I don't know a ton about single board computers. Can anyone comment whether the use of an EspressoBin board here has some significance over, say, a Raspberry Pi?
the espressobin(2xA53) is way less powerful than an rpi3(4xA53), let alone 4(4xA72), but has a minipcie slot enabling you to add a WiFi card of your choice.
Additionally, the Espressobin has a Topaz ethernet switch onboard with 4 ports (1 to the SoC, 3 as gigabit ethernet rj45). This is both really spiffy and scary (see my other post). The spiffiness is that the switch can be controlled by Linux and is integrated with bridge-utils. It looks and mostly behaves like a software bridge, but the packets never hit the CPU, only the topaz chip.
The RPi 4 is the first one with an Ethernet interface that isn't connected over USB. All the earlier RPis are seriously handicapped for networking usage by that limitation.
sure, but the espressobin has a gigabit switch onboard. and that switch is controllable from Linux, and treated as a bridge device, easily manipulated from brctl.
while the rpi3 spanks the espressobin on CPU, the espressobin destroys pretty much every other dev board (including rpi4) in the price range with regard to network functionality.
Also a SATA port, though they put the wrong gender 4 pin molex power connector on the board so you either have to break out a soldering iron, or commit a perversion of a Y cable.
Additionally, the Espressobin has a Topaz ethernet switch onboard with 4 ports (1 to the SoC, 3 as gigabit ethernet rj45). This is both really spiffy and scary (see my other post). The spiffiness is that the switch can be controlled by Linux and is integrated with bridge-utils. It looks and mostly behaves like a software bridge, but the packets never hit the CPU, only the topaz chip.