Libre Computer Sweet Potato Single Board ARM SBC AML-S905X-CC-V2 2GB Pi PC Alternative

When the price of pi's went through the roof I decided to give the Le-potato a go. I probably invested 80 hours learning how to port my apps from the pi. Now there are only a few of my Pi projects that are not ported / compatible with the potato. This sweet-potato is great. $35.00 for a 2 gig pi 4 equivalent. that draws much less power (no fan required) and is equally robust. If you are not willing to put in some effort then don't buy this and then complain. If you are looking to do video encoding be aware that h264_v4l2m2m has not yet been ported to any OS that runs on the potato. I understand porting is in the works. All I/O has different mapping and different coding requirements but it all works. For myself, this move was a great choice.

Has 2x the RAM of a RaspberryPi 3 and I can't see much of a difference in the CPU performance (for what I'm using it for). The v2 version of these boards use USB-C for power instead of the micro-USB found on the v1 boards or a RaspberryPi 3. The v2 boards also don't have an audio out jack. Something to be aware of, if you care about those things (I don't for what I'm using them for). The eMMC connector is a great option for adding storage instead of (or in addition too) the microSD card. The caveat being that there is no standard eMMC connector, so you need to order the card from the manufacturer as others will likely not work and you run the risk of damaging the pins on the connector on the board and/or the card (ask me how I know!).

Good. Large storage is hard to find for this computer. USB hard drives won't work, not enough USB power.

This is Le Potato 2.0, literally. But what a great improvement for an already solid budget SBC. Since the Le Potato has been out for some time, all of the overlays and distros that have been developed for the Le Potato work for this board (again, because this is just Le Potato 2.0). At the time of this writing, the PoE mezzanine is not available for this board, but I am eagerly awaiting it. This is the first AML-S905X board I have used where I have tested the media center capabilities. The CoreELEC build for the S905X makes this board stand out for budget media center builds. The video quality (tested some 4K files) was far superior to the Raspi 4 I was using previously. Because this board has working UART overlays, I tested the RS485 communication using Codesys ARM64 runtime. Keep in mind when using the UART port(s) you need to implement the overlay for the correct port using the Libre Wiring Tool and the port will come up as /dev/ttyAML6 instead of the familiar /dev/ttyS0 that many are familiar with on the Pi. This is an improved version of an already great SBC. It does not have WiFi, Bluetooth, or the 3.5mm audio port. Keep this in mind when trying to spec an SBC for your use.

I love these little boards, you can run retro games or just have a little linux computer for basic stuff. I used one of these to do a pikvm, took a lot of work getting it working but it has been working great.

So far the board seems great, since Raspberry Pi became hard to get and over priced. I'm by no means an expert on Libre computers, but the description here made it sound like there's built in wifi. After some research and experiments, it seems like the only way to connect to Wi-Fi is through an external dongle.

I got hooked on the UEFI capability, meaning that I could jump start any OS on this. Once I learned how to properly configure it, got Arch Linux running. Perfect! As other have mention, documentation is a bit sparse but you can just consult with upstream documentation, so no biggie. Didn't notice that it had a eMMC speedy module, however for my current tests the SD card will suffice. Neat little data pusher/puller.

I own the original version of this board, the Libre Le Potato, and adored it enough that I wanted to buy another to tinker with. When I found out that there was an updated version of this with USB-C power and UEFI support, I thought it would be nice to try out. Unfortunately, trying to run a full software update on even base Debian and Raspberry Pi OS Lite took several HOURS to complete, compared to the mere minutes it did on the Le Potato booting the same OS on an identical SD card. Even my old Pi 3 Model B didn't run so slow. Again, this could be just me receiving a defective unit with my sample size of 1, but it's disappointing nonetheless. I would recommend that you buy the Le Potato instead to be safe. The annoying Micro USB power for a better performing SBC is more than a fair tradeoff.