The rapidly evolving hardware of SBC

I'm not really a hardware junky, I just play one in the planning meetings.  I was probably a little more excited than most people about the raspberry pi 3b+.  I had no idea what it meant, but there was a footnote on a few articles about power over ethernet, or PoE, capability.  This meant that I could add a pi and not have to consider power requirements to the location it served.  That's the most recent example of getting excited over a feature that I actually cannot use.

I've also experienced roughly 5 power outages in my house over the past month.  Not kidding.  I think I brought it up when I was bragging about buying my new computer hardware.  With what I have experienced at work, flash media dies quickly when you slam the power on it over and over.  I've had to recover time servers, single board systems, and some other random pieces of tech due to failed flash.  That's what makes the decision to get more flash based gadgets painful.  I need a good way to back them up, a load of spare flash media, and some use cases that don't require 5 9s of uptime.

So, with that in mind, I'd like to share the four devices that I will purchase based on my projects.  The first two are obvious, based on my blog.  The Pi and the Pi Zero W.  No need to dig around for numbers, the most recent are what I will use.  Standardized on micro SD, and for the most part they are also standardized on power.  Replacing a power block or drive requires little to no effort, and for things like security cameras, I have backups to clone from.

Aggregate 1:
Pi!

But, I am also prototyping a mechanical device.  That means I want a small form factor that responds to commands rather than a credit card system with a full OS that can replace a computer from the early 2000s.  Which is why I am looking into getting a few Arduino boards.  Commands and responses with cheap and easy Z spectrum add-ons.

Aggregate 2:
Arduino

And finally, I want a device that I can make a single use device for a specified purpose.  I mess around on my computer more often than not.  I recently forced an OS upgrade that stalled due to multiple previous upgrades, failed software experiments, and a massive hardware change.  I want to set up an AI system without worrying about what kind of strange stuff I am doing on my desktop.  And in a couple of months, I will be able to get what will basically be a chipset made just for that purpose.  It includes a CPU, GPU, and NPU (Neural-network Processing Unit).

Aggregate 3:
RockPro

So, who else has bought into features that they cannot use?  And who else is looking forward to tech that they have already planned a purpose for?