Raspberry Pi dominates the hobbyist market and is a favorite among the ones who want to try some cool, geeky, DIY projects. However, the world of the single board computers has a lot more to offer, and you should definitely check out these boards as well:
10. VoCore
VoCore is a tiny Linux computer that is entirely open hardware and runs OpenWrt. VoCore is equipped with WIFI, USB, UART, 20+ GPIOs. It is no larger than a coin and has been designed for the IoT technology. The board is reasonably priced at $20, comes with 32MB RAM and 8MB flash memory, and is driven by 360MHz MIPS CPU.
You can find more about it here. You can buy it here
9. Arduino INDUSTRIAL 101
Arduino Industrial 101 is driven by Atheros AR9331 processor and runs LininoOS, a Linux distribution based on OpenWRT. The board has 64MB of RAM and 16MB of flash storage and comes with WIFI connectivity, 3 GPIOs, 4 Analog Inputs, 1 USB, 1 Ethernet signal on pin headers and a built-in DC/DC converter. Arduino Industrial 101 is priced at $40.
You can find more about it here. You can buy it here
8. C.H.I.P.
The world’s first $9 computer, C.H.I.P. is driven by an R8 processor of 1GHz that not only allows it to be small in size but also enables it to handle some serious work. The board has 512MB of RAM and 64GB storage. It comes with Bluetooth 4.0 and built in WIFI.
You can find more about it here. You can buy it here
7. Banana Pi M3
This computer board is fitted with an octa-core processor of 1.8GHz and 2GB of RAM. The board offers many connectivity options like Gigabit Ethernet, 2 USB, SATA, WiFi, Bluetooth, and HDMI connection. Banana Pi M3 supports quite a few operating systems like Android, Lubuntu, Ubuntu, Debian, and Raspbian. The board flaunts 2GB LPDDR3 memory and 8GB eMMC storage.
You can find more about it here. You can buy it here
6. NanoPi 2 Fire
Priced at $23, Nano Pi 2 Fire is a powerful computing board powered by Samsung S5P4418 quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 up to 1.4GHz. The board comes with USB 2.0 and 1GB DDR3 RAM and is fitted with microSD slot and microUSB port.
You can find more about it here.
5. NanoPC-T2
Priced at $60, NanoPC-T2 is the enhanced version of NanoPi2 Fire. The board is driven by A9 quad-core SoC and features dynamic frequency scaling up to 1.4GHz. The device offers onboard WIFI and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.
You can find more about it here.
4. Intel Edison with Kit for Arduino
Powered by Intel, the $92 Edison kit for Arduino is rather pricey at $92. However, its Dual-core, dual-threaded Intel Atom CPU with a 32-bit Intel Quark microcontroller gives it a remarkable functionality and the support for Yocto Linux, Python, Node.js and Wolfram makes it a powerful single board computer. The kit provides 20 digital input/output pins, of which six may be utilized as the analog input.
You can find more about this board here. You can buy it here
3. Parallella
Parallella is popular among the hobbyists for its powerful computing and elite performance. The board is driven by 16-core Epiphany RISC SOC, and Zynq SOC (FPGA + ARM A9). Parallella offers up to 48 GPIO pins and 1GB SDRAM.
You can find more about it here. You can buy it here
2. cloudBit
cloudBit is set to revolutionize the product development with its IFTTT support which allows the board to integrate with any web service as well as hardware like NEST. This Linux based system uses the WiFi adapter for networking and automatically connects to the littleBits cloud. Priced at $59.95, cloudBit is driven by Freescale i.MX23 ARM926EJ-S processor and offers 64MB of RAM.
You can find more about it here. You can buy it here
1. HummingBoard-Gate
HummingBoard-Gate provides great flexibility as you can use more than 150 different modules to customize your product. The users can just plug-and-play sensors for enhanced board functionalities. The board can also be integrated with necessary sensors using a 36-pin GPIO header and 4 USB ports. It is heftily priced but is great fun to experiment with.
You can find more about it here.
