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Ringing In 2015 With 40 Linux-Friendly Hacker SBCs
DeviceGuru writes As seen in this year-end summary of 40 hacker-friendly SBCs, 2014 brought us plenty of new Linux and Android friendly single-board computers to tinker with — ranging from $35 bargains, to octa-core powerhouses. Many of the new arrivals feature 1-2GHz multicore SoCs, 1-2GB RAM, generous built-in flash, gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, on-board FPGAs, and other extras. However, most of the growth has been in the sub-$50 segment, where the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone reign supreme, but are now being challenged by a growing number of feature-enhanced clones, such as the Banana Pi and Orange Pi. Best of all, there's every reason to expect 2015 to accelerate these trends.
We homeschool, and my children are part of a homeschool co-op.
I'm currently working on using a BeagleBone Black to build a Jeapardy like game system, for when the co-op does their knowledge bowls, etc. I am going to build the first 'contestant' box and the main box, and do a class for the advanced students where they will help build the rest of the contestant boxes, and then we will both program in the software to support several different game setups, like 2 teams of 5, 5 teams of 2, 5 teams of 2 with a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd order for teams to answer in, in case the 1st team doesn't get it right, etc. At that point, it's just software.
It's a great introduction to simple circuits (each contestant box will have a button and an LED, so power, ground a few resistors, etc), and simple software to read the GPIO pins and set the LED lights.
The co-op gets a cool Jeapardy team setup exactly how they want it, and the students get hands-on experience building it and programming it.
And, they can re-use the BBB for other projects as the students want to experiment with it. It's a flexible embedded computer that they can use for other projects. Just keep a different SD card for each hardware system that they keep.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
My 70 watt AMD "house server" has been turned off since early November to one of those sucky 5 watt Banana Pi boards, and a 3 watt R-Pi B+ for OVPN duty... Not a single problem so far...