I recently purchased from Aliexpress the latest Orange Pi Zero for 6.99$. It is a nice little microcomputer with the specs you see below:

Hardware specification CPU H2 Quad-core Cortex-A7 H.265/HEVC 1080P. GPU ·Mali400MP2 GPU @600MHz

·Supports OpenGL ES 2.0 Memory (SDRAM) 256MB/512MB DDR3 SDRAM(Share with GPU)(256MB version is Standard version) Onboard Storage TF card (Max. 64GB)/ NOR Flash(2MB Default not posted) Onboard Network 10/100M Ethernet RJ45 POE is default off. Onboard WIFI XR819, IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Audio Input MIC Video Outputs Supports external board via 13pins Power Source USB OTG can supply power USB 2.0 Ports Only One USB 2.0 HOST, one USB 2.0 OTG Buttons Power Button Low-level peripherals 26 Pins Header, compatible with Raspberry Pi B+ 13 Pins Header, with 2x USB, IR pin, AUDIO(MIC, AV) LED Power led & Status led Key POWER Supported OS Android, Lubuntu, Debian, Raspbian Interface definition Product size 48 mm × 46mm Weight 26g

As a project to see how it performs I decided to set it up as an Ad-block server with the incredibly nice software Pi-Hole. As an operating system I used the Armbian which you can get it from here: https://www.armbian.com/.

So first step is to download the image (I used the Debian jessie 3.4) , decompress it because it is in 7z extension and write it a Microsd card with Etcher. It is the suggested tool for this task.

Power your OrangePi, find the Ip address from the dhcp connected devices from your router’s control panel and after a few seconds try to connect via SSH. For this you can use Putty. Default username is root and password is 1234. You will get prompted to change the root password and add a user. Do both. Then you are ready to install Pi-hole. This an easy task. Just paste in your terminal curl -L https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

After a couple of seconds you will see a wizard which will guide you through some basic setup. Once this is finished you are ready to use your Ad-block server! Add as DNS in your internet connection the IP address of the orange pi and check a website you know it is full of ads. Magically they disappeared! Bonus the really nice admin panel for pi-hole. You can access it from your browser -> http://<your-orangepi-ip>/admin/index.php.

Here is mine:

Have fun!