It's subsidized. Try getting them at $5 in volume.

I know you're right, but I never could figure out why they'd sell singles for less than wholesale. what's the point?

First hit is free/cheap. This is common for dev boards for whatever component a company's trying to get you to buy a million of.

I bought a $9 C.H.I.P computer many years back which had pretty decent specs. They might have been too cheap though, because they sadly went out of business.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP_(computer)

And didn't require a PhD in UART to get an OS running on it. Seriously, who the hell thought the process described in that blog makes any kind of practical sense at all.

I mean the thing has two USB ports, TWO! And you can't use either, hahaha!

PhD in uart. Loled on that one. Thanks.

But don't worry, instead they connected the MIPI CSI to.. the USB-C connector?

OP here...it got a little better with a patched picoprobe.

I wrote up part 2 here: http://thelittleengineerthatcould.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-8...

But yeah, not plug-n-play. I still have to find out how to get network or SD-Card.

it is quite interesting that it actually has an sdcard slot but doesn't use it as a boot device? Like wtf? With only 128 MB of flash what kind of OS can one even fit on that...

Nothing about this board makes any sense lol.

Stay tuned, according to the Bouffalo Lab BL808 SoC datasheet (page 90) series numbering system that the board is based on, they will probably have more RAM and ROM capacity in the later versions of the SoC:

https://github.com/bouffalolab/bl_docs/blob/main/BL808_DS/en...

The first batch had a bug in the USB serial. Supposedly it's already fixed in boards you can buy now.

Pi Zero didn't have any wireless connectivity. Pi Zero W was $10 (now $15).

Does it really have that capability if the author finishes their second extremely hacky blog with "Next up: Can we get networking?".

I can also solder a random wifi chip onto an Arudino. Will it work? No, but neither does this one.

The cheap ARM boards you see typically have some economic reason that involve a deal for millions of SoCs falling through at the last minute and the SoC manufacturer selling them off at below cost just to get anything back from the run.

The BCM2835 was destined for a cheap set top box but for reasons not known publicly the manufacturer of that box didn't take those chips.