I bought one of the first orange PIs: they have terrible support for hardware, notable for the wifi: it is shipped as blob only in content of Armbian. No upstream drivers. You cannot have wifi and some other OS (even updated Armbian) nor openwrt etc.
PSA: If you don’t absolutely need ARM or the really tiny form factor and can settle for higher power consumption, you can get a used Dell or Lenovo business PC from a few years ago for less than a new Raspberry Pi or even some of the higher end alternatives/clones but with similar computing power. Or something a lot more powerful for not that much more.
I really like their ultra-small form factor models. About the size of a coffee table book so not that much larger than a raspi with a case, and if you factor in the fairly high quality case, more I/O, active cooling, non-soldered CPU and RAM, and expansion through hard drive slots and M.2, it’s an even better value.
It’s basically another board that you attach to a Raspberry Pi or similar SCB that allows you to gain additional functionality like adding sensors, cooling, more ports and so on.
Here’s one example: (click). The green board at the bottom is a Raspberry Pi Zero (I think) and the blue board on top is a hat, specifically a Sense HAT. It has additional sensors like one for temperature, a gyroscope, barometer, etc.
I bought one of the first orange PIs: they have terrible support for hardware, notable for the wifi: it is shipped as blob only in content of Armbian. No upstream drivers. You cannot have wifi and some other OS (even updated Armbian) nor openwrt etc.
PSA: If you don’t absolutely need ARM or the really tiny form factor and can settle for higher power consumption, you can get a used Dell or Lenovo business PC from a few years ago for less than a new Raspberry Pi or even some of the higher end alternatives/clones but with similar computing power. Or something a lot more powerful for not that much more.
I really like their ultra-small form factor models. About the size of a coffee table book so not that much larger than a raspi with a case, and if you factor in the fairly high quality case, more I/O, active cooling, non-soldered CPU and RAM, and expansion through hard drive slots and M.2, it’s an even better value.
If they can handle playing 1080p videos streaming without lag or tearing, then I am very much going to get either the 16GB or 32GB.
Can you use Raspberry Pi “hats” on this board?
What’s a hat?
It’s basically another board that you attach to a Raspberry Pi or similar SCB that allows you to gain additional functionality like adding sensors, cooling, more ports and so on.
Here’s one example: (click). The green board at the bottom is a Raspberry Pi Zero (I think) and the blue board on top is a hat, specifically a Sense HAT. It has additional sensors like one for temperature, a gyroscope, barometer, etc.
They’re in stock for about $138 right now.