Single Board Computers #

As the name suggests, it is a single board computer that functions as a Microcontroller, having a GPIO pins on the side and a pretty beefy processor, it can lift any task easily with it’s ARM chip(usually). Usually these intricate pieces of Fiberglass and Copper and Silicon run on a *nix system and is required to function as a single board computer. Again these boards typically runs small and simple projects such as Home Assistant or RetroPie which are small scale open source projects relating to the hardware. Many of these projects support the RaspberryPi Family more due to it’s popularity, but many clones have also emerged throughout the years.

To view all of these single board computers in one place, visit SBC Database.

What are the use cases for each board #

Many of the popular ones include Nvidia Jetson which are typically used to develop AI-based applications. Raspberry Pi which is the more supported and the most hacked among the community, support for these boards are extraordaniry and can be many versatile applications.

The Odroid and BeagleBoards a good introduction to SBC and their pros, Odroid and BeagleBoards are commonly used for primarily headless servers and Linux-based Applications, due to their sizes they are not commonly found in handhealds.

BananaPi and OrangePi and Radxa are the boards to go for handheald and cyberdecks, typically small form factor and lower power draw means the CPU&RAM combo packs a punch many of these boards support Linux and emulator-focused OSes.

For a cheap aalternative with all of the functionality of a Raspberry Pi is the LibreComputer and Asus Tynker Board popular with building cluster due to the price to peformance.

A beefy, strong, and out peforming sbcs are the IntelNUC, LattePanda, Zimaboard, and UDOO; breaking the boundries of what one 5 Layer PCB can do and peform.

If you don’t want the hassle of creating the computer, the PINE64 Foundation produces hardware that fufill the portable Linux experience.

Finally Arm Chip manufactures such as: Rockchip will create powerful sbc experience.

Boards: #

RaspberryPi Family - A singleboard computer common to the community, Powerful processor Arm-based for Linux.