Zero 2, 1GB Allwinner H616 Quad Core 64 Bit Open-Source Microcontroller 1000M Ethernet Single Board Computer, Support Android10, Ubuntu, Debian (Zero 2 + Expansion Board + Al Heat Sink)

WOW! I was looking for a cheap board to use with OctoPrint, since the RPi are perpetually on backorder, and will be for another year or so. I thought I was having a problem with my previous OctoPrint server (on a Rock64), but it turns out there's a bug in the gcode. Oops. :)We also had a problem with one of our smart TVs. There has been random weird traffic coming out of it, so we can't use it's smart functions any more. I suspect there's something hinky in the firmware, possibly making it a botnet member. It's an off-brand smart TV. I want to put a new streaming box on it, that I can maintain myself, rather than being vendor locked.I didn't try their OrangePi OS, but I probably should have.I installed their version of Android. You *have* to use their SD card writer for their Android. I'm not sure why, but you need it. Once I did, it was flawless. It boots Android. It doesn't have Google Play on it, but there's likely a way to do it. I just didn't pursue it. I side loaded the apps I wanted, and it worked. The video quality is clear and smooth. The latency between menus is better than most smart TVs I've used. I'll probably buy another to be the streaming box.Once I was done with that experiment, I flashed their Debian desktop. That was painless, and booted right away. Nothing special was required, and no real Linux skills was really needed. I've been a Unix/Linux SysAdmin since the 1990s, but I didn't need to even type in a shell to get it going. It just worked. I poked at it a bit, and it was like any other default install of Linux, except on this tiny cheap board.Then I moved on to it's real purpose, running OctoPrint. Obico[dot]io has a prebuilt OctoPrint image for OrangePi Zero2. They've already done *all* of the installation for you. They include their plugin, for their pay service. I didn't see any other customizations, it was just a plain default install. I might try their service later on, but for now I'm just using it for OctoPrint. I installed all the plugins that I have on my other OctoPrint boards, and that went flawlessly.You can find that OctoPrint install by searching Google for "orange pi zero2 octoprint" or "orange pi zero2 obico". Or you can still just install Debian, and install Octoprint yourself.I bought it with the expansion board for the extra USB ports. That was necessary for Octoprint, so I could plug in the USB cable to the printer, and the USB webcam. You could probably do fine with a USB hub too, but this was cheap and clean. Cheap is my biggest motivation on hardware like this. I don't want to waste hundreds of dollars, when I can waste tens of dollars. :)If I get a couple more, I'm going to try to get Slarm64 working on it. I don't think it'll be too hard to do.I'll probably add a fan to it soon, just because electronics don't like being hot.Oh, and this thing is tiny. Sometimes it's hard to judge how big things are. I expected it at least 50% larger, especially with as much unused space as there is on it. It looks like the physical size is just this big as to support the IO ports.So, if you're considering it, get it. It will work well enough for most basic tasks. I think it would be underpowered as my primary desktop, but that's not really the market this was made for.