Crowd-Sourced Project: Does this Compute?

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     Thanks to everyone who voted on what to base this little station around!  With all of your input, the overwhelming decision was that I should build around the BITX40.  If that sentence leaves you completely baffled, you might want to go back to part 1 and come up to speed :-)  After you do that, please head over to the subscribe page so that you can stay up date on all my projects!  The final results of the voting put the rigs we identified in the following order, highest scoring to lowest:​

1. BITX40
2. uBITX
3. Mountain Topper 3b
4. Elecraft KX1
5. Hendricks PFR-3b
6. W7EL Optimized QRP Transceiver
   
7. Bayou Jumper
   
8. ConnectSystems CS108GS / Xiegu X108G 
   

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     So with the decision on the rig made, I sent my payment off to HFSigs.com and now I just have to wait for the package to arrive!  While I wait, I want you to once again help me decide on the next component of this project - the Computer!

Okay, so maybe not THAT computer, but you get the idea!  In some of our earlier voting the general opinion was, if there's room for a small computer, try to get one in there.  With the radio that ended up being chosen, there will definitely be space to get something in there, so rather than drag things out, here are the options:

Raspberry Pi

If you don't know what this is, go ahead and climb out from under that log, dust yourself off, trim the beard you've been growing while sleeping for the last decade, and head over here to read about them.  After that, go here to buy it before everyone finds out you didn't already have one (or 2, or 3)

BeagleBone

I won't be hard on you if you don't know about this one.  These are another option in the single board computer market, but they haven't gotten the popularity craze that the Raspberry Pi has. They are a little more capable, but I guess people just like Pi more than they like Beagles...
If you're interested in a good article comparing the Beaglebone to the Raspberry Pi you can check out this article over at techlila.

Kangaroo +

Say what now?  Aren't kangaroos those things hopping our friends in VK land?  Well, yes...but they are also a product that the company bills as being a "mobile desktop PC."  Basically, its a tiny, out of the box computer.  Just plug it into a monitor, add your favorite interface device (mouse, keyboard, etc.) and start computing.  The slick thing here, is that it has a built in battery, which would take some load off the battery in the box, leaving more amp-hours for the rig, and it is much more powerful than either of the single board PC's above.  You can check out the full scoop on these here.

One of Those Cheap Android Tablets

There are quite a few android tablets on the market, and some of them are pretty inexpensive.  The downside of a tablet is that I would be more restricted in software options, since I would be tied to using mobile apps.  The benefit though, is that a tablet would be an all in one solution and most tablets have fairly robust internal batteries.  Just like the Kangroo+, having internal batteries gives the benefit of saving more battery power for the rig.  All that would need to be done would be to figure out a mounting method in the box.

Final Thought Before the Vote

Just a quick thought before the official voting - you may have noticed that I didn't really touch on monitors or interface devices to go with these computers. I'm doing a "presumptive close" on that aspect.  Due to our scope requirement for everything to fit in the box, there isn't really room for a mouse and keyboard, unless we went with a rather non-elegant, fold/up, roll/up type, which ultimately would just take room from something else.  Since small touchscreen monitors are relatively inexpensive for all these options, that is the route I will pursue.  If anyone feels strongly that I should do something other than this however, feel free to comment or reach out to me via any of the methods on my contacts page. 

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Voting is now closed!

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Thanks for voting!

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