I've spent considerable amount of time with Pine64 soquartz (it uses rk3566). It is more powerful than rk3328. It does what I want. But with a smallest carrier board it is significantly bigger than rpi zero 2w. Still, it is the best alternative if I can get it (albeit 4x the weight and size of rpi zero 2w).
One can obviously find RK3566 in SoM form factor (
Pico3566_SOM for example), showing it is possible and cost effective to do (just not at the $15 price point!), but card edge connectors piss me off.
I like to play with routers and SBCs, and one of my favourite use case is to add a nice 2.5"-3" display for status information for non-technical folks; I love the BuyDisplay IPS TFT panels (
link) with built-in controllers (liki ILI9341, ST7789, etc.) for this (but shipping can still be an issue). There's even a thread here about how I like to control the backlight LEDs (current-controlled using BJTs, intensity control via DAC+PWM). SPI bus makes interfacing to them easy, but limits the effective frame rate. BuyDisplay/EastRising Technology display modules tend to export the connection method, so parallel bus interfacing is available at relatively high clock rates, and usually even the TE pin (tear effect, needed for update sync without tearing) is exposed. To control them, I like to use a microcontroller, that then interfaces to the host SBC with either USB or UART.
The issue is the parallel bus. Typically, you have 8/9/16/18 data lines, and a write strobe. Perfect for DMA'ing, right?
My favourite microcontroller for this is Teensy 4. SparkFun even sells a compatible variant,
MicroMod Teensy , but it has that annoying M.2 card-edge connector (and has had issues due to the PCB flexing). All I really want is the NXP i.MX RT1062 MCU, the proprietary PJRC bootloader chip (NXP MKL02), USB OTG/Device, a couple of PSRAM/Flash footprints, and lots of I/O in GPIO bank order. PJRC will even sell the bootloader chips separately, if one designs their own board. Running at 600 MHz, it has ample power to do GPU-like stuff, like compositing the output data from several framebuffers, and would make for a really nice programmable GPU-display module for all sorts of things. i.MX RT1062 also has LCD support (can generate the signals needed to drive display modules without controllers), and 512k+512k of internal RAM, so it's eminently suitable.
But, even though it's proven it can be done at quite low cost –– about $25 in parts in singles from standard sources including the 6-layer board, MCU, components, and the display module ––, nobody makes or sells them, and I'm just a hobbyist and trying to get 6-layer BGA (i.MX RT1062 is only available in 196-pad BGA in 0.8mm or 0.65mm pitch) routed correctly the first go is, ahem,
unlikely. I'd probably only use a dozen of them in my lifetime, even if they were off-the-shelf, so how much effort should I put in these?
(I have run a company for a few years myself, but burned out horribly: I'm not suited for business aspects
at all. Even now, a couple of decades later, my mental heath won't stretch even to me selling any extra boards on Tindie, if I managed to make them.)
The same problem exists with many other "hobbyist" fields dealing with displays or cameras, and even audio. The possibilities are nearly endless with off-the-shelf
components; it's just that the
integration into useful modules is lacking. (Systems integration, i.e. implementing say Linux on routers, switches, appliances, etc. is even
more lacking. Yes, there is Yocto, OpenWRT, and other projects, but most commercially available appliances have a rather non-expertly cobbled together system software setups. As shown by e.g. Rigol's new DHO800/DHO900 series scopes running on top of a non-bound-tight Android, the possibilities are there; we just lack the
human expertise to integrate them sensibly and effectively. We need hobbyist integrators!
(That's the reason my hobbyist
projects are all in Public Domain: I wouldn't mind a Chinese factory to run a few thousand units to sell on eBay to hobbyists like myself. But, because I'm only a hobbyist and they're not exactly Sparkling with Magic, it's as likely as an alien landing nearby and giving me ice cream.)
It is
so annoying when cheap suitable hardware exists, but nobody puts it together in a useful form. This pushes one to either technologically inferior solutions (like me not using DMA, and Raspberries' USB multi-generational issues), or buying "proper" programmable display modules or even a low-power secondary SBC with HDMI or LCD connector.
Here in Finland, one has to pay VAT 24% (for electronics), plus a 3.10€ local-post handling fee, for this kind of electronics orders outside EU, unless the seller is EU-registered and/or handles the customs import (DDP, like Mouser and JLCPCB, for example).
Wow, and I though we had the worst VAT in the EU here in Poland at 23% and the extra fee for shipments that don't use the IOSS is €2.
Here it is pretty straightforward. If the shipment has an invoice specifying the value attached they calculate the VAT for you automatically and you pay it to your postman on delivery with the €2 fee.
Interact with your postman, in Finland? Uh, no. The best you can hope for is a notification to come to a post office.
I'm not sure if it is still the case today, but the last time I had to pay it separately I had to go to a *different* post office to pay VAT and the fee to get the package, and there was an extra delay of a couple of weeks before it even got there (within Finland, I mean). There are very few actual Posti offices in Finland left, as most are just proxies, "service points", subcontractors attached to a store; not owned or operated by Posti proper. (Outside large cities, there's typically just one "real" office per municipality.) I do not believe these proxy offices are allowed to handle customs at all here in Finland, but things could have changed in the last couple of years.
(As a government-owned business, Posti is a prime example of how not to do things, even though their Cxxes consistently get all kinds of bonuses and rewards. The *only* part of the business that had been consistently on the positive for decades was domestic post: domestic letters and parcels, both private and commercial, even when the "extra" cost of lots of small packages coming in from disadvantaged countries like China was included. Then, they decided to "expand" and "diversify", and as usual, that burned a shitton of money with nothing gained. Now, to compensate for their idiocy, what do they do?
They reduce domestic post services, even limiting post delivery to few days a week. "Because business has been poor, we need
X", right. What we need, is actual business people in charge, that can maintain a business model without diversifying into bird watching and supporting rioters. The core business was always profitable in Finland according to their own figures, it's just that they decided they needed to diversify into mowing peoples lawns and whatnot, which backfired exactly as us "conspiracy theorists" claimed it would, and now
customers, not the leaders and proponents and promoters of that idiocy and loss of investments, have to pay the price. Fucking idiots!

)
I don't know. I really would like something like pine64 to work out
For a similar reason, I keep reminding my friends about
Olimex, a Bulgarian embedded products and tools company (
est. 1991) that has a lot of Open Source Hardware products, and quite nice designs. I want them around, I want them to make a profit, and I want them to succeed, because I like their business model and the products they do.