have more control over Windows Update than standard Windows 10 and you can access it remotely using Windows Remote Desktop.

Hope this helps,
Martin

Thanks so much Martin, and excellent tip with the Win10 LTSC 2019 vs 2021.

Hi Karam,

I've been looking more closely into these, it seems on amazon.co.uk, any of these type of fanless mini PCs, a lot of reviews talk about surface temperatures being hot, and I see a lot of ~40degreesC mentioned, so it must be the norm.

I did note though, that the reviewers on amazon.co.uk mentioning surface temp concerns disappeared for the fanless PCs, which were slightly wider.

Also if I was to try one, do you think this might be one to give a shot with a larger case?


Kind regards / Thanks in advance,

Marcus

I suppose a bigger box means bigger heatsinking so cooler. Open hardware monitor seem to be showing around 40-46C whilst I'm just running some Cortex database in simulation mode on the unit I described above (though now with LTSC on it). So perhaps the box feeling quite warm is not such a problem as it's not far from the CPU temperature reading which to me implies good thermal coupling to the box. I think what I was concerned with earlier is if the box feels that warm then how hot is the CPU?

The ones in your link appear to be i3 upwards variants. Are you saying there is an option for a wider casing or just that the casing looks to be wider? - Certainly seems to be more finned. I imagine an i3 is going to get hotter than the celeron but other than that difficult to draw a conclusion until you have one. Have to say the pricing is really quite tempting.. and hardly any difference between a 128GB vs 256GB SSD not that even 128 is required.

Although XCY responded to my early questioning about the autorun on power resume they didn't to my query anout specific driver files for the machine. However LTSC installed ok anyway so I'm guessing the automated Windows 10 driver seeking did the job without needing these. Not that I'm an expert on such matters. Anyhow just indicates I suppose that support may be a bit flakey if needed.

Aha, understood now. And yes good to hear CPU = outer box.

Regarding i3's, it was just that they seem to come in wider cases and more finns so presumably better heat disputation, however true, the i3 are 15W TPM vs 7.5W, so indeed maybe it's a lost cause! On the other hand maybe if it's i3, it'll mean it's barely ticking over in comparison so might be cooler anyway. Impossible to tell though if these i3s have hard wired option for auto booting though I've realised. Thanks for info on their support responsiveness, good to know.

So I bought one of those fan less mini PCs that Karam mentioned earlier in the thread. It only took about 7 days to come from China, well packaged and is about the size of a CD case and about as thick as a VHS tape.

I ordered the 8gb memory option, and it came with Windows 10 Pro installed. It booted up fine and I spent a few hours stripping out all the unnecessary Windows junk, plus turning off the auto-updates and the other annoying Windows stuff. As it's W10 Pro you can do quite a bit with it.

I ended up having to buy a new Cortex USB interface from Karam, as my previous PC was an old XP model that's been faultless for over a decade, but I didn't know the old RS232 was no longer supported. (I say faultless it's started to grind and grumble a bit, hence the need for the update).

With Cortex W10 installed it's been running for just over a couple of weeks, and I'm really pleased with it. Totally silent, runs warm but not excessively so. I can remote desktop into it and it only cost about £80!

Happy to supply a few pics if necessary.

Chris

Can you confirm which hardware link you had to link? I've just received an XCY unit to try .. but can't see any motherboard documentation showing which does what ..