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FriendELEC Releases $40 NanoPi K2 Board That Competes With ODROID-C2, Raspberry Pi 3 (cnx-software.com)
DeathByLlama writes: The single board computer market, broken wide-open just a few years ago by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, continues to flourish today as FriendELEC releases their $40 NanoPi K2 board. This SBC packs a 1.5 GHz 64-bit quad core Amlogic S905 processor, and paired with 2GB of DDR3 RAM and the Mali-450MP GPU, it is able to stream 4K at 60 FPS. Add in gigabit ethernet, onboard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, IR (and a remote!), eMMC compatibility, a familiar GPIO header, and a $40 price tag, and you end up with some stiff competition for other market leaders like Hardkernel's ODROID-C2 and Raspberry Pi's flagship Pi 3. The release is clearly in early phases with Ubuntu images and house-sold eMMC modules still on their way. It's amazing to see such strong competition in this market -- and with so many sub-$100, incredibly capable SBC options, which will choose?
I've recent purchased a couple of Android TV box for usage as digital signage. They had the the same specs with the same price. But they came with a case and power supply. Why doesn't some Chinese manufacture make a vanilla Android box that is hacker friendly? Let us easily the OS as we see fit.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Is it FriendELEC, or FriendlyELEC? You owe it to the manufacturer to, for God's sake, AT LEAST GET THEIR NAME RIGHT!
These little ARM boards are great but, I'd love to see some super cheap ARM/FPGA boards become available. Something like a Zybo but in the $50 price range with just enough FPGA fabric to offload tasks that the CPU is abysmal at. The RPI brought embedded computing to the masses and it's been great but, a $50 ARM board with an FPGA could bring some flavor of High Level Synthesis (and AXI) to the masses. That's whole new level of nerdiness and enables a proper next generation type of hobby embedded stuff.
A Pi clone is just a cheaper Pi. Nothing we really haven't seen before.
Now, FriendlyElec's Neo series is a bit more interesting... 40mm x 40mm, no GPU... sort of a riff on the Pi Zero, but not a slavish clone and with more port options (ethernet/full-USB on one, WiFi/camera on another, etc). I've got a couple of them running around the house in places a Pi would be overkill, but a Pi Zero would require extra components.
Log in or piss off.
At least the Odroid boards and the Pi 3 don't have it yet, but the Pi Zero non-wifi version has been eliminated in favor of the Zero W which has wifi.
Anyway this board just seems like a me-too. See also the Odroids, Rpi, Orange Pi, etc.
And more memory. 2Gig ain't what it used to be. (I had 16Meg in my 386SX rig back in the day.)
Waiting for my ExpressoBINs to arrive.
Of course they did, because I just got my RPI3 yesterday, and I had been hemming and hawing for months about what device to get for an HTPC. Decided on PI3 for software and community support, so while this one looks real nice spec-wise, I might still have gone with the PI had I seen this one first. My initial impressions of the RPI3 is that it's surprisingly responsive for such a modest machine. It'd probably be usable as a primary desktop for most non-gamers. I've only played with it for a short time, but it's pretty neat for $35, and LibreELEC seems quite snappy, and was installed within minutes of powering up the board.
SATA is old and dead in 2017
emmc and PCIe are the interfaces of the present
why not just mount it via NFS over a PPP connection
The specs of this new NanoPi are closer to the specs of the Odroid than to those of the RPi. NanoPi and Odroid have Gigabit Ethernet (and NanoPi has wireless on top of that), the RPi only has 10/100 Ethernet (internally connected to the USB interface) and wireless.
Raspberry Pi Specs:
SoC: Broadcom BCM2837
CPU: 4× ARM Cortex-A53, 1.2GHz
GPU: Broadcom VideoCore IV
RAM: 1GB LPDDR2 (900 MHz)
Networking: 10/100 Ethernet, 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.1 Classic, Bluetooth Low Energy
Storage: microSD
GPIO: 40-pin header, populated
Ports: HDMI, 3.5mm analogue audio-video jack, 4× USB 2.0, Ethernet, Camera Serial Interface (CSI), Display Serial Interface (DSI)
Odroid C2 Specs:
* Amlogic ARM® Cortex®-A53(ARMv8) 1.5Ghz quad core CPUs
* Mali-450 GPU (3 Pixel-processors + 2 Vertex shader processors)
* 2Gbyte DDR3 SDRAM
* Gigabit Ethernet
* HDMI 2.0 4K/60Hz display
* H.265 4K/60FPS and H.264 4K/30FPS capable VPU
* 40pin GPIOs + 7pin I2S
* eMMC5.0 HS400 Flash Storage slot / UHS-1 SDR50 MicroSD Card slot
* USB 2.0 Host x 4, USB OTG x 1 (power + data capable)
* Infrared(IR) Receiver
* Ubuntu 16.04 or Android 5.1 Lollipop based on Kernel 3.14LTS
FriendELEC NanoPi:
SoC – Amlogic S905 quad core cortex-A53 processor @ 1.5 GHz with penta core Mali-450MP GPU
System Memory – 2GB DDR3
Storage – eMMC module socket, micro SD slot
Video Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4K @ 60 Hz
Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek RTL8211F), 802.11 b/g/n WiFi + Bluetooth 4.0 (AP6212 module) with chip antenna + IPX connector
USB – 4x USB 2.0 host ports (GL825G USB hub) + micro USB OTG port for power and adata
Expansion Header
40-pin header with GPIO, I2C, UART, ADC, PWM, SPDIF, and CVBS
7-pin I2S interface
Debugging – 4-pin Serial console port (3.3V)
Misc – Status & power LEDs, IR receiver, power key (populated)
Power Supply – 5V/2A DC input via 4.0×1.7mm power barrel, or micro USB port
Dimensions – 85 x 56mm
Nobody knows what the fuck this article is about.
Hey BeauHD. Nice to see that you're still not bothered by the complex editing job of seeing that what you post actually makes sense.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If it can be controlled completely by Free Software then it becomes interesting. If there are any binary blobs -- or worse, blobs that cannot be replaced due to DRM -- then it's utterly worthless.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
These are surplus s905 chips that nobody wants to use anymore, as they've move on to updated SoCs with x265 support.
Still, this might be slick to build a MAME tabletop arcade box.
It amuses me how all these SBCs advertize decoding high definition video. Of all the things I can think of to do with a Pi--robotics, remote sensing, UAVs, etc--decoding video is just not on my radar. Besides that I tried using a Pi once for a XBMC/Kodi box and found the experience to be lacking. 1080p video did play just fine most of the time until something crashed.
These devices can be used for amazingly cool projects. But I suspect 90% of them end up in the bottoms of drawers. I've got 4 in a drawer myself, waiting for time to use them in some cool project some day. In the meantime another more powerful one comes along.
Can anyone tell me if this board or any board (BBB maybe?) contains power management, such as suspend and resume, power on or wake on a schedule, etc? For remote sensing that is really what I need.
I'm looking for a competitor with w recent gpu but they all seem to limit to OpenGL ES 2.0
Making a slightly better Pi for a slightly higher price isn't going to turn heads. The pi just works. There is lots of code and it is a known quantity.
To beat the Pi there has to be some zing. Some problem that I am having needs to be solved.
I can think of a few things that would wow me(one or more would be great). Lots of RAM. Really small footprint. Really cheap. Very low energy usage. Really good GPU. The whole thing on a single chip. A zillion cores (even if they are slow). vxWorks Compatible. And what would be great would be a shipper in Canada who didn't charge way over MSRP and tag on a shittonne of shipping charges.
Basically, for a company to make what is effectively a next generation Pi is just dumb. The next generation Pi is probably around the corner anyway. Things like the Omega2 catch my interest. Super cheap, Low power and car run linux.
For instance. A ESP32 that could run linux would rock my world. That would basically end my pi buying days.
"It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em"
The hardware side of all these Pi "clones" is fantastic. They blow past the original Raspberry version all the time. There are varieties that are smaller, cheaper, more powerful, more innovative, more features.
However their operating systems and general support are awful. What little information is available is usually only made known by amateurs who's interest waxes and wanes, The operating systems are largely undocumented, old, and hit'n'miss as to whether they will work on any particular board - and frequently don't have features like SPI implemented, (Although part of this is due to the system config file and its vagaries.)
If the hardware manufacturers put half the development skill into the software as they do into the hardware, they would dominate the world and leave the RPi crushed into a stain on the rug. It is only the support, forums, and large amount of "how to" information that keeps the RaspberryPi viable. If the others ever caught up, the RPi would cease to exist.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
most of these me-too boards lack proper support on the software. Most if not all support only the old linux kernel 3.x. The later kernel 4 which the RPi supports gives better security and functionalities. You can't even run docker on most of these me-too hardware no matter how good they are over the RPi. Ok, not everyone want docker, but security itself is already a big question mark. Of course you can always compile your own kernel and make it up-to-date but building your own kernel is not for everyone, and definitely not for most of the Chinese manufacturers that use these boards to power their own devices.
Are we returning to the good old days of computing, where there was more than two or three main platforms? Remember the days of MS-DOS, Mac, Amiga, Atari ST, TRS-80, C64, etc? The more fragmented the world because, the harder it becomes for viruses and all that crap to migrate and grow.
#DeleteFacebook
How far away is such a device from becoming able to be a good desktop PC from non gamer types of users?
For most little compute jobs around the house (watching for bluetooth, logging door open closes, getting temp readings and light readings and humidity readings, etc.) I think the PI is the wrong target. The Next Thing Chip is a way better model:
No SD card, so A. no extra expense, B. no weird SD card-based failures.
Built-in WiFi, which is how most of these little projects connect.
Works off a battery right out of the box, so that you can keep up through power failures.
Less than half the idle power draw of the PI (with bluetooth and WiFi active -- significantly lower without).
Cheap. $9.
There's less extras you have to buy, and I have excellent uptime on simple setups.
I would not mind seeing some competitors in this space. The PI Zero doesn't cut it because it needs an SD card and has no networking.
Still waiting for the day when someone finally releases one of these small computers with SATA interfaces so I can make my own NAS.
Exactly.
Wifi can't just spontaneously activate. If someone can activate an deactivated wifi connection, then they have already successfully penetrated the environment to a point where they don't need to.
We get it. You are one stood motherfucker. No reason to keep proving it.