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?

Comments

Hardware great! support sucks

[petes_PoV]

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.