I purchased a LattePanda using Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin part is unremarkable – I don’t speculate on it nor use it as a store of value, just for transactions. Buying via a maker web site was simple (their shopping cart software is Shopify and they use BitPay as a payment cartridge). But what really intrigued me was the Lattepanda itself.

It’s pretty cool.

You may know that most single-board computers (SBCs) run on ARM chips. ARM cornered the market for low-powered devices and most mobile phones use them. So too most SBCs including the well known Raspberry Pi. My collection of Beaglebones, RasPis, Odroids and others is now joined by a SBC powered by an Intel. Harking back to an earlier post, this is mostly brought on by a couple of things: a need to run some trenchant Windows software. I’d also like to play movies through it, if possible.

That second need is brought on by never really getting my Plex project working: I could get the recording part through my HD Homerun TV recorder working, and storage wasn’t a problem – it was just that the particular box I chose to put it on wasn’t strong enough to do the transcoding needed to play back the movies on different devices. Perhaps also the Lattepanda won’t be sufficient as I notice that the Atom chip runs REALLY hot and I’m just fitting it with a fan to take some heat away. Let’s see if that helps, but I may need to invest in an Odroid XU4 or something to really get the power boost my home media systems require.

For now I am gearing up the Windows platform on the Lattepanda and installing all the necessary updates, then putting it in a case and under my aquarium where it will run the Seneye Connect software and possibly a webcam on my fishes.