Orangepi

Introduction Orange PI 3B is a cheap and attractive Raspberry Pi sized single board computer based on the Rockchip RK3566: Rockchip RK3566 (4x ARM Cortex-A55 @ 1.6GHz) ARM Mali-G52-2EE GPU (OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1/3.2, Vulkan 1.1, OpenCL 2.0) LPDDR4 RAM (2/4/8 GB) Micro-SD card slot SPI flash (16/32 MB) Optional eMMC pluggable module (16/32/64/128/256 GB) Wi-Fi5 + Bluetooth 5.0, BLE 1x USB 2.0 Type A OTG, 2x USB 2.0 Type A HOST, 1x USB 3.0 Type A Host 1x HDMI (up to 4K @ 60fps) 1x MIPI DSI LCD port 1x MIPI CSI camera port Colour-coded 40-pin GPIO (uart, spi, i2c, pwm, gpio) Gigabit Ethernet port Optional M.2 M-KEY PCIe port 89 x 56 mm The versions with 2 GB / 4 GB / 8 GB of RAM are currently sold at 38 / 44 and 66 EUR on the manufacturer’s AliExpress store. For the same amount of RAM, the price is much lower than Raspberry Pi 5 (currently 98 EUR with 8 GB of RAM), and you can use PCI Express without an additional board. This being said, Raspberry Pi 5 has its own strengths, such as dual 4K HDMI output. ...

Introduction Five days ago, I received the Orange Pi RV2 board I ordered. For about 54 EUR / 64 USD (+ shipping), this board has very attractive features, in particular: Top view - Source Orange Pi- 8 GB of LPDDR4X RAM (2 and 4 GB options exist) 8-core K1 64 bit RISC-V CPU 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports 2x M.2 M-Key PCIe2 sockets… great to plug-in PCIe devices, in particular NVME SSDs. 3x USB 3 and 1x USB 2 ports WiFi and Bluetooth 128 Mb SPI flash Micro-SD card and eMMC (not populated) Full-size HDMI Others: 2x MIPI CSI camera interfaces, MIPI DSI display connector, general purpose headers, buttons, jack audio… All this is amazing, and if not for the slower CPU compared to Raspberry Pi 4 (according to reviews I read), this board could be more appealing than the Raspberry Pi 5 itself, which has just one Gigabit Ethernet port, no SPI flash and needs an additional “HAT” to connect just one PCIe device. Raspberry Pi 5 has two HDMI ports though, sadly micro-HDMI ones. ...