With the rise of various open-source hardware and the birth of the new generation of single-board computers, the maker era is filled with fresh and exciting things, continuously driving product technology innovation. Recently, element14 officially launched the new third-generation Raspberry Pi B board, which features built-in wireless and Bluetooth connectivity, faster operating speeds, and more powerful capabilities, further expanding its already world-class ecosystem of Raspberry Pi accessories, including the newly launched Raspberry Pi touchscreen display.
When it comes to Raspberry Pi, many people will think of Banana Pro, PcDuino3S, and Cubietruck. What unique features do they each have? Let’s take a look with the editor of “Microcontroller and Embedded Systems Applications”!
Raspberry Pi 3
The new Raspberry Pi 3 uses the Broadcom BCM2837 64-bit ARMv8 quad-core processor, with a running speed of up to 1.20GHz, significantly improved from the 900MHz of Raspberry Pi 2; at the same time, it further enhances power management capabilities, with an upgraded switch power supply that can output up to 2.5A, allowing it to run more powerful external USB devices. Users can now purchase it through element14 for a price of 247 yuan.
Thanks to its support for low-energy Bluetooth and wireless LAN, the Raspberry Pi 3 can support various innovative application developments right out of the box, such as IoT connectivity, Bluetooth headset or speaker streaming, Wi-Fi gateway, and home cloud storage. This marks another important milestone in the development history of Raspberry Pi. The performance of the new development board surpasses all other Raspberry Pi development boards currently on the market, enabling customers to develop more specific applications and innovative projects.
Element14 has also launched three new Raspberry Pi accessory products, including:
1. New 16GB NOOBS Micro SD card, pre-installed with all the software needed for quick startup development
2. Unique 2.5A Raspberry Pi power supply, allowing users to power the Raspberry Pi and “expansion” boards with a single power supply, maximizing the advantages of the Raspberry Pi 3’s advanced power management capabilities.
3. New case for Raspberry Pi 3.
Banana Pro
Banana Pro is a next-generation open-source single-board computer and an upgraded version of Banana Pi, featuring the Allwinner A20 system-on-chip, with 1GB DDR3 memory, supporting WiFi functionality, and combining video and audio output lines to save space, with GPIO interfaces increased to 40.
Banana Pro resembles Raspberry Pi in appearance but far exceeds it in performance, with increasingly refined details, proving the strength of the developers. Its configuration and expansion capabilities are powerful, especially suitable for makers looking to experience open-source boards. Banana Pro offers stronger hardware performance support than Raspberry Pi. It is based on an ARM architecture, featuring a 1GHz Cortex A7 dual-core processor, 1GB DDR3 memory, gigabit Ethernet port, and SATA socket. Banana Pro can run smoothly on various operating systems, such as Android 4.4, Ubuntu, Debian, Raspberry Pi, and Cubietruck.
Banana Pro is credit card-sized and can easily run games like “Quake III: Arena”, supporting 1080P HD video output, compatible with Raspberry Pi and can directly run ROM images. With high-performance hardware, Banana Pro offers faster speeds and better compatibility. Watch a massive number of HD movies for free, read news, work, send emails, and chat on QQ. Professional forum support, 96 controllable IQ, DIY instance exchange.
PcDuino3S
PcDuino is a mini PC platform with hardware performance metrics far exceeding those of Raspberry Pi, stable performance, and excellent craftsmanship. It can install Ubuntu and Android ICS like a PC, features HDMI for HD display output, and is compatible with Arduino interfaces, enabling Google TV development.
PcDuino is specifically designed to meet the rapidly growing demands of the open-source community, providing a platform that can run a complete PC operating system, easy-to-use toolchains, and compatibility with popular Arduino open ecosystems, such as Arduino shields and open-source projects. Its hardware performance metrics far exceed those of Raspberry Pi, offering stable performance and excellent craftsmanship. The CPU of the PcDuino mini computer uses a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 core, with 1GB DRAM and 2GB Flash onboard storage, fully compatible with Arduino interfaces. Additionally, PcDuino can boot from NAND or mini-SD card (TF card), with Ubuntu pre-installed in NAND Flash, ready to use right out of the box.
Cubietruck
Cubietruck, also known as “Cubieboard3”, is equipped with the same Allwinner A20 main control chip as Cubieboard2, and has enhanced many hardware configurations based on version 2, such as 2GB memory, gigabit Ethernet, wireless network card, Bluetooth, VGA interface, etc.
CubieTruck features are as follows:
1. Processor
• Allwinner A20, dual-core ARM Cortex-A7, ARM Mali400 MP2 Complies supports OpenGL ES 2.0/1.1
2. Onboard resources
• 2GB DDR3@480MHz
• 8GB NAND Flash, expandable to support up to 32GB SD card
• 10M/100M/1000M network card RTL8211E
• WIFI+BT wireless network card BCM AP6210, onboard antenna
• [email protected] power supply, built-in Li-battery and RTC
• HDMI+VGA video output interfaces
• SATA 2.0 interface
• USB Host x2, OTG x1, SPDIF x1, IR x1, LEDs x4, Headphone x1, Keys x3
• Expansion interfaces: 54pin, including I2S, I2C, SPI, CVBS, LRADCx2, UART, PS2, PWMx2, TS/CSI, IRDA, LINEIN&FMIN&MICIN, TVINx4, etc.
3. Others
Size: 11cm x 8cm x 1.4mm
System: Supports Android 4.2.2, Ubuntu 12.04, and other Linux versions, factory pre-burned with Android 4.2.
