Okay, so now I’m thinking about buying a second Raspberry Pi for the purpose of setting up a dedicated home server. My current solution, that of using an old laptop, appeared to be a good idea when it was first setup, but given the fact that basically I’m the only local user interested in using it, it no longer seems to make sense to allocate such a high power budget for a machine running 24/7. Hence my plans to migrate to a low-power single-board computer.
But, before I go out and just buy another Raspberry Pi, I should evaluate the current state of the single-board computer market. Already there has been lots of quibbling about competitors to the Raspberry Pi that are technologically superior, so I should see if one of those will better meet my needs than a Raspberry Pi. And indeed, one of them definitely does better meet my needs: Banana Pi.
So, how did I go about coming to that conclusion? First I went to the Wikipedia article on “Comparison of single-board computers”:
20180527/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_single-board_computers
Now you’re presented with this nearly innumerable list of single-board computers. How do you figure out what to look for? Of course, you want to look for new models of single board computers. Conveniently, there is a table column with the release date of the boards that you can sort by.
After doing that, I’ve distilled down to a small number of best choices:
- Orange Pi
- Raspberry Pi
- Le Potato
- Banana Pi
So now searching down more information on each of these individually is easy.
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Orange Pi looks kind of old and not kept as up-to-date or featureful as the alternatives, so that is out of the list.
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Le Potato and Banana Pi both look promising for this one reason: they use the Allwinner chipset, and therefore are supported by the
linux-sunxiproject and use an industry-standard U-boot process. Personally, one of the things I hate the most of the Raspberry Pi is the non-standard boot process it uses. Why? Because I can’t use the Raspberry Pi out-of-the-box to learn about and practice the boot process on other small embedded devices like a router or a smart switch! -
So finally, the tie-breaker between Le Potato and Banana Pi: Banana Pi has more boards available and purports wider operating system support.
Hence, the clear winner is the Banana Pi.
Are there any caveats between the Banana Pi and the Raspberry Pi? Sure, but none of them concern me. These are things like the following:
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Different boot process. As I’ve noted, that is a deliberately desired feature of mine, not a shortcoming.
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Physical form factor is not exactly compatible with the Raspberry Pi: I’m building my own device designs by hand and by 3D printing, so I can adapt to the changes easily. Plus, I haven’t actually finished building my first Raspberry Pi design either.
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Finally, an interesting observation about the Banana Pi website versus the Raspberry Pi. The Banana Pi website is clearly more manufacturer oriented, whereas the Raspberry Pi website is more hobbyist and educational oriented. This might dissuade the newest of new users, but the most prolific users in the market, i.e. professional users and advanced hobbyists, will welcome the changes to the website.
20180527/DuckDuckGo le potato
Ah, what is said on the KickStarter page is quite interesting. They say they are professional engineers that you won’t find the quality they provide much elsewhere. And I agree.
What is meant by “libre”? That means that they computer hardware design is libre, although the parts and the software might not be. The designers strive to avoid proprietary interfaces that would result in vendor lock-in.
20180527/https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/librecomputer/libre-computer-board-next-gen-4k-sbc-dev-board-for
20180527/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libre_Computer_Project
20180527/https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/librecomputer/libre-computer-board-tritium-sbc-linux-android-7-n
20180527/https://libre.computer/products/boards/all-h3-cc/
Yes! linux-sunxi uses U-boot, so we’re in good business.
20180527/http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page
For the Banana Pi, these designers are clearly doing a better job by including that aren’t included on the Raspberry Pi like SATA drive interfaces and LVDS display interfaces. Therefore, reusing an old laptop display is much easier, for example. Or, setting up a high-capacity NAS can be done efficiently, but the data transfer speed will be the apparent bottleneck, unfortunately.
20180527/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pi#Banana_Pi_BPI-W2
20180527/DuckDuckGo banana pi review
20180527/https://www.gadgetdaily.xyz/makeblock-starter-robot-kit-review/
20180527/http://www.banana-pi.org/
These are some interesting and important historic single-board computers mentioned in the Wikipedia article.
20180527/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamPlug
20180527/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SheevaPlug
The Free Software Foundation’s page on single-board computers hasn’t been updated since 2015. However, the content is still mostly relevant. So, what are the main caveats against boards like the Banana Pi? The GPU and VPU. Other than that, they have an acceptable boot process, unlike the Raspberry Pi.
20180527/DuckDuckGo free software foundation single board computers
20180527/https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers