Single Board Computers, and why you should get one!

Name: FriendRewind
Author: FriendRewind

FriendRewind

My first exclusive to FriendRewind blog. Time to make others suffer with my rants!

Today, I wanted to talk about Single Board Computers, and why you, yes you! should get one for your collection!

Single board computers are computers that are all built on a single circuit board, including your CPU, memory, and other components. You may be thinking of a Raspberry Pi, or a Chromebox. For technical purposes, at least for me, I consider all of these SBC's! (There are other brands as well, but for this blog I'll only talk about these two)

Some of these are made for coding and tinkering. Some are deployed as workstations for corporations. Some are also put on modules that are installed into other computers!

So why do I recommend you pick them up?

Personally, it's the modularity. Raspberry Pi's can be modified to run whatever you want and whatever you install! I use two Raspberry Pi 4's and a Pi Zero in my collection right now. My main Pi is a network dashboard that runs a dashboard that lets me monitor both my network usage and my electric usage! You can install many different things into a Pi or Pi Zero, including hats that let you see your air quality, install a touch screen, or monitors your electric! I also use Pi-Hole on my Zero!

Used Chromeboxes on eBay in my opinion, are very slept on as well. They are a bit more complex in flashing custom OS's onto, but these machines, when you install Linux on them, are very capable desktops for use with web browsing or even setting up as boxes for streaming! I have flashed these myself, and they are interesting machines.

In a modern era where every group is buying each other up for control, AI is being forced into every service we use, and tech providers and services continue to cave in to government overreach, the time to learn how to flash open source software that can't be bought out or controlled is now! These machines make it easy, and help teach you how to regain control of your hardware in a smaller form!

But Pretense, they are very expensive!

Yeah, sadly that is the case now due to RAM pricing and over-inflation of AI. Two years ago, if you even able to, you could get an 8GB Raspberry Pi 5 for around $90. You are lucky now if you can get it below $200 now.

If cost is a factor that prevents you from picking up a Pi, I recommend you take a browse around eBay and look for cheap Chromeboxes! I've found them, albeit without the power cables, for under $30! These are boxes that you can flash Linux onto (as long as the model supports flashing) and use for practice for installing software.

Raspberry Pi's sadly don't seem to be going down in price anytime soon, and in the past they have stifled consumers in favor of corporations. Which means sadly the best time to get a Pi would likely be now. You can get a Pi 400 kit from Micro Center for $50 and I highly recommend you look into that if you go down the Raspberry Pi route! The downside is that Raspberry Pi's use ARM processors rather then x86/64 processors, so a lot of software either won't work or isn't optimized for it, but these machines can be used for programming, projects, as well as setting up very important services like Pi-Hole, which I recommend everyone try out!

If you do get a Raspberry Pi, a used Chromebox, or program a different SBC, definitely share your work in the comments! If you have any other questions about them, feel free to share them as well. :3

Published by pretense

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