
The Single Board Computer Database - peter_d_sherman
https://www.board-db.org
======
sowbug
I'd like to see a field indicating whether the vendor has upstreamed its
kernel modifications. I rarely build kernels from scratch, but others do, and
being able to easily do it helps me gauge whether a community will grow.

~~~
metildaa
This would take quite a bit of effort to maintain, as there are many discrete
features on most boards.

Just the Allwinner chips supported by the sunxi community have a kernel
upstream status matrix that could easily fill a good chunk of a page.

~~~
cunidev
This.

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cunidev
CS student and owner here. Thanks for adding my project to HN! In fact I
noticed this post by investigating on why my server has been continuously
going offline in the last hours - apologies for that, it has never had such
traffic peaks before and isn't on a high end hosting :(

The site is in a particular phase, as having little time for it anymore I'm
(literallyL giving it away to the Linuxgizmos owner to be integrated in a
larger site and possibly become more useful. Anyway, feel free to ask me
anything here, I'll be glad to answer anything :)

~~~
lovelearning
Great effort! The granularity of information is really good. Did you do this
alone? How did you go about compiling so much information?

Have you considered monetizing it using affiliate links?

~~~
cunidev
Glad you like it! Yeah, I added almost all technical specs myself, which
proved to be a quite time consuming... I looked for them on official pages,
benchmarks, and product datasheets. There should be affiliate links (if the
Skimlink integration works), but in fact most boards aren't on Amazon or
"mainstream" sites as they're meant for industrial applications.

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logicallee
For the people who are reading these comments and this story, I think a lot of
you might be interested in this "discovery" I made (an off-hand HN reference)
that I haven't understood in all the time since:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17902043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17902043)

When you look at what was done, they got Firefox and x-window forwarding
working on it. It's super fast. I don't understand why it isn't just fantastic
for running all sorts of things on the embedded Linux level.

Why isn't something based on this just super popular?

I'm really missing something here. It's not 512 MB, but 32 MB RAM is (easily)
enough to run Go programs. I don't understand why such a cheap and tiny
computer doesn't make it super useful for everything. At that price and form
factor, you could put it in a toothbrush.

I just can't believe there is no application for this or something like it.

I didn't get a clear answer the last time I asked - do any of you know? What's
the big missing piece, what am I missing here? This is an SD card form factor!
It's $30! It has 16 GB filesytem! And wifi, wifi, wifi. And weighs less than
two pennies.

according to here: [https://elinux.org/Wifi_SD](https://elinux.org/Wifi_SD) it
draws 50 mA idle. That means it would run for 2 days on an AA battery
(idling).

I Googled the processor the above elinux.org page mentions, and got an exact
match on the processor revision here:
[http://club.dx.com/forums/forums.dx/threadid.626327?page=3](http://club.dx.com/forums/forums.dx/threadid.626327?page=3)
implying it runs 175 Mhz. More than enough to do anything you want, really.

Running a Python script you develop on a desktop should be a breeze.

I don't understand why this isn't driving...anything. Nobody has this thing in
anything. And the remarkable achievement of this device is 4 years old (all
the links are 4 years old.) So....

.... can you all help me understand why this isn't being used and hacked into
anything?

~~~
tomcam
Ditto. I’ve been wondering what happened to this as well.

~~~
Tor3
I bought one of those Transcend cards. In the end I didn't use it for anything
- it's just so much easier to grab a Pi from my stack of Pi boards, plug in an
SD card and connect it to do whatever needs doing. Printer, TV, whatever.

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ShakataGaNai
Another feature request/suggestion for this site: Quantity of ethernet ports.
Also minimum bluetooth version.

~~~
trengrj
Quantity of SATA ports would be great as well. It is far too difficult to find
an small ARM board with 4 SATA ports.

~~~
grizzles
+1. Another way to solve this would be to put all the data in the coarse
search results. That way the author wouldn't have to recode the site every
time someone wants a new filter. You could still fit the buy button on the
line item. :)

~~~
trengrj
The best I have found so far is Helios
[https://kobol.io/helios4/](https://kobol.io/helios4/). Unfortunately I missed
the second shipment.

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berti
Please add eMMC to the storage filters.

The database days the Odroid C2 has no eMMC slot, which doesn't seem to be
correct.

~~~
bestham
Is there a slot for /embedded/ MMCs?

~~~
berti
Yes, "eMMC5.0 HS400 Flash Storage slot" [1], and pre-loaded eMMCs for C2 [2].

-e- See "Technical Detail" tab on the first link for board picture showing the eMMC slot.

[1]
[https://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_cod...](https://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G145457216438)
[2]
[https://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_cod...](https://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G150825660587)

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majewsky
Things that I find missing:

\- filter not just by presence of SATA, but by number of SATA ports

\- filter by availability of SATA power

I would really like to have a small (ARM or x86) board with multiple gigabit
ethernet ports and also at least two SATA ports, to use as a homeserver
(combined router and NAS with select web services exposed to the public
internet). This role is currently filled by a small headless desktop PC, but I
feel like I could go much lower in the power consumption dept.

~~~
maweki
It's also important whether the SATA controller is passed through USB or
properly connected. Some boards have abysmal SATA performance because of that.

~~~
cunidev
By rule SATA in Board-DB means "native SATA" as USB-SATA sucks. Some boards
with USB3-SATA are listed with a notice that SATA isn't native, but USB2-SATA
is definitely banned from being referred to as "SATA".

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GistNoesis
It would be great if it also included SoC like esp32 which are "OS free"
"single board computer".

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loudouncodes
This but for retrocomputer kits

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FlyMoreRockets
I had no idea retrocomputer kits were a thing. Can you provide any links? I'd
love to learn more.

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cynix
Would be great if it could filter by PoE support.

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3rdAccount
If anybody could get past the HN hug of death (Slashdot effect), can they
summarize this up? The title is intriguing.

~~~
tlarkworthy
Its a queryable list of single board computers. Not a database tech for single
board computers

~~~
3rdAccount
Awwww. Now I'm less interested.

~~~
scottlamb
I think the "database tech for single-board computers" is SQLite. Others
exist, but even without having any idea what you need, it seems a pretty safe
bet to say that SQLite does it.

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fsfguy
Are any of these RYF approved?

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walrus01
For x86 this is ignoring a lot of the Intel NUC sized things you can buy and
remove from their cases, some of which have soldered onboard cpu. Add your own
RAM and m.2 format nvme storage.

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usermac
How do I know if I can flash the OS on one of these into a custom one?

~~~
blihp
I'd be very surprised if there was one you couldn't (and would be worth noting
in the database.) Most of these boards expect you to be fairly literate both
from a hardware and software standpoint.

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andrewstuart
A database of retro and 8 bit computers would be cool too.

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ashildr
SBC with DisplayPort are hard to find, but some displays only provide DP for
licensing reasons. So that would be a nice thing to add.

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toomanybeersies
This is a great resource. It would be nice to be able to filter for boards
with support for Camera Serial Interface though.

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pmorici
Seems pretty poor. It has the Minnowboard MAX but none of the recent versions
of the minnow board there have been at least two updates since the MAX.

