The $8 Linux Computer (2022)
thelittleengineerthatcould.blogspot.com110 points by zenincognito 4 hours ago
110 points by zenincognito 4 hours ago
I love looking back 10+ years for the cheapest Linux thing you could buy. People were buying devices that were for kids or a router or something and repurposing it because it was open enough to get a shell on / flash Linux to it and start doing projects with.
In the 2020s or somewhere before that we got a bunch of dedicated cheap MCUs that were good enough and I think stole the thunder from full Linux but there are still projects to run it on things like the ESP32 family.
Either way, hardware hacking is still my favorite hobby to watch.
For a while, and I think even still today, the cheapest linux thing you can buy that has USB ports, wifi, and a power adapter are those Rockchip CPU powered Android TV boxes that are super popular from aliexpress and the like. There were people getting pretty mainline Linux distros on them. They have all moved on to be more expensive now (with 8GB RAM and way more cores than needed), but if you look back at ones from a few years ago you can find ones that were 1GB or 2GB of ram with a bit of eMMC storage and a quad core arm CPU roughly equivalent to a Raspberry Pi 3 in performance. Unlike a lot of these linux microcontroller-sized boards, you got power, wifi, usb ports, an audio out, and a nice case for it. What you lack is exposed GPIO usually. At one point you could find them for around $24. I think you still can if you look hard enough.
My friend has gotten full Linux on a number of weird RISC-V boards. https://github.com/queenkjuul/milkv-duo-ubuntu
Personally I think the LicheeRV nano on SG2002 is worth the investment of 15-20 bucks.
This thing has USB OTG, multiple usable GPIO and can be flashed via microSD and has a display out with touch support.
I was in the process on building a little iPod Nano clone[1] with Rust / Slint but i was too busy for a while, yet I plan to get back to it in the future. Unfortunately the sg2002 image has no CPU governor yet.
Maybe I switch to the tinyembedded dual with a custom PCB to save power[2].
The Raspberry Pi Zero sold for $5 before the foundation sold out.
When they were that cheap, I would grab my one on every trip to Microcenter, just because I'd probably find a use for it, and if I didn't, I knew someone else would want it. Fun times.
I miss them selling for $3.14 on Pi day.
These days we'd be lucky to see certain models discounted to $314.
Zero at $5 was never profitable. I think it was reported that they consulted Eric Schmidt and followed his advice to sell the core hardware at loss and recoup from accessories and bundle sales, which didn't suit their business, but did it anyway. This was why it was limited to 1 per customer and also because Pi Zero and Pico models have a more overpriced/appropriately-priced "WH" variants with no purchase limits.
To be fair to them that was over ten years ago, and prices of everything have risen significantly in that time.
Yeah, the launch was nearly 15 years ago (Feb 2012) - more than 1/7th of a century. It’d be in 9th or 10th grade by now.
Sold out? Or catered towards market demands?
They changed from an education-focused non-profit to a for-profit entity and then IPO'd. They sold out in the most literal sense.
That's what selling out is...
For reference, for those of you who prefer to learn things via ska punk music from the 90s...
Tomato. Tomahto.
Personally the pricing changes are absurd even with inflation and memory prices in mind.
RPi is horrible value now you can get so much more from a lot of other boards it's not even a comparison now.
> RPi is horrible value now you can get so much more from a lot of other boards it's not even a comparison now.
They didn't really exist before. And software support is still best on RPi. But they did really lose the plot because you could buy a whole x86 mini PC (new) for less and they're much better (unless you need GPIO).
> They didn't really exist before.
This is something that a lot of people seem to forget. I remember a friend showing me a low-performance Linux-based devboard shortly before the release of the Raspberry Pi. It cost hundreds of dollars. On top of that, support for the board was worse than the support for most of the Linux devboards released after the Raspberry Pi (which often has poor support compared to the Raspberry Pi).
> unless you need GPIO
I'm not even sure how that is relevant in most use cases if cost is a factor. Microcontroller development boards are inexpensive and will hook up to the x86 mini PC via USB. If you're willing to pay a bit more, many Wi-Fi based options are available.
I wouldn't say they lost the plot as they really don't have much choice with the current inflated component prices. It's either increase the prices or discontinue the products.
One could buy an old router or Android device for media playback on a TV for less. So the main attraction here is not that it's cheap, but that it's small and has convenient GPIO.
This article motivated me to buy three of these, it was fun, I had to get a pico to build the interface.
I still intend to go back, but time keeps on slipping...
I'm sure many have collected an impressive number of SBCs since the beaglebone, someday I want to build a display case that runs them all on some distributed process as a visual art piece
I want this but in credit-card form factor, with a screen built in.
Like a Linux phone?
If you can name me a phone the size of a CC ...
There are a bunch of tiny, no-name Android phones with 3” screens.
They’re awful to use but they are very cheap.
If the intent is to play with RISC-V cheaply rather than getting the absolute cheapest computer, I'd look at something with C908 (a small cpu that is vector capable, RVV 1.0).
A particularly good deal is the Banana Pi BPI-RV2: It has 4xC908@1.25GHz, 512MB DDR3, M.2, miniPCIe, 1x 2.5GbE, 5xGbE.
There is a cheaper Banana Pi BPI-CanMV-K230D-Zero. 2xC908, 128MB LPDDR4, KPU, MIPI CSI/DSI, Wi-Fi, 40x GPIO.
If serious about RISC-V, then of course RVA23 is desirable. Unfortunately any SBC with that is currently expensive due to the RAM shortage situation.
This is very impressive. Here are the specs that they linked:
https://pine64.com/product/128mb-ox64-sbc-available-on-decem...
It has 64 MB of internal psram and these cores:
- 64-bit 480MHz RV64 C906
- 32-bit 320MHz RV32 E907
- 32-bit 150MHz RV32 E902
This is like desktop computers from 30-40 years ago I guess. There were quite a few types of applications those could run.
I'd guess that this board is inexpensive as a cheap entry-level board into the pine64 ecosystem, other boards by pine64 are more expensive. ($60-$80 range.)
Also liked your “Nature abhors unused RAM” piece.
https://thelittleengineerthatcould.blogspot.com/2019/10/horr...
Sam Altman is just catching on ;)
>At the time of writing, ethernet, wifi and SD-Card are not working.
This might be the most Linux sentence ever!
Quick someone upload a passmark score
Probably a little faster than a Pentium 3
The C906 core that runs Linux on the BL808 SoC on this device has roughly the same integer performance as a P3 on a per Mhz basis. The C906 is about 2.4 DMIPS / Mhz and the P3 is roughly 2.4 (Katmai core) - 2.8 (Tualatin core) DMPIS / Mhz depending on the version. You are looking at roughly P3 450 integer performance
Its an interesting comparison that Im not sure reflects positively on the RISC-V C906 core when you factor in core area and process nodes and core area, 22nm vs 250nm. Even if we choose the worst case scenario for the P3 cores to compare which would be the Katmai core. We are basically look at ~parity with a 30 year old core design
C906 core only @ 22nm = ~0.6 mm2
C906 core only @ 250nm = ~78 mm2 (geometric transform)
P3 core only @ 22nm = ~0.5 mm2 (geometric transform)
P3 core only @ 250nm = ~76 mm2
Apologies if this is messy and badly formatted. Im currently at a wedding, sat waiting between the ceremony and the after party and Ive quite a few beers. I responded because its something I looked at previously with RISC-V cores and I already had the answers in my head
Interesting, thanks! Would be cool to have the same comparison for a modern Intel cpu
The chip computer used to be much more capable and feature rich at just 9$
Assuming you're referring to the one released in 2015, with inflation that's nearly 50% more expensive apparently.
I got a proxmox server hosting many stuff on a T530 thinkpad I got for less than $5, now beat that! Actually, I have a 2015 imac running archos that I got free from an old boomer, he even incl the magic mouse and keyboard.
Is the Pi Zero 2W globally unobtainable at this point? What are folks using instead?
You can get amazingly far with an ESP32, RP2350, or other modern microcontrollers if Linux isnt a hard requirement.
You can pick them up in the Cambridge store, if you're anywhere near it, I bought one last week and they had plenty in stock.
But online it's very hard to find
Complete starter kit for $90 here
https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w.html?cid=usd&s...
You’re not saying that this 8$ project costs 90$ today, are you?
Damn, I just checked eBay prices - even second hand some people are asking close to this! I should dig mine out and cash in too.
Out of interest I just dug out my invoice for the pi500+ I brought almost exactly 12 months ago - looks I got it at around 40% of the price it goes for today.
I agree with the other poster though, ESP32 is a good alternative if you don't need linux - these things are great ...
https://shop.m5stack.com/products/atom-lite-esp32-developmen...
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