Single board computer notes.
So, after some thought, I’m planning on getting the Libre Computer Board latest version in preference to the Banana Pi that supports NAS. I think it will be more important to have the best performance out of my intended single board computer form factor than having a potentially useful feature that I might want to use.
20180812/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libre_Computer_Project
So the EOMA 68 Earth Friendly Computing Devices? Where are those? They’re in good shape! Shipping is planned for late October of this year! However, that’s primarily 1000 units for the 800 pre-orders thus far. If you’re like me and going to jump on the bandwagon after the fact, you better be prepared for a bottleneck.
20180812/https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/2-7-5-samples-received-dram-is-ok-micro-hdmi-to-confirm
Now that I’m here to look, I also see that there are some libre NAS devices that look quite interesting. But the final verdict? Their form factor and power consumption is too large for my desires. Sure, I like the performance, but I’ve been telling myself to go for the form factor that you want, and let technological scaling over time handle the performance after several upgrade cycles.
20180812/https://www.crowdsupply.com/gnubee/personal-cloud-1
20180812/https://www.crowdsupply.com/gnubee/personal-cloud-2
And, finally, this is ever further justification that I do not need to go for Banana Pi. If I want a NAS, this device will do a much more excellent job than the Banana Pi will do.
But now, I’m looking further into what Amazon has in store for the Libre Computer board. And what am I seeing?
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The latest Libre Computer Board, Tritium, is not available on Amazon.
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The next latest Libre Computer Board on Amazon, Le Potato, has some reviews claiming it is good… but their is this other board that is better named the ODROID-C2.
Okay, so now let’s get the lowdown on the ODROID. My verdict: there are multiple versions of the ODROID available, one of the latest of which is the C2. Sure some of the other later versions are more powerful from a computational standpoint than the C2, but they also consume more power. Also, ODROID-C2 has Gigabit Ethernet, whereas Libre Computer Board Le Potato does not. Finally, Libre Computer Board may require some proprietary binary blobs to boot. So my verdict? Given all the limitations at hand, I’ll go with ODROID-C2.
All of that said, one thing that people say compares well on the side of the Libre Computer Board Le Potato as a home theater PC is that it supports high dynamic range video output, whereas ODROID-C2 does not. However, this still doesn’t work so well given the 100 Mbps Ethernet on the Libre Computer Board Le Potato.
Still more comments. The fact that Le Potato has trouble running Armbian? Well, wait, Wikipedia claims it does support Arbian. But all in all, ODROID-C2 has better software support, which is one of the reasons why it ranked better on Amazon than Libre Computer Board Le Potato.
20180812/https://www.amazon.com/Libre-Computer-AML-S905X-CC-Potato-64-bit/dp/B074P6BNGZ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1534092245&sr=8-3&keywords=libre+computer+board
20180812/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ODROID
20180812/https://www.amazon.com/ODROID-ODROID-C2/dp/B01LDLBBY8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1534094083&sr=8-2&keywords=ODROID-C2