Atomic Pi - High Speed SBC with Peripheral ICS

Note: I'm writing this review on my Atomic Pi!! IF YOU BUY THIS, TAKE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT A "PLUG-AND-PLAY" BOARD!! You will have to do some tinkering, soldering, software work, etc! So to everyone complaining about this thing now being very user friendly with the connections and all, you should've known what you were getting into! To anyone who hasn't, go on Youtube and just search up "atomic pi". The videos by ExplainingComputers and ETAprime are especially good. I can solder, so I had no problems splicing into some jumper cables to an existing power supply and hooking it up. Right off the bat, I want to say that the stock Lubuntu OS is not great, so I suggest saving the technical files and installing a new OS. Since it's x86 based, just about any Linux distribution will do! Big plus compared to stuff like Raspberry Pis, which have to have an ARM-based operating system (note: I don't hate the Raspberry Pi, I still want one in addition to this APi). That said, I love this thing! This thing has 64 bit architecture!! My old laptop didn't even have that! $35 will get you a last-gen RPi 3, which is not bad or wrong in any way, but this board has a bit more "oomph", plus it can run without a Micro SD card thanks to the onboard 16 GB of eMMC flash storage! eMMC is very rare on SBCs of this price point, and the 2 GB of RAM is actually sufficient for basic desktop usage. I bought this as a secondary desktop/tinkering computer to experiment with. If it blows up by some mistake on my part, I'm only out $40 or so! To be honest, the community around this is sub-par. There is a forum and some documentation, but not a whole lot. That is partially because this is actually a rebranded industrial board. It was manufactured by AAEON, as the MF-001(AAEON is an award winning Taiwanese tech company, and part of ASUS). These boards were sold to Mayfield Robotics, which used them as the "brain" of the Kuri personal assistant robot. That project went bust, and they sold the boards to Digital Loggers, who bought them, ran a Kickstarter campaign for breakout board development, and then rebranded it as the Atomic Pi as you see it. The 9-axis inertial navigation sensor and real time clock are highly unusual for an SBC, and I like it! I made the choice to overwrite the Lubuntu OS, and instead installed Raspbian Buster for x86(a.k.a Raspberry Pi OS). It's a lot less buggy, and has a very nice interface. It actually installed with 64 bit architecture, which is great. Web browsing is adequate, not stellar, but it IS an SBC. Running apps is great, I love the open source nature of Raspbian, but it does take some skill to navigate. Oh, and the massive heat sink works a treat! It barely gets warm to the touch, with no fan, and working the board hard! Oh, and as you could probably tell by the picture, I built a skeletal riser case out of Legos for it, it works great. There are 3D files on Thingiverse for cases for this thing, if you have access to a 3D printer. Overall, it has it's quirks, it's not a desktop, and it's not for everyone, but I LIKE THIS THING!!

Pros 1. Power Efficient overall - 15w peak/ ~5w idle power consumption is pretty good 2. z8350 is a reasonably good processor. QuickSync compatible 3. Comes with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage which is more than you will probably get with many other SBCs 4. No hardware weirdness with any OS option (i also have an ACEPCT-11, running a headless server in it is like pulling teeth) Cons 1. makes a breakout board mandatory to power the device properly - unless you are okay with exposed live leads 2. very less built in storage and RAM. For the price it is okay, but a higher priced option with a 4GB RAM / 32GB storage option would have been much appreciated. 3. Only one USB port. Most z8350 devices come with only one USB3 ports. But a couple more USB2.0 ports would have been welcome. Overall for the price, this is a very good device. If you want x86, this is the one to go. I was running a plex server in this (a single 720p transcode) before the dearth of storage and USB ports made it impossible to run. Right now in mid 2020, if your power budget allows it, you can also buy a used first generation chromebox with Intel Core U (CULV) processors for approximately $45 - a lot of them are reaching end of life and are getting liquidated. So, that is also another option.

First the fix. I didn't know it came with the breakout board, so I bought one -- both of them could not be used to power my unit. I had a 5v 4A power supply and nothing seemed to happen, and It did this on both breakout boards. Fixing it was pretty easy... So I watched a few youtube videos and saw where other people were plugging into the connector on the Atomic Pi -- I checked for 5v on these pins... Nothing. Checked continuity between center pin and 5v Power on the Atomic pi connector-- nothing. What I found is that 4A FB ( The green thing behind the 2.5mm jack) wasn't working. So I soldered a jumper from one side of 4A FB to the other. If you do this and it blows up and burns your house down... I am not responsible... just saying what worked for me. Funny thing is that I had two boards with the same problem. The only thing I can think of is that this is a 4A fuse, and I am running a 4A power supply and it blew the fuse. Instructions even say that if you're going to use an external hard drive -- get a 5v 5A power supply.... Thats why it's only 4 stars. Other than that this thing is really an awesome buy. Cheaper than the Raspbery pi, runs X86 compiled programs, has a 16G Storage built in, comes pre-installed with Lubuntu. Yeah it's very good. BONUS -- Mine came with a camera! Speed... Now I did try and install KDE Ubuntu -- it worked but man is it slow, had it on for about 20 min and went back to Lubuntu. I installed Lubuntu 19 with LXQT -- very nice. I would imagine that running on Windows 10 would work but it is probably going to be very slow.

What I love: * The price: other x86 SBCs with the same CPU cost $100. Other mini PCs from China cost at least $80. This board is a bargain. * USB3.0, real gigabit ethernet (it really reaches than 900mbps) and low power consumption make this board the best $35 NAS solution. * x86_64 architecture, 2GB RAM and full Windows and Android x86 compatibility make this board the cheapest way to get a half decent PC fully capable of handling office tasks. * The ability to choose your own WiFi antennas, exposed GPIOs, Linux and Android compatibility, the precence of a eMMC, onboard bluetooth and WiFi, make this board quite versatile. * The big heatsink didn't allow the CPU to reach more than 55°C in my tests. Now that it's out of stock I'm regretting buying only one. What I dont like: * The absence of a DC barrel jack. But this board can still be powered easily with bradboard jumpers. * A 16GB eMMC is too small for Windows 10 (but it's more than enough for Linux) * I would have expected to find at least some cheap PCB WiFi antennas includeded in the box. Withouth them WiFi is basically useless and now I have to wait to get some from Aliexpress. * There is no audio jack. You can either use audio over HDMI, or use a cheap USB sound card. Or use the big external expasion board (not yet available from Amazon). Raspberry Pi comparison: * The Atomic Pi is a little bigger than two Raspberry Pi. * The Atomic Pi is much much faster than a Raspberry Pi. * The Atomic Pi can diplay 1080p videos from VLC and even from Youtube (with Firefox). WIth the Raspberry Pi you have to use its own player and just forget about streaming a HD video from a browser without stuttering. * The Atomic Pi requires a slightly more powerful power supply than the Raspberry Pi. * The Atomic Pi doesn't require a SD to work. * The Atomic Pi, as a server, is just better in any way than the Raspberry Pi (storage speed, network speed, software compatibility). * The Raspberry Pi, as a TV media center, can be controlled with your TV remote with HDMI-CEC. The Atomic Pi cannot. * The Raspberry Pi has a more flexible and better community supported GPIO interface. * Unlike the Raspberry, the Atomic Pi is already properly cooled out of the box. I didn't found a way to overclock it, but I cound easily change the frequency governor. How I use it: I soldered a power connector, from a barrel plug and a common breadboard pin strip. Then I disabled the PXE boot, I booted a Linux live pendrive and flashed the provided Debian Buster minimal image to the eMMC (instructions provided). Then I installed a desktop environment (with the command taskel), so now I have a little Linux desktop. I also installed a Samba server, so it doubles as a quite fast NAS. Finally I 3D printed a plastic case from Thingiverse and it's now complete.

An Intel SBC is a neat idea and overall I like the board, especially for the $38 I paid for it. The prospect of not being limited to ARM optimized distros was promising. Onboard eMMC and the Atom processor are nice specs. But it's let down, in part, by the 2GB of RAM and lack of community support and accessories. The performance isn't great. I tried running Zorin Lite but it was slow and choppy. Zorin Core (my distro of choice) was unusable. Other distros didn't fair too much better unless you went with lightweight releases and that, to me, partially defeats the purpose of an Intel SBC. And what's with only one USB port??? The tinkering community isn't nearly as big for the APi as for the RPi so there isn't much in the way of support or project ideas. And virtually no cases available. I had to print my own case. I think I saw a guy selling 3D printed cases on amazon/ebay but that's about it. The Raspberry Pi 4B is just a much better SBC. Sure it costs a little more for the 4GB but you get 4GB. I'll keep the APi around to tinker with but the RPi 4 is a better SBC with a better community.

I got this all hooked up and running using a 5volt 4A power supply through the gpio pins. I also added all three of the antenna for wifi and blutooth. This one has 4gig ram. This runs on Lubunto and boy does it really suck! Most of the apps like sound and video players have limited if any functionality . The video plays good from a flash drive but nothing on the internet.Blu tooth is seen but not pairing. Some apps just freeze up or display error codes. This is operating system is already installed on the board and there is NO changing it. I tried...I have installed operating systems on other sbc's with no problem. The bios in this thing will not even recognize any other input devices at all. So I am stuck with this POS. I wish I would have waited to the Rasberry Pi 4. Take my advice and don't throw your money down the drain on this pi wanna -be. It is NOT the next best thing.

I have purchased (more than ten) of these. I have used them for TV set-top boxes as well as other servers: * Plex media server * Camera Server (and or recorder) * 3CX phone server (or SBC relay) * General NAS server. * OPNsense Firewall (works great!) The above servers all run great as "Headless" servers (with 2GB of RAM). Pretty much any freebsd or debian based install will work on this x86 64-bit compatible board. (I like to use the USB 3.0 port for a regular hard drive.) It comes with Lubuntu 18 installed (but in much need of current updates). Runs great with this install. You always restore this install from the DL site. It is "Camera Ready" so it can work with the GEO Cam 1080p webcam for about $13 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SYJJKBP (also by DL) Limited Model: This model board is in limited supply for this price. However Aaeon continues to make them (in a newer SBC format) called the "UP board" (search for "Aaeon UP Developer Board with Intel Atom x5-Z8350") https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XRLV6QW Pros: * great price for what you get. * regular BIOS (efi boot only) * regular HDMI (with sound via HDMI default) * has sound amplifier (works as "Line out" if only supplied by 5V) * has onboard Bosch accelerometer * Has console "serial" port (needs adapter for USB) for trouble-shooting * onboard blue tooth * onboard WiFi (needs antennas) * boots from any efi device (SD Card, Onboard eMMC drive, USB, Network) * It can run Windows 10 (but with only 2GB of RAM you would really need to ameliorate it) Caveats: Needs stuff... * needs a new cmos battery. * needs power supply * needs wiring for power supply (or a baby break-out board) * needs wiring for USB 2.0 port * needs wiring for regular Stereo sound out * internal eMMC drive is small (can use SD card or USB3.0 hard drive) * needs external WiFi antennas if you wish to have solid WiFi access. Needs two antennas per unit. Here are four antennas (for two units): amazon.com/dp/B07W4T7HX2 + amazon.com/dp/B07H3P9KDQ In the attached photo you will see a 3D printed case with a small 5V fan, and a hard drive (underneath-- attached to the USB 3.0 port). There is a header on the motherboard for a USB 2.0 port (There is nothing in the USB 2.0 port in the photo). I negotiated a price for baby-breakout boards to have a barrel power connector. In the photo you will see a 20W "ultra thin" power supply from the "CHUX" distributor item 32905940921 (at the ali x site) I printed the case to adapt this PS. I will try adding WiFi antennas onto this case (and maybe I will add a 1/8" sound port) If you enjoy Linux and enjoy tinkering with inexpensive SBCs then you would enjoy these.

This board is an amazing deal! The amount of hardware on this board is far more than its price would justify but keep in mind that it was not originally designed to be a hobby board or directly interfaced with by a consumer, so it takes a little extra work to get it running. Once it is running, it far outperforms my Raspberry Pi 3b+ (I don't have a 4 yet, so I can't say how they compare). I haven't used the onboard 9-axis or the speaker amplifier yet, but just using it as a workstation computer has been a pleasure. Also, because the processor is x86 (the same as most home computers), most software is easily supported and installed without any adjustment or requiring support from the supplier or community. To get the board running, I did need to get a power supply and a female barrel jack connector (I didn't want to cut the barrel jack off of my supply). Also, I had to use 3 of the pairs of power terminals to get it sufficient current. Because of this, I recommend beginners buy either of the breakout boards offered as it does simplify the supply of power. There is only one USB 3.0 port immediately available on the board, but there are pins available to add a USB 2.0 port. For an OS, I'm using Lubuntu 19.10. I did try Ubuntu, but the RAM available on this board made it a bit sluggish, and Lubuntu feels nearly the same to me. Additionally, Ubuntu 19.10 flavors ran without needing any adjustments (like audio output) as opposed to 18.04 flavors, which did need some adjustments to get audio over HDMI. Anyway, I really enjoy using my Atomic Pi (I don't care what it used to be labeled as, this is what it is now). As long as you realize that you'll need to do a little more work to get power supplied to the board and you have a USB 3.0 hub, this board is really a pleasure to use and you get way more than you pay for.

Don't waste your time and money on this development board. Just don't. Life is too short.

First thing first, remember to replace the cmos battery with a new battery after you received the board. It will make things much more easier for you. I would recommend buying the complete Atomic Pi set (Atomic Pi board + baby board and power adapter) then you wont have compatibility issue. This review is meant for beginner who is interested of trying out Single board computer with Linux. Try out the pre-loaded Ubuntu OS comes with the Atomic Pi and see if you like it. Allow your new Atomic Pi board to run for 48 hours and see if you have any issue. This seller is very helpful. You may also search on YouTube for solutions if you have issues. There are a few Debian based Linux OS that works well with the Atomic Pi. As long as you select the light weight Debian based Linux distros then you will be fine. You will run into storage space issues if you select the Linux OS distro that packed with a lot of stuff. I tested the Atomic Pi with Blender for high resolution image rendering and the result was similar to Raspberry Pi 4 with 2gb ram. Just remember always google for solution if you run into trouble or install another Linux OS and try it out.

- Manque entretoise pour surélever la platine. - Pile de Bios moulée, un support aurait été plus logique (ma pile est HS :-( ) - Pour les étrangers, il est préférable de réinstaller le système (clavier qwerty, mot de passe, réseau inaccessible) ......

Bought this SBC and the baby-breakout-board from Shakaworld. Very friendly and helpful seller. Pricing and shipping costs were totally reasonable. The board itself works like a charm. I'm satisfied!

At the time I didn't know what to expect, but it was satisfying to run standard operating systems on an SBC.