I also posted this on reddit, here is the full text.

In the github page, there are instructions for installing monerod on a raspberry pi zero. I'm wondering if anybody is actually doing that in practice. I previously had some issues with an atom based system with a spinning hdd and I'd be surprised if a pi zero can host a usable monerod through a sd card.

What I really would like to do is to start a community project for dedicated monero node hardware/software. Since we are encouraging everybody to run their own nodes, and it is a bit tricky, it would be nice if somebody could burn 1 XMR and have a little device that plugs in and has the sole purpose of being a monero node. You point your wallet to that, and bam! you're now doing it right. No wallet, no personal data on device, just a piece hardware that runs monerod and does that well. Keep it on your LAN, put it on a VPN, or NAT into it with DDNS over your home router, I don't care.

I'd choose a platform that costs ~ 1 XMR including over 100gb (expandable) storage and support it with a ready-to-flash image. RPi is the natural first candidate, but I'd rather have real storage. For example, Cubieboard has sata, there is a version of BananaPi (W2) which has M.2 sata, any other suggestions? Once decided on the platform, I'd specify the parts, prepare a solid image, and a script to deploy that image with appropriate modifications (keys for ssh or a web gui for config). Then I'd put out a website with affiliate links to all the hardware (board, computer, power supply) and signed software so it would be self-sustaining.

I am a PhD student in bioinformatics. I do a lot of compute on remote clusters and a lot of the work I do revolves around providing biologists compute tools and platforms that they can use reliably without much computer expertise. I also install and support experimental IoT enabled lab equipment for an organic chemistry lab. I think I have the right skill set to push this to a point where the community can benefit.

I was toying with this idea and ideally, I'd order a bunch of prospective hardware and do some testing to decide on the platform before I proceed. Unfortunately I don't have the expendable income (see previous paragraph; PhD student) to pursue this, so I wanted to see if the community would be interested in funding it.

PS : If the zero really runs monerod over sd with no problems, which I will attempt to test, then this can regress into me supporting that with a signed modified raspbian image that is ready to flash. Nobody wants to wait 4 hours for it to compile, and cross compiling is a pain in the butt, so I think there would still be value in that.