Like most people, I entered COVID as a normal hobby geek with a Linux server I played around with and a healthy hardware habit with a side of home automation and DD-WRT. I emerged from COVID enrolled in college, now with two servers (one new build, one rebuilt from my first one), two Pi, multiple instances of Home Assistant (one dedicated) and putting sensors on everything a sensor could go on and rewiring switches for wifi control of overhead fans, flashing every compatible router I could find on Amazon Warehouse with DDWRT in my home for an ad hoc mesh network (no, it didn't work, but I didn't care) while cabling everything to switches and creating a really hilarious network deathtrap tripping hazard, a massive media library (discovered Handbrake and making multiple resolutions) and a Sonos home theatre system. And yes, played an unhealthy amount of Animal Crossing and got an NVIDIA Shield Pro for streaming and Plex, as you do. I'm sure everyone can relate.

SBC's were the natural escalation; I had credit card bills to pay off and that's going to take a while.

I gatewayed with Pi like ten years ago but it took off during Later COVID when I noticed my credit score and started testing it as a NAS, Media Server (later: Cassiope Media Server, my second end to end Linux build), then got into learning about the kernel itself. I already had an Odroid (Home Assistant Blue) so why not go on, so project-based SBCs seemed healthy; I had a reason for buying one. This led to more Pi's--as I couldn't use Kernel Pi (Eurydice) for it and Andromeda Pi was masking my personal network, then I needed one for a Pihole (Iphigenia, Hecuba), which is how I ended up with a BeagleBone Black (Medusa) for an Open Thread Border Router. Still pretending I wasn't just collecting them like cats, I networked them together and just enjoyed looking at them and making them matching banners with figlet with the excuse I was learning how to do network-wide deployments over SSH (true) and learn Debian OS (technically, I am doing that) and started PoEing things (my credit card bills may not be getting lower, no).

The count stands at a total of 9: one (1) Pi Zero W, one (1) Pi Zero 2 W, one (1) Raspberry Pi 4B 4G, two (2) Raspberry PI 4B 8G, one (1) Odroid N2+, one (1) Beaglebone Black, one (1) PocketBeagle, and one (1) BeaglePlay. (Other: two Linux machines, Watson and Cassiope). Yes, they all have names and technically, each is associated with a project. The BeaglePlay's (Circe) associated project is 'create my own documentation on what it does because Beagles don't document'.

So which ones do you use, why, origin story, feelings: go.

(I'm moving in a week and half my hardware is being packed. I'm about to have to take down my network and Home Assistant and may be freaking out. I'm not sure I know where any light switches are here, either.)

  • azimir@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    Oh... that's a huge question. It's been a long time now. I have used these in various projects for a lot of engineering, research, home networks, and embedded projects. I almost always run them headless over a serial console then SSH in for management.

    • RPi 1 - my son used it recently for the RCA TV out
    • RPi 2B
    • RPi 3A+
    • RPi 3B+
    • RPi Zero
    • RPi Zero W
    • RPi 4B+
    • Beagle Bone Black - I ran a pair of these as TOR relays for years. They were tanks.
    • NanoPi NEO-LTS
    • NanoPi NEO Air-LTS - The current one in service is an OctoPi server for my 3D printer
    • Orange Pi 5 (I got one of the 32GB ones! - currently a Plex server with an external SSD and onboard M.2)
    • Orange Pi Zero2
    • C.H.I.P. Computer - this BTW was one of the best little hacking computers. It was phenomenal to setup and run over the OTG USB console
    • Bannana Pi (original) - It was great because it had a SATA port so we used them to back network Linux installs for smart home kits.

    I do a ton of other work with embedded microcontrollers too. Lots of ATMega and SAMD boards, plus a bunch of ESP 8266/32 variants.