clones

UPDATE 9/23: The CEO of Elecrow responded. I've posted a follow-up blog post with my reaction to the response and some other thoughts on AI voice cloning.

Listen to this clip:

I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty familiar. I mean I would like you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. But that's the Jeff Geerling channel, not Elecrow, where the clip above is from. I never said the words that are in that video.

I'm in the unique position of owning a collection of Raspberry Pi Compute Modules 4 (CM4).

I also own at least one of every production CM4 clone in existence.

This sets up a quandary: if I have the real thing, what motivation do I have to care about the clones?

There are hundreds of CM4 carrier boards that do everything from restoring retro game consoles to monitoring remote oil rigs in highly-explosive environments.

Since launch, the CM4 has been difficult—and since early 2021, impossible—to acquire. The supply constraints are well documented, and I'm sure a few comments will lament the situation. But the CM4 is trickling back to 'in stock' at many suppliers (about how the Pi 4 was a couple months ago).

tl;dr: The ODROID-C2 is a very solid competitor to the Raspberry Pi model 3 B, and is anywhere from 2-10x faster than the Pi 3, depending on the operation. The software and community support is nowhere near what you get with the Raspberry Pi, but it's the best I've seen of all the Raspberry Pi clones I've tried.