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Well, given I can’t demonstrate Kitten (https://codeberg.org/kitten/app) on a PineBook Pro due to lack of HDMI out, I just ordered a CrowPi L since I have a Raspberry Pi 4 lying about unused.
https://www.crowpi.cc/collections/crowpi/products/crowpi-l
Got the advanced kit – want to demonstrate how you can do Small Web dev on this thing. And for education… imagine kids making a web site that displays sensor readings (humidity, temperature, etc.) :)
(Note: this is in no way an endorsement of spycop-hiring Raspberry Pi Foundation.)
…And on that last note, I’ve been trying to find alternatives to Raspberry Pi – would be very interested if folks have any leads… especially to boards that can be used for education.
@aral Jeff Geerling talked about this in one of his videos. Many alternatives but none are so well documented and have an OS that just works...
@frankdelporte Yeah, software is really holding back these boards… and given the potential especially in education, that’s so sad. Fingers crossed the situation can only improve :)
@aral @frankdelporte I recently tried out the latte-panda if you don't mind Windows then that comes ready to run. But putting Linux on it was quite painful
@Workshopshed @frankdelporte Thanks :) (I do mind Windows but it’s good to have on the radar; maybe their Linux support will improve.)
@royal @frankdelporte @aral Yeah... every time I try a different vendor, there's little quirks that hold me back from giving a resounding recommendation.
With the Pi almost everything 'just works' and what doesn't is well documented in forums, blog posts, sometimes in official docs or github.
Sometimes just finding the community (or a working image!) for clone boards is difficult.
Radxa seems to be doing okay here, and maybe Orange Pi. But still not 'easy' across the board.
@aral Well, Pine themselves propose devellopement boards which may be used for education purposes i suppose. I haven't tested any however.
@poorpocketsmcnewhold Yeah, but having two PinePhones and a PineBook Pro with sketchy-at-best software support and core features not working does not make me want to alpha test anything else for them on my own dime at the moment. I’d love to see a bit more investment in the whole experience from them before I reconsider. My room is starting to look like a junkyard of promising-but-not-quite-there open tech as it is :)
@aral I was recommended the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeagleBoard by friends several times.
I never had much use for single board computers though, so I never tested it myself. Might still be worth a look.
@ben Thank you :)
@aral If you want to emphasis *small*, I've played around with the Onion Omega2 a bit. It's pretty capable for the form factor, though the smaller than typical pin spacing can be frustrating. https://onion.io/
@saramg Bookmarked, thank you. They have quite a few very interesting boards :)
@aral
Maybe one of the ODROIDs? https://www.hardkernel.com/
Recently I stumbled upon this article: https://www.ubuntupit.com/best-raspberry-pi-alternatives/
@fzimper Neat, thank you. Bookmarked to read :)
@aral Lichee RV (module+dock) is one of the less expensive and it's reasonably usable. Still available on aliexpress.
@federico3 Wow, that does look very promising, thanks.
Just read this about it: https://jamesachambers.com/sipeed-licheerv-d1-risc-v-sbc-review/
I think this one is just amazing. I use it in my intro classes.
@stevensrmiller Looks neat :)
I have one, but haven’t done anything with it yet. Software is…hard to find.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004157984532.html
Review: https://bret.dk/armbian-on-the-mangopi-mq-pro/
Specs: https://linux-sunxi.org/MangoPi_MQ-Pro
@amanda Thanks, Amanda :) And yeah, software seems to be the issue with alternative boards.
Theoretically all the boards listed on #DietPi's website should be able to at the very least run Node.js (and install it very painlessly).
Also, check out this thread for a discussion of Pi alternatives (and a few more more details about DietPi): https://mastodon.sergal.org/@slightlyflightyone/109478568450380615
NB: I haven't tried any of those SBCs so far, as I can't really justify getting more while I still have several underused Pis kicking about...
@aral @PadreSJ@twit.social@PadreSJ@twit.social- among other things- is a pretty well known and respected engineer and coder.
@aral check out olimex's olinuxino boards. They're open hardware, much hardier, and fully free software. Current iterations don't have wifi on them unfortunately, but they have also pioneer boxes that are basicly small freedombox servers. :)
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardware
@tonton Thank you. I’m very interested in building one of their laptops at some point :)
@aral Would appreciate your opinion of the keyboard. If the keyboard is usable, this could be a very interesting little device.
@acousticmirror I shall be sure to provide it. It should get here by the time I’m back from #OFFDEM in Belgium :)
@aral have you done any diggin on BeagleBone? A handful of years ago when I was working with hardware more, they were regularly popping up. Not sure where they’d re now.
@Dpen I haven’t heard a lot about them recently either. But thanks for the reminder. I’ll take a look :)