Why did I start all these builds?
It began with what seemed like a very simple choice.
Early on, I learned that if I wanted to build an AllStar node, I needed to buy a Raspberry Pi board. Raspberry Pi was the familiar path, the documentation was available, and most examples assumed that was the computer an operator would use.
Over time, as Raspberry Pi boards became more popular, their prices grew as well. That led me to wonder: if there were other single-board computers—SBCs—that could do the same job.
My “If?” led directly to my “Wow!”
I discovered the Armbian Imager, a more general counterpart to the Raspberry Pi Imager many operators already know. The manufacturer page shown here listed 82 manufacturers and categories—and an astonishing 392 individual boards.
Suddenly the question was no longer whether an alternative existed. The question became: How many of these boards could be turned into useful AllStarLink nodes?
Booting Linux is only the beginning.
For these projects, success means building a working ASL3 node, registering it, testing linking and audio, verifying PTT and COS, surviving a reboot, and documenting a path another operator can actually follow.
Some boards become complete appliance images. Others become guided installers or carefully documented reference builds. A few reveal limitations worth recording. Every one teaches us something—and each successful build proves that amateur-radio experimentation does not have to stop with one brand of computer.
That is why there are so many different boards on this site. This is a continuing, practical experiment: find an interesting SBC, learn its strengths and peculiarities, build a dependable ASL3 system on it, and share the result freely.