DLI Atomic Pi - High Speed SBC with Peripheral ICS, Camera and Breakout Board

This is likely not a 'beginners' single-board computer. To explain, this board was designed for use in a product that failed to reach market. As such, it has design choices that reflect that. There is no barrel jack for DC input on the SBC (although a small daughterboard for power and GPIO access was included with the kit I bought). The male connectors used to interface with the PCB for I2S, audio amplifier L/R output, amplifier volume control and UART/TTL Debug ports are not included with the kit. This might be a problem for some as the connectors aren't readily available (based on my personal search, albeit brief). If you have the skills and gear, you can remove the PCB connectors and solder directly to the Atomic Pi, which was my choice. That doesn't work for everyone and depends on your use-case. For my application (network streaming device for games, movies and music), hard-wiring the connections to the PCB was preferred with the Atomic Pi permanently installed inside a custom designed, application specific enclosure.Since the Atomic Pi was designed for high reliability inside a commercial product, the PCB layout, build quality and overall design reflect that. The PCB is multi-layer and made with high-quality fiberglass and gold-plated, 2oz. copper traces with ample stitching. There are provisions for RF shielding/cans over the WiFi and Bluetooth layout (tied to ground) plus headers for a cooling fan and an SMD JST-style power connector. The hardware is exceptionally well built and designed for long-term continuous use. The camera module is a case-study in design, layout and build-quality. It is a step above the already well engineered Atomic Pi. If you design or layout PCB's, you should really study the camera module. From the well thought out placement of components to the quality of the components used the camera module is a no-joke, cost-no-object design exercise that made it into production.Best of all, the Atomic Pi and camera module perform flawlessly. You can use several flavors of Linux, include light-weight distros as well as Windows 10 without much hassle. The Atomic Pi has a highly capable, multi-core XMOS MCU available to the user. Check out the XMOS data sheet for its full capabilities and applications notes. The XMOS MCU is powerful, accessible and worth the price of admission itself. The Atomic Pi also has a built-in Bosch 9-axis gyro/magnetic sensor built-in. You can use this feature for robotic, geo-magnetic field logging, positional awareness and motion control. The built-in 5-watt amplifier is a nice addition and reduces the need for external components/devices when building projects. The Intel 4-core Atom CPU and 2GB of non-upgradable RAM makes for a quick and reliable industrial computer. Factor in the extras such as the Bosch 9-axis gyro/mag sensor, XMOS MCU, high-quality camera module with exceptional build quality and you have a value option that is second-to-none. You wont find the levels of user support and 3rd-party accessories of a Raspberry Pi or Odroid but what you lack in user forums and prebuilt OS distros you gain is raw horsepower and quality. Did I mention the build quality of the Atomic Pi and camera module? It is a seriously well designed and built kit!If you are comfortable with the nitty-gritty of project design and software development, this is a great option. If you want to run Kodi in your living room with a Raspberry Pi-like user experience, this might be more challenging (depending on your comfort-level). It is not difficult or impossible but it isn't as simple as flashing an image and hooking it up to the Internet. It is worth it, if you want something that is truly a step above many $30-40 SBC's.

These boards were made for the Kuri robot before Mayfield Robotics went bust, and bought to be resold by the Atomic Pi Kickstarter project, so they're discounted and there will be no more after these. For $35 it appears to be fantastic value, and I would have said grab one now if you're tempted - but be prepared to spend a lot on power supplies as these are real hard to power up successfully...Something that you need to be aware of, if like me you had never seen one of these before and made some assumptions based on other system such as the Raspberry Pi: there is *no* power LED on the board, so there is absolutely no indication that you have successfully powered it up until you see something on the HDMI screen (which can take an incredible five to ten minutes to first appear unless you have the right PSU fitted). So like me you may be suspicious of a dead board when the actual problem was an insufficient power supply. Most 5V supplies are around 2A which is not enough to boot it up or give any indication of life at all. They say you need a minimum of 2.5A but it is clear that something *much* beefier is in order.After trying several PSUs, I thought I had managed to power mine up with a lab bench supply, which fitted the requirements of amperage, voltage accuracy and stability, and lack of noise - but it wasn't enough to also drive the USB and ethernet peripherals. Eventually (after a week of efforts) I got everything working using a $100 desktop PSU (Corsair CX 600) and an adapter with an ATX breakout module.By the way this was my second board, the first had one of the power transistors in the voltage regulator circuit broken off in shipping. I actually saw three separate problems with that board, there were two connectors also not soldered on straight. Very poor quality control. Still, you can keep sending them back until you get a good one so I won't discourage anyone from buying these - if you have a use for a board of this style, $35 is a fantastic price for all that is included, even taking into account that you'll probably have to buy a new PSU.Attached are photos of 1: system working, off lab supply. 2: damage to first board received. (swapped by Amazon with the usual efficiency and no shipping charges.)Image 3 above is the failed attempt with a lab power supply, and the 4th image is the final working one with the ATX supply and breakout adapter.With the lab bench supply, it appears that the USB and ether interfaces *are* active for a short time while booting, but if anything is plugged in to either of them, the system goes in to a boot loop, and if it does ever boot to the login screen, the USB and ether interfaces are shut down - and I mean totally disabled, no power. I saw a DHCP request at some point before they shut down but the system didn't accept the offered IP address. Basically I had NO way of logging in to this device whether from a keyboard or over the net. It was a paperweight. Value for money: 0. The 'support' group was useless and no-one answered questions, and the only discussion that mattered - all the issues with power - was locked and would not accept new posts.I was lucky that I remembered that I had an unused ATX supply from some years ago, and was able to use one of those adapter boards to take off a wire to the barrel jack.On the plus side I'm delighted to see that the Atomic Pi could access my home wifi without the need to add an external antenna, as had been suggested by some reviewers. With the ATX power supply, both the USB and wired ethernet jacks worked fine.