Single Boade Computer Question.

[Geek-9pm]

My question is at the bottom.    **
First a quick into for the general public.

In its truest sense, an SBC has referred to a single PC board with the processor, memory and some type of I/O that allowed it to function as a computer...
SBC generally refers to a microprocessor based board. But, just as in previous years, semiconductor manufacturers have often supplemented the launch of new products, especially microcontrollers, with development kits or demo boards that engineers could use to test out their newest silicon. These kits were generally used by professional engineers to test out the silicon for their next design. Once the necessary functionality of the microcontroller was confirmed, the designer went into laying out their own board to test out their proof of concept design

- from a nice PDF:
https://www.newark.com/wcsstore/ExtendedSitesCatalogAssetStore/cms/asset/pdf/americas/common/NE14-ElectronicDesignUncovered-Dec14.pdf

Here are some more links you might like:

Adriano:
https://www.arduino.cc/

Raspberry Pi:
https://twitter.com/Raspberry_Pi

Others:

http://www.totalblogdirectory.com/the-history-of-single-board-computers/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_computer

https://www.electronicspecifier.com/communications/then-and-now-a-brief-history-of-single-board-computers

Here are two items that got my attention:

The $89 x86 Single Board Computer.

The $9 Credit Card Computer

** Now my Question.
Do you have a recommendation from experience? I want to play again with a SBC, but at my age I am very slow and have a hard time with any new project. I once bought a Adriano and never used it.

Should I just give up? Is there a SBC for a very old tired hobbyist?   

Thank you.

[camerongray]

It entirely comes down to what you want to use it for.  If you're looking for a PC for general day to day use then there are almost always better options than single board computers. SBCs generally are designed for use for specific projects or in embedded applications and with that the "best" one majorly depends on what it is being used for.

There's also a difference between a microcontroller and a single board computer.  Things like the Raspberry Pi and Udoo are Single Board Computers - A computer with a reasonably powerful CPU and conventional PC IO designed to run a full blown OS such as Linux.  On the other hand the Arduino is a microcontroller, a very low powered computer (usually in a single chip) designed purely to run a specific program bare metal without a conventional operating system for use within an embedded electronics project, they aren't really useful for anything without external hardware and can't be used for general computer tasks.

[BC_Programmer]

Have to agree with Camerongray. It will always depend on what you intend to do with it- there isn't really a Single-board computer for people who simply *want* a single-board computer- If nothing else you would obviously want to do something with it.

As an example a Raspberry Pi could conceivably be used to provide functionality to a TV in the sense that you could mount it "on" the TV and plug it into the HDMI port and supply power from a USB Port; you turn on the TV, you turn on the Pi, and can simply switch to that HDMI port. With the typical "NOOBS" Linux distribution you could have things "always available" on the TV by switching to that HDMI input; viewing youtube videos, watching movies/TV Shows, or even playing games. Paired up with wireless peripherals there wouldn't even be wires coming from the TV. Some of that can be done with so-called "Smart" TVs however Smart TVs also have many privacy implications- many manufacturers have been found collecting usage information as well as personal information and sending it to their servers, for example, without any explicit consent.

Another application would be to set up a "Pi Hole"- I have one set up for this right now. It effectively blocks ads and certain domains/info by acting as an  "in-between" DNS Server. I have my router configured to use the Pi as a DNS server, which in turn will filter out certain requests for known ad domains altogether and otherwise forward the request to a "normal" DNS Server, meaning that I get some set of ad blocking features across my entire network on every device.

And as Cameron notes they aren't the same as microcontrollers like the arduino, which are more like components that would be part of a larger project than something that can be used more or less independently.