A bunch of interesting Single-Board Computers (SBCs) have been designed to be a RaspberryPi alternative, but these nice NanoPi SBC’s are equipped to operate with Debian 8.1 and Android 5.1. They are based on Samsung ARM (Advanced Risk Machine) processors, or more clearly they are entire computers built on small piece of board using Samsung SoC (system of a chip).
These guys are the NanoPi Fire2A and the NanoPi Fire3, open-source projects released by FriendlyElect. The Fire2A uses a QuadCore processor running at 1.4Ghz accompanied with 512MB DDR3 memory Ram and the NanoPi Fire3 comes with a OctaCore processor also running at 1.4Ghz but with 1Gb Ram.
Altought, the Fire3 version has a better RAM memory and processor than the NanoPi Fire2A, they share the same design and features including the new Ubuntu Core-based FriendlyCore distro to work with.
The two new boards ship with schematics, and offer the same community support provided by all NanoPi boards. Debian images are available for both systems, and although the NanoPi Fire2A wiki mentions Android compatibility, an Android image is available only for the NanoPi Fire3, probably due to the NanoPi Fire2A’s limited 512MB of RAM.
Features.
- Processor:
- NanoPi Fire2A — Samsung S5P4418 (4x Cortex-A9 @ 400MHz to 1.4GHz); 3D GPU
- NanoPi Fire3 — Samsung S5P6818 (8x Cortex-A53 @ 400MHz to 1.4GHz); Mali-400 MP GPU
- Memory/storage — 512MB (Fire2A) or 1GB (Fire3) DDR3; microSD slot
- Display/multimedia:
- Micro-HDMI 1.4a port
- LCD interface with full-color RGB 8-8-8
- DVP camera interface (includes ITU-R BT 601/656 8-bit, I2C, and I/O
- Networking — Gigabit Ethernet port (Realtek RTL8211E)
- Other I/O:
- USB 2.0 port
- Micro-USB port with data and power support
- Debug/serial interface
- 40-pin RPi-compatible expansion interface with UART, SPI, I2C, PWM, I/O etc.
- Other features — RTC with battery backup; 2x LEDs; power and reset buttons; optional heatsink, capacitive touchscreens, and camera
- Power — 5V/2A via micro-USB; PMIC (Cortex-M0 MCU)
- Dimensions — 75 x 40mm
- Operating system — Debian; Android (image only for Fire3); FriendlyCore (based on Ubuntu Core 16.04)
Read more: Nano Pi Fire supports Android and Linux
