I had a request for a follow-up to my recent post about SBCs regarding what I actually do with them. There are a lot more of them kicking around than I'm going to show here. Some drift in and out of use as I start or shut down projects or upgrade to different boards.
These are the heart of everything really. They have a very cool design with the whole chassis being a giant heatsink and are stackable. The key features supported are for 3.5 inch and 2.5 HDDs or SSDs, gigabit ethernet, fairly powerful 2GHz octa-core CPU and 2GB RAM. These make great little low-power servers and that's what they are designed to be. No video or audio out, no GPIO and only 1 USB port.
I am using them to self-host a handful of services. One HC2 is running Yunohost with Nextcloud, XMPP and Wallabag. The other HC2 has a large HDD providing network storage and a media share that is connected to Kodi on the TV.
As mentioned in previous posts this Gemini capsule is hosted on one of these boards inside the Recon Sentinel enclosure that it came with. A second one is my music server that runs Mopidy and sends that audio stream synchronized to multiple speakers around the house with Snapcast.
Rock64 "Recon Sentinel" Servers
Sitting under the living room TV is a Pi 3 with a sense HAT that has an 8x8 led matrix. This Pi 3's job is to run a neat little LED clock on the LED matrix. It is also plugged into a speaker and acts as a Snapcast client for the synchronized audio system. The other Pi 3 currently in use is inside a Mycroft Mark I voice assistant.
Another speaker in the kitchen has a CHIP sitting on top that acts as a Snapcast client. I have a few other CHIPs that are used for experimenting and will likely also be used as Snapcast clients in the future when I add more speakers. A CHIP is also what powers the PocketCHIP portable computer that I've been using a lot lately.
While not really the same type of device as the ones I talk about as SBCs, the Odroid Go Advance is essentially an SBC that has been custom designed as a gaming handheld. It can run normal Linux distros just as if it were an SBC and even has a GPIO header and USB port. I use it as a game system but like that I could turn it into a mobile server if I wanted to.
I have a couple of Pi 0Ws with camera modules and suction mounts that are not currently being used. A Pi 3B+ with a 4-inch touch display HAT may become something at some point as well. One more would be the Pi 0W with an e-paper hat and USB hub that I have experimented with off and on.
