The Banana Pi BPI-M7 single board computer is equipped with up to 32GB RAM and 128GB eMMC flash, and features an M.2 2280 socket for one NVMe SSD, three display interfaces (HDMI, USB-C, MIPI DSI), two camera connectors, dual 2.5GbE, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, a few USB ports, and a 40-pin GPIO header for expansion.
Is it $60 or less? Everytime one of these alternative boards with an assload of more features pops up, nobody bothers to mention the price. Obviously we could spend more money to get more features, that’s what spending more money does. You can’t replace something without actually offering an alternative. The pi’s biggest selling point was that it was cheaper than a steak dinner. If you dont match or beat that, you aren’t actually competing with the pi.
It looks like it’s ~$100. But when I’ve used similar SBCs in the past the issue ends up being drivers. Even if something is faster and better specced than a RasPi, you end up outside that ecosystem with very little in the way of support for whatever oddball hardware your board has.
I have a BananaPi M3 and the software support was horrific. Getting a kernel to compile with the hacked drivers and firmware was like black magic.
Orange pi worked quite well but I mostly used python & GPIO.
Oh yeah, I had to debug and recompile that GPIO lib so no it was kind of not very user friendly…
For $100 you can buy a micro form factor Optiplex PC which has several orders of magnitude more computing power, but it does have a bit larger form factor and less ports than what OP listed.
And power, that’s a pretty important metric if you plan on running something 24/7.
Yeah, I’ve mostly given up on Pis at this point.
Your OptiPlex will have considerable PCIE expansion though, so you could slot in a second hand dual-port nic if you wanted to (10GbE might be easier to find than 2.5 and they are still relatively inexpensive as second hand hardware)
SBCs in the past the issue ends up being drivers. (…) outside that ecosystem with very little in the way of support for whatever oddball hardware your board has.
The RPi does have a nice ecosystem but the trick is to pick a board supported by Armbian - that will ensure future kernel updates and low level things working fine. For instance I’ve been using a NanoPi M4v2 since 2018 with a RK3399 CPU mind that at that time it already had a PCIe x2 interface, 4GB of RAM and was cheaper than the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ from the same year that had Ethernet shared with the USB bus.
There’s an AliExpress link in the article that clearly prices it at $260…
Cool? I’m seeing $165, but my original comment was based on the article as it existed five months ago. I’m not sure the board was even shipping at that time
This and support. My dad could set up a pi, and he doesn’t know what a kernel is or how to compile.
Thanks for saying this. It’s features at price point.
“It’s better than the Pi at only 3x the price.”
And what’s with the “Avoid the Raspberry PI” sentiment? They are hard to get (?). I’ve been using the Pi for forever, and have zero ‘product’ complaints that would make me want to "Avoid the Pi’. If anything, I have plans for more. Again, the price - A Zero2W is $15 MSRP. For $15, You can put that in everything. A Pi4 is $35. Its just a great deal.
Current prices for the 8gb pi5 are around £80 which is about $100, and it won’t ship until some-when next year.
Is it $60 or less? Everytime one of these alternative boards with an assload of more features pops up, nobody bothers to mention the price
Have you considered that if you buy a RPi5 today it wont be 60$? Either if that’s your price point, depending in your use case, there might be better options. For a NAS for 100€ you can find an HP Mini with an i5 8th gen + 16GB of ram + 256GB NVME. For electronics Radxa Zero 3W / Zero 3E.
Those zero 3W sticks have been unavailable ever since I saw it here.
Looks like they are available now. I have never used a Zero 3W, but that price is real nice.NM, I misread the site. They are not in stock.
AliExpress? I swear I saw em there the other day
“More reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi”
I didn’t know we even had reasons to avoid it
What if you really hate support and ease of finding images online?
There’s definitely an argument for not supporting the Pi Foundation with their anti-consumer practices over the last few years. They’ve sold out to corporate interests and don’t give a shit about the educational/hobbyist mission of the original Raspberry Pi.
What if you really hate the fact that The RPi foundation is being hostile against people nowadays with proprietary PCIe connectors, telemetry, requiring a custom flash tool to get SSH and whatnot?
You can dd the iso without any problems.
Yes you can, but then without a display and keyboard you won’t be able to SSH into the thing right away. They’re using small tricks like that to push people into their tool and you’ll be seeing more of that crap in the future.
Don’t you just touch SSH in the /boot dir after you flash, then you can SSH in as pi and password raspberry?
The workarounds are either using their tool or doing what you suggested. Other SBCs do the reasonable thing and have it enabled by default like the Pi did in the past. This change simply pushes less-proficient users into using their tool.
Having it enabled by default is a pretty massive security hole. I preordered the raspberry pi 1 when it launched and I don’t remember SSH ever being enabled be default in their images. Where did you hear it was enabled by default?
This is not true
https://roboticsbackend.com/enable-ssh-on-raspberry-pi-raspbian/
On Raspberry Pi OS, ssh is disabled by default, so you’ll have to find a way to enable ssh + find the IP address + connect to it.
The workarounds are either using their tool and/or fiddling on the SD card. Other SBCs do the reasonable thing and have it enabled by default. This simply pushes people into using their tool.
The extra menu in the flasher does the magic on the sd-card. I’ve been setting up headless pi’s since before 3b came out, and the same options are available today.
The idea that ssh being enabled by default is reasonable is just like your opinion. Did you know you have to enable it during installation on both Debian and canonicals derivative? Maybe it’s still on by default on fedora (with root login enabled to help you!)
If editing your config is fiddling then I struggle to see your use of an sbc.
I think the reasons are they are pushing a competing product.
There aren’t really any reasons to avoid it. There are certainly reasons to choose an alternative product, namely the complete unavailability of 4B and 5 boards. My biggest issue so far is that the alternatives offer features that I don’t want, or have a price that’s way too high for a SBC
Straight up some of those single board computers cost so much that I’ve just considered getting an old mini office PC
They’re really capable and can be had for like $100
Yeah, unless you need the GPIO or the lower power consumption of a Pi, mini PCs are better for 90% of the projects people use single board computers for. Plus you usually get upgradable ram, and more-resilient storage.
Last time I needed IO pins for a project I ended going with a circuit python compatible board
I think I went with a Qt Py with an esp32, it was like $15, has native type C, and was really easy to work with
namely the complete unavailability of 4B and 5 boards
Is unavailability still an issue? My local computer store always has a lot in stock of them in stock these days.
Considering the 5 isn’t even being sold yet, I question the validity of your anecdote. The 3B and 4/4B are still hit or miss as far as stock goes. I just bought a 3B from Digikey and it’s the first I’ve seen them in stock since before COVID though it’s not as if I’ve been checking rpilocator daily for updates.
Considering the 5 isn’t even being sold yet
Yes it is. My local store had stock three weeks ago: https://x.com/centralcomputer/status/1719814131652440132. I didn’t buy one since I have enough computers, but I physically saw them at the store.
Every time I’ve been there this year, they’ve had the Pi 4B in stock.
No need, RaspberryPi has been avoiding us. Finding to purchase one has become a tiresome errand.
You may want to have a read at this: https://lemmy.world/comment/5357961. The Pi is becoming the least consumer friendly SBC and a money grab like no other.
[Citations Needed]
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Yeah, this is an absolute blocker for me. If its not supported upstream then it’s a no-go. I don’t want to be running whatever hacked up Ubuntu image the manufacturer put together then stopped updating in 3 months when the next iteration gets churned out
It’s the same, I picked up an Orange Pi 5 plus on sale and didn’t even think about the kernel and module driver situation. It’s rough. Joshua-Riek/ubuntu-rockchip and the other contributors do great work to un-fuck the situation and get a non-screwy ubuntu install cobbled together, but in the comments for issues even he gives off a “well, the situation is shit” sort of vibe.
I won’t buy another rockchip sbc.
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That’s a shame.
That’s too bad because the specs OP listed are pretty great plus I’d love to see the Raspberry Pi Foundation (or whichever corporate entity controls production and sales) knocked down a few pegs due to their anti-consumer behavior over the last several years.
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Yeah they are a massive fuck around unless you already know how
I had the same impression until I dusted off my banana pi one last month and there was an up-to-date armbian image for it. Totally pleasant surprise.
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Does it’s run upstream Debian or SUSE? No? A custom distribution with proprietary binary blobs and no updates after one year you say? Sounds shit.
This is the only question that really matters. If it’s overpriced? meh, it’s a cheap alternative to a NUC. But if it’s going to be stuck on obsolete software forever, run.
That’s the reason why Armbian exists. So those devices will keep having newer kernels and software. Read into the things.
??? Armbian is open-source. Some boards eventually get stuff from Armbian merged back into upstream Debian however you’re still better running Armbian as it comes with optimizations to avoid burning SD cards etc.
Good specs, but the rpi still has the absolute big advantage of it’s vast field of available turnkey software.
There is a big difference between “it works out of the box” and “it works so-so after a lot of fiddling, and I still don’t know why”.
Also GPU drivers.
If you’re mad at NVidia for their closed-source drivers, then remember that ARM seldom makes their Linux drivers available for free, so you have to either have to deal with absolutely no GPU driver while the CPU does the graphics rendering (might not be a big deal on a NAS though), or with open source drivers that are less capable than the Nouveau drivers and even fiddlier to install. The ARM Mali driver issue is so bad I was legit thinking on a solution to run the Android binary blobs (which at least are available by ripping them off from the Android kernel) on regular Linux, a lot of function call redirects would likely take care of that issue.
I’ve got one of those cheap Rockchip rk322x TV boxes and it took me fucking literal hours to get the Mali driver working and the performance, while noticeably better, was still way worse than if I ran it’s stock Android image on it.
Depends on your use-case. If you want to use GPIO and other low level features, yes the Pi is faster to get going, if you’re just using ir for a NAS/storage then a board like that will work out of the box.
At which point you’re better off with a mini pc.
I totally agree with you there. https://lemmy.world/comment/5500098:
For eg. for 100€ you can find an HP Mini with an i5 8th gen + 16GB of ram + 256GB NVME that obviously has a case, a LOT of I/O, PCIe (m2) comes with a power adapter and outperforms a RPi5 in all possible ways. Note that the RPi5 8GB of ram will cost you 80€ + case + power adapter + cable + bullshit adapter + SD card + whatever else money grab - the Pi isn’t just a good option.
I even went further on GPIOs and low level electronics here https://lemmy.world/comment/5500638:
RPi 2B+ for around 10$ nowadays (…) other brand new cheap SBCs such as the Radxa Zero 3W or the Zero 3E or even the Raspberry Pi Zero W. The point is that it doesn’t make sense to buy a standard and expensive RPi for things that don’t require much CPU. If you don’t really need an OS and you code C or MicroPython a 3.5$ ESP32 board as well.
This is the problem I see with these “high end pi” systems. The benefit of the RPI is low-cost and small form factor along with the GPIO.
When you start to get too expensive you compete with more capable systems in the same price range.
Well, it always depends on the use case. And if you think over the use case, maybe other solutions might even be better.
What an unpleasant and unnecessary turn of phrase .
It’s the software, stupid!
I dunno, this is going to be expensive, unless you need the GPIO or the smallest size possible I’m not sure what the advantage is over spending $150 or so on one of those mini Intel N100 boxes with dual 2.5GbE, they are x86 so can easily run normal software like Opnsense or similar without worrying about support going away down the road.
Or without 2.5GbE just one of those $60-80 8th gen Dell/Lenovo/HP USFF PCs off ebay.
SBCs just don’t seem very competitive currently because they’re quite expensive for what you get, and require specialized software releases, plus stuff like hardware transcoding never seems very well supported even though the chip can technically do it.
So you share my opinion: https://lemmy.world/comment/5500098:
For eg. for 100€ you can find an HP Mini with an i5 8th gen + 16GB of ram + 256GB NVME that obviously has a case, a LOT of I/O, PCIe (m2) comes with a power adapter and outperforms a RPi5 in all possible ways. Note that the RPi5 8GB of ram will cost you 80€ + case + power adapter + cable + bullshit adapter + SD card + whatever else money grab - the Pi isn’t just a good option.
I even went further on GPIOs and low level electronics here https://lemmy.world/comment/5500638:
RPi 2B+ for around 10$ nowadays (…) other brand new cheap SBCs such as the Radxa Zero 3W or the Zero 3E or even the Raspberry Pi Zero W. The point is that it doesn’t make sense to buy a standard and expensive RPi for things that don’t require much CPU. If you don’t really need an OS and you code C or MicroPython a 3.5$ ESP32 board as well.
I agree with you, i wanted raspberry pi for my EE practice in uni but it was way too expensive for what it gives and i bought raspberry pi pico 16mb type c for 2$ on sale, for those who want compact pc to tinker with it’s better to buy used mini pc because it’ll be much better bang for the buck
Hopefully it’ll beat pi4 prices as well
If you’re looking for cheap… what would recommend is instead a Mini-PC like the HP EliteDesk 800 G2 DM or the Dell OptiPlex 3050 Micro.
For a small NAS and self-host a few services even an old laptop will do it, however there are advantages to picking a mini PC. Those machines are quiet, don’t require much power and some can even fit a 2.5" hard drive so you won’t need external hard drive enclosures. More on that later.
For eg. for 100€ you can find an HP Mini with an i5 8th gen + 16GB of ram + 256GB NVME that obviously has a case, a LOT of I/O, PCIe (m2) comes with a power adapter and outperforms a RPi5 in all possible ways. Note that the RPi5 8GB of ram will cost you 80€ + case + power adapter + cable + bullshit adapter + SD card + whatever else money grab - the Pi isn’t just a good option.
Aside from the big brands like HP and Dell there are other alternatives such as the trendy MINISFORUM however their BIOS comes out of the factory with weird bugs and the hardware isn’t as reliable - missing ESD protection on USB in some models and whatnot.
So it costs more up front, and it uses more electricity which costs more in the long term.
I don’t need all the extra Pi accessories, I already have cables and chargers and SD cards. So for me, the price of a Pi is just the price of a Pi.
- HP Mini with an i5 8th gen = 35W
- RPi 5 = 27W
Do you really think that will make a difference. For what’s worth how much do you pay to have a 35W device running all year? In my case I’m paying a crazy 0,157€/kW… Amounts to 35/1000*24*365*0.157 = 48.14€/year considering a full load that the machine never has.
The max Power consumption often does not matter on devices that run 24/7 more important is the idle powet consumption. Here are SBCs and ARM Chips in generell way better.
I had my Pi 3B+ down to under 5W on idle having various services running. I can not speek for newer Pi versions but i would estimate them still lower then 8W on idle. That is really hard to beat with an normal PC. Maybe the Mini PC with newer Mobile or integrated CPUs are getting in this region.
Not quite sure where you got the 37W for the HP Mini.
Check this out: https://lemmy.world/comment/5503906
Lmao did you just compare the highest possible power consumption on a Pi with the lowest possible consumption on a desktop PC?
Lmao, do your research before commenting stuff like that.
- https://support.hp.com/ee-en/document/c06045012 (variant Intel Core i5-8500T)
- https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129941/intel-core-i5-8500t-processor-9m-cache-up-to-3-50-ghz.html
TDP 35 W Thermal Design Power (TDP) represents the average power, in watts, the processor dissipates when operating at Base Frequency with all cores active under an Intel-defined, high-complexity workload. Refer to Datasheet for thermal solution requirements.
Here’s how things look on the HP model above:
Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8500T CPU @ 2.10GHz BIOS Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8500T CPU @ 2.10GHz To Be Filled By O.E.M. CPU @ 2.0GHz BIOS CPU family: 205 CPU family: 6 Model: 158 Thread(s) per core: 1 Core(s) per socket: 6 Socket(s): 1 Stepping: 10 CPU(s) scaling MHz: 23% CPU max MHz: 3500.0000 CPU min MHz: 800.0000Obviously that thing wont be running at base frequency while idling. Here is one if units right now:
analyzing CPU 0: driver: intel_pstate CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0 maximum transition latency: 4294.55 ms. hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.50 GHz available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.50 GHz. The governor "powersave" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 800 MHz.See, it scales down to 800Mhz with a watt meter I remember it translated to idling at around 10-11W.
I never said it was better than a Pi, I just said the difference is not worth it and you’re still ignoring the fact that i5-8500T will be able to do a LOT more work than the RPi5 could do while keeping the CPU bellow or at 2.1 GHz - not surpassing the 35 W TDP.
Okay got it, so you compared the highest possible TDP on a Pi with the average/idle TDP on a desktop, and you’re acting like that’s a fair comparison. Thanks for clearing that up!
No… I compared the highest possible TDP on a Pi with with the average TDP of a “T-CPU” (power-optimized) running at full load and I concluded by saying a realistic idle consumption is 11W.
Look I’m sure the Pi does a lot better than 11W idle, but at those such low consumptions is is mostly irrelevant. I also added that given load X (equivalent to the Pi CPU at max load) the Intel CPU will make make it without reaching even the 35W while the Pi is going to be running at a full 27W.
100$ isn’t cheaper than 55$. That’s 200% more than the pi. If someone is looking for a pi because of the price, a 100$ computer isn’t an option.
The Pi is $55 without any accessories… With accessories it’s way over $100.
What accessories? You’re assuming everyone needs all the accessories.
Which accessories?
I’ve got a million keyboards, mice, monitors, cables, chargers, adapters, etc. And I run RPi headless for most use-cases. One is currently using a ten-year old phone charger, it’s on wifi, so what accessories again?
I don’t need that mini computer which is 10 times the size of an RPi for my use cases.
Is it attractive for certain use-cases? Certainly (and I have those on my shopping list), but you keep going on like it’s just the better device.
Hell, I bought a few Pis on sale for $5 each years ago. How is that PC going to beat five bucks, 2 watts max, for my given use-cases (things like Pi-Hole, Vaultwarden, Joplin, etc)?
Yea, to replace my Pis would be about $30 each, but they’d fit in the same place, and migration is a snap.
I’ve got a million keyboards, mice, monitors, cables, chargers, adapters, etc.
Sure, you do. But people just starting likely do not. I’m thinking of the new user, not just myself.
Hell, I bought a few Pis on sale for $5 each years ago. How is that PC going to beat five bucks, 2 watts max, for my given use-cases (things like Pi-Hole, Vaultwarden, Joplin, etc)?
For that you don’t even need a Pi 5. You can get a cheap SBC at around $10-20 to do that work.
Yea, to replace my Pis would be about $30 each, but they’d fit in the same place, and migration is a snap.
And you are assuming people are only buying new boards to replace old boards.
but you keep going on like it’s just the better device.
“Keep going on”? I’ve mentioned it maybe 2 times, that’s hardly enough to classify it as “keep going on”.
I just don’t believe that Raspberry Pi or SBCs are the king(s) of home servers anymore. There are a lot of cheap x86_64 based options out there. But yes, if you just upgrade from a previous generation the Pi 5 is perfect for you, even though it’s likely overkill for your use-case.
Not really. It’s made to run headless, and isn’t always used for compute tasks. I use mine for running servos. But accessories for the desktop are also not included, so your point doesnt stand regardless.
My brother in christ. A used PC has powersupply, case, storage and cooling. This is about the basic kit you need for a proper pi5 experience. You can very easily hit the 100 dollar mark.
Also, most of the used business PC will have 8G RAM, which would put your little ARM funsies up to the $130 budget range.
And you would still only have 4 shitty cores, no expandability.
And it wouldn’t have gpio, would require at least a square foot of floor/desk space, and it would cost more to run. Price. Size. Gpio. Nobody is running their remote controlled car with a cabled desktop sat on it.
If you just need GPIO for low level electronics there are 20$ SBCs that get the job done. No need for a full RPi5.
USFF boxes are quite a bit smaller footprint than 1 sq/ft, about 7"x7"x1.4"
If you’re running a remote controlled car you want something way down the power scale like as ESP32 or even an ATTiny + radio HW.
Mind you, I don’t disagree with your actual point, I just think the example you used wasn’t correct.
Not sure how much more it would cost to run. If you only really talk about stuff a pi can do as well, you wont be maxing out your cores. You will use a bit more maybe. Nothing sort of whatever you only really keep in mind for monero mining.
You’re assuming use-case.
Oh his point stands, as soon as you add a case and a power adapter/cable you’re near 100$.
Oh his point stands,
No it doesn’t. The power supply is 8$ and the case is 10$, from the official store. That’s 72$. Stop lying.
Yeah sure.
I’ve got easily 50 power adapters for things like Pi. Doesn’t everyone?
You’re ignoring the fact that you need accessories that will up your cost to the 100$ range. Either way, fine, there are now 4 and 5th gen HP Mini PCs selling for 50-70$. Want even cheaper then look for i3 CPU + 4 GB of RAM, you’ll find 40$ complete machines that run faster and are way better than a Pi. All of those options come with power adapters and all the things required to get it going.
Thank you for your detailed suggestion.
I’ve got HP ProDesk 600 G5 Mini i5-9500T off ebay for $190. Best damn purchase ever. Running 21 docker containers and transcode 4k with ease while consuming only 35w.
However, sometimes you need GPIOs especially for school projects.
However, sometimes you need GPIOs especially for school projects.
Yes but think about this, for a simple school/electronics project you can get even an old RPi 2B+ for around 10$ nowadays that will get the job done. For a NAS / media center / selfhosting any second hand machine will be a better choice. I wouln’t even mix the two into a single board.
There are also other brand new cheap SBCs that might work for your electronics such as the Radxa Zero 3W or the Zero 3E or even the Raspberry Pi Zero W. The point is that it doesn’t make sense to buy a standard and expensive RPi for things that don’t require much CPU. If you don’t really need an OS and you code C or MicroPython a 3.5$ ESP32 board as well.
Where on earth are you buying HP Mini machines for so cheap? Even the older gen seem to be 5 times as expensive as your estimate.
With patience and from eBay and local second hand websites. If you’re in Europe you’ll usually see sellers from Germany selling them for cheap, in the US there are a LOT more offers.
Regardless, like used cars, sometimes a specific generation that is cheap today can be more expensive tomorrow , it all depends on the amount of machines someone or some big company is dumping at the time you’re searching for. In my case I can usually get things locally cheaper than eBay, for eg. recently I saw a very good deal on a HP Elite Mini 600 G9 i3-12100T 16GB of RAM, NMVe 256GB for 300€.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
I appreciate the info, but I am not a patient man. :)
Fair enough 😂
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters IP Internet Protocol LTS Long Term Support software version NAS Network-Attached Storage NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PSU Power Supply Unit RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SBC Single-Board Computer SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
9 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
[Thread #294 for this sub, first seen 22nd Nov 2023, 14:15] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Well, I do kinda want a new router (but would also need to switch from opnsense to openwrt).
I’ve better suggestions for you than that board… way better.
- https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R3
- https://openwrt.org/toh/sinovoip/bananapi_bpi_r3_v1.0_v1.1?s[]=bananapi&s[]=bpi&s[]=r3
- https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=23.05.2&target=mediatek%2Ffilogic&id=bananapi_bpi-r3
There’s an upcoming board the BPI-R4 with optional Wifi and 10G SPF cage: https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R4
Oh, waw, this is amazing. And exactly why I don’t follow this kind of things :). I don’t need a new router. But then again, need is such a weird word …
Unless it can natively run all the existing ready-to-go Pi images and software packages and will also receive community support when I ask for help in a Pi-adjacent forum it’s not really going to be a competitor to the Pi. The hardware is pretty much irrelevant.
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I assume this bot is for mastodon users or something?
Yes, see here: https://github.com/db0/lemmy-tagginator
Would it help to add a “what is this” type link. Or maybe “about bot”
ye I’ll add something soon
Damn, I got a Pi 4 8GB ram. Still planning on putting recalbox on it though.
Do you research very well before buying other boards than a Pi. It may be for you or now, depends a lot on your use-case.
I recently bought a Quartz64
The full PCIe slot on those boards is just gold. I have a NanoPi M4v2 that also has PCIe in a M2 slot, used a cheap board to get 6 sata ports out of it.
I actually got the B version but there is an adapter if I change my mind down the road. I wanted the wireless and ir sensor
