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dchest

Some more cheap SBCs from my bookmarks:

- BananaPi (Allwinner, MediaTek): http://www.banana-pi.org/

- Le Potato (Amlogic) and Renegate (Rockchip): https://libre.computer/

- NanoPi (Samsung, Allwinner) : http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/category&...

- OLinuXino (open hardware, Allwinner A20, A64, etc, iMX, Ralink): https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/

- Odroid (Amlogic, Samsung): http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php

- OrangePi (Allwinner): http://www.orangepi.org/

- Pine64 (Allwinner) and Rock64 (Rockchip): https://www.pine64.org/

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I might recommend https://www.board-db.org/ -- up to date parametric search for single board computers with prices and links to buy.

I am not affiliated with the site, but use it regularly. Sometimes, it allows to find really obscure boards which fit a niche application.

I have both Raspberry Pi's and a few of the cheap "clones". So some takeaways:

The good: they're definitely cheaper, I paid about a third of the raspberry Pi 2 price for a comparable Orange Pi. Other models seem to have similar aggressive pricing.

The bad: Armbian distros are a mixed bag, I had the impression some of them were put together by developers who didn't even have the particular board on hand. I spent a good three hours just getting WiFi to work (not being familiar with linux didn't help either though) , while putting up with an invisible cursor editing config files. Setting up a raspberry pi zero W in comparison was 5 minutes. Also I found out later that the pin header was 180 degrees rotated compared to the Raspberry, which made it not compatible with standard hats.

In retrospect I did learn a lot, and the Orange Pi has been running without issue for 2 years now. But Raspberry's have my definite preference.

It would be cool if one of the big distros head a test suite for SBCs. The knowledge that the pi is well rested and supported is probably the biggest thing holding me with them. Well, and I think they're a really great organization which has driven a lot of innovation. But knowing that I might spend three hours screwing around with WiFi definitely keeps me from even trying out competitors.

There are also a few interesting options in the ~$100 price range.

One example is the new WandPi 8M. It's based on the NXP i.MX8M and has a few key advantages (particularly, true gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0). I've ordered one myself, but I'm not sure exactly when they're supposed to start shipping.

There's also the x86 based UP boards. They're based on newer Intel Atom SoCs, so my guess is that the out-of-the-box Linux support would be fairly decent.

The NXP chips have the other only open source GPU drivers, with the first being the RPi. If you want to do multi-media and need USB3, this is probably what you want.

The upboards are interesting, some have an FPGA, and some NN processing soon courtesy of Movidious.

The Pine64/Rock64 and Orange Pi are as cheap or cheaper than the RPi, and some Allwinner/Rockchip boards have binary GPU drivers, but really YMMV.

When shopping for SBCs, I find archlinuxarm's supported devices list very useful.

https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms

For ARMv8 specifically: https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8

I've recently been converting most of my home pi's to arch linux, as I use Arch as my daily driver. Add cockpit on top and it becomes a very modern generic platform.

https://github.com/sthysel/archlinux-arm-cockpit

How much cpu/ram does this take up on a pi? I imagine it's a nice interface to have.

Don’t forget the Espressobin: http://espressobin.net/

Have an EspressoBin sitting in my box of misc electronics parts. I wanted to run pfSense on it but last time I checked the Marvell CPU in it isn’t the same as the one in the Netgate SG-3100 that pfSense is exclusively compatible with ( https://store.netgate.com/Search.aspx?m ). Ended up getting a Ubiquiti UniFi switch + gateway to compliment the AC Pro AP that I already had and it works great — one management interface for all my home networking gear, VPN just works, wireless roaming + backups + 802.1x + rsyslog + emails of events + comprehensive monitoring and DPI make it a pretty nice home setup, especially with pi-hole running DNS.

Support is coming very soon: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=120015.15

https://twitter.com/gonzopancho/status/953758906689388547

https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/7rat4n/pfsense_on_...

That is an exceptionally good looking board at that price.

It's quite nice. Doesn't run pfSense yet, but apparently that's being worked on. There's a version of Arch that runs wonderfully on it though. I bought it a few days ago after reading this[1] guide to try to replace my pfSense router (stupid AES-NI...).

[1]https://blog.tjll.net/building-my-perfect-router/

I was just investigating which distro would provide a smooth experience with espressobin. Looks like I need to give Arch a try.

I've been working with the Onion Omega 2+ recently and enjoying it.

https://onion.io/omega2/

I was one of the Onion Kickstarter backers and got one of the first ones. It was seriously a disaster for the first year.

Zero support, even in the forums (which are still such a JS mess they don't work on my iPhone). For a lot of users, the microSD slot didn't work. For many others, wifi was a nightmare.

It's gotten significantly better over the months, but it's still not ready for primetime. The good news is that the Onion folks are still actively working on it, and many of the issues have been addressed via firmware updates. But it's still flakey as hell. I've never been able to get its native GUI to work; even the new one released last week.

On one hand, the base unit is only $5. On the other... you get what you pay for.

I had to dig this deep to get any specs:

https://docs.onion.io/omega2-docs/omega2.html

And even then, it doesn't even tell me the very basics, such as what SoC does it use.

When it's this bad, it's automatic discard.

Any of those x86? or is that mutually exclusive with "cheap"?

UP seem to have a range of x86 boards for comparable prices: https://up-shop.org/4-up-boards

x86 is mutually exclusive with 'well designed'. Arm slightly less so, especially v8, although GPUs are all still 'secret sauce' (except newer nvidia I read). I'd really like to switch everything from x86 to arm sooner than later.

Would you elaborate on that? I've encountered a lot of ARM (and other archs) around, while, on the contrary, x86 seems to have a pretty decent base (excluding some horribile chinese-designed tablets).

I guess they're talking about the SoC/ISA rather than the board designed around it. x86 is generally considered a rather clunky/bad ISA and often sniped by — I don't think the term is really good but can't really find a better one — ISA pedants.

Depends on how cheap, the Minnowboard starts at $150

https://minnowboard.org

There seem to be better-performing x86 Windows Mini PCs available for less. Come in a proper case and with a power supply.

If you need GPIO, I see some mini or smaller ITX mobos available[1], though I don't know how painful it is to get working...

1: http://www.mini-box.com/Jetway-JNF9D-2550

Also https://www.lattepanda.com, around the same price.

$20 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-04W1431-ThinkPad-X220-i3-231...

$30 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X220-Motherboard-FR...

~4-10x Raspberry pee 3 speed, SATA, pcie, 1Gbit ethernet, battery backup. Can get them as low as $10 with one USB port broken (either mechanical or fried).

This is an interesting option. Is it possible run that bare motherboard attached to a compatible power supply and nothing else? I don't see heat sinks on the first link, or RAM, or storage on either.

1GB ddr3 sodimms are pretty much free/garbage(friends, IT at work) due to being outdated and too small for anything, or $4 on ebay including shipping if you cant be bothered to ask around.

Those were just first random links from ebay, you can get better deals if you search harder, for example EU $15 http://allegro.pl/org-sprawna-plyta-glowna-lenovo-x220-core-... whole lower case +wifi +bt +cooling, one usb mechanically broken (out of 3 sockets, 9 more usb available if you solder directly to motherboard in strategic places like camera/mpcie/fingerprint/expresscard/dock connectors). Thinkpads can boot from SD card just like raspberry pee. You boot without keyboard by shorting one pin on keyboard/dock/debug connector.

did I mention full schematic? http://plan9.stanleylieber.com/hardware/thinkpad/x220/x220.s...

mostly open source firmware is also available https://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x220

Thank you for your reply. I made some off-topic comment a couple of months ago on HN about the lack of inexpensive, full x86 compatible SBCs. This gets close to the mark, especially if I can run the bare motherboard or something close to it.

As an aside, the schematics really take me back to a moment in the late 1980s. Radio Shack sold Tandys and TRS-80s at one point, and I remember an especially thick series of binders full of the system schematics for one (or some) of the computers they sold. I was too young with no money of my own then to buy them, and now I really wish I knew what that was so I could find it on eBay. Little did I know that was the end of an era, and not something I'd see the likes of again until today.

I haven't used one, but some of the low-end Liva machines[1] seem viable. Or Compute Sticks of various flavors (depending on what you wanted to do with them - no GPIO on either)

1: http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product/Product_LIVA_SPEC.a...

The rock pro 64 will hopefully come out by May 1 from pine64 with faster dual A72 cores + quad A53 cores. Their shipping is slow.

Firefly have a range of devices (Rockchip): http://www.t-firefly.com/

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