My Review of the Libre Le Potato
My review of Libre's Le Potato and Raspberry Pi Alternative
Kelly Sullivan
4/26/20231 min read
With the prices of Raspberry Pis increasing and the volume of physical units decreasing due to the supply chain shortages, there are people looking for an alternative. After doing some research and I have found that alternative for me. It is Libre Computer’s Le Potato.
I purchased a 2 gigabyte Le Potato for myself to experiment with and I do like it. The Le Potato is the same size as the Raspberry Pi 3 B+, but does not have some of the features. For instance, the one that I bought does not have a built-in Wi-Ffi chip or a place to plug in a ribbon cable for a Pi camera. The USB, Ethernet, power and HDMI ports are all in the same location and the Pi’s and will fit in a case designed for the Pi. With that all said, I will give the Libre Le Potato a crispy, because I prefer my bacon crispy, rating. In other words, I like it very much.
When I purchased mine, I also purchased a CanaKit power supply, which ironically is the same one the Raspberry Pi uses, a generic wireless dongle and a Samsung 128 Pro Plus micro sdxc card. I then started researching how to get Octoprint on the Le Potato so I could use it as a print server for my Prusa 13 mk3 3d printer. This is where the challenge started.
Here are the items that I purchased from Amazon:
Without the Wi-Fi Dongle or heat sink
With the Wi-Fi Dongle included and a heat sink
Power Supply
Wireless Dongle
Micro SD Card
I am going to start by saying that my exposure to Linux to any and all distros is limited, in other words, I am a Windows person so please don’t hold that against me. I believe that my lack of knowledge in Linux will provide better instructions for building an Octoprint server. So, watch for those posts