SinoVoIP, a company known for its Banana Pi board and related spamming, has been working on another AllWinner A20 product called BPI-R1 (Banana Pi R1), a router/NAS platform that features 5 Gigabit Ethernet ports, a SATA interface, HDMI, audio output, and more.
BPI-R1 Board specifications:
- SoC- Allwinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 processor @ 1 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU
- System Memory – 1 GB DDR3
- Storage – SD card slot up to 64GB, SATA connector for hard drive or SSD up to 2TB
- Video output – HDMI, LVDS/RGB via DSI connectors
- Audio I/O – HDMI, 3.5mm stereo jack, and on-board microphone
- Camera – CSI connector possibly interfacing with their upcoming BPI-D1 camera
- Connectivity – 5x Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45) ports including 4x LAN ports, 1x WAN port, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi (RTL8192CU module) with two antenna connectors.
- USB – 1x USB 2.0 port, 1x micro USB OTG port, 1x micro USB for power
- I/O Expansion Headers:
- 26-pin header (but not fully R-Pi compatible) with access to GPIO, UART, I2C, SPI, CAN, PWM, 3.3V, 5V and GND pins
- 8-pin header with UART7, 2 more GPIOs, and power signals
- 2-pin header for UART0 Tx and Rx.
- Misc – Power and reset buttons, Power and user LEDs, IR receiver, Battery connector
- Dimensions – 148 x 100 mm
- Weight – 83 grams
The company will provide Linux and Android 4.2.2 images and source code for the board. They also claim BPI-R1 is an “open source router”, but based on their previous products, that only includes the software, not the hardware.
The board is expected to be available in October 2014 for $65. OS Images should eventually become available in the Download section of Bananapi.com, and source code in their github account. Further details may be available on SinoVoIP BRI-R1 product page.
Thank you Lalith!
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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This is very interesting project actually. Modern routers are quite fast in term of bandwidth and packets per second, but they sucks when it comes to VPN and encryption speed. Routers with more of less high-speed CPU are expensive (>$200) and if they really would sell it for $65, it would be amazing.
This is what I was waiting for. Strange nobody came up with this before. Excellent!
What is the difference by using a $40 dual core TV stick that can run Linux and plugin in a Ethernet hub replicator??
@JotaMG
It depends what you want to do, but this one also included SATA, GPIO access and more.
Maybe the Gigabit Ethernet performance would also be lower via a USB 2.0 to Ethernet adapter, but I have not checked how BCM53125 Gigabit Ethernet switch is connected to AllWinner A20, so maybe it’s the same.
You’ll also get the source code for this board, and you may have a little more work to do with a A20 HDMI TV stick.
If they shyould add ann extra usb port or a usb header and maybe a header with 5V and a nice case it should be an all-in-one router/server/media player.
@JotaMG
The Ethernet switch presumably recognises tagged frames, so you can set up “virtual LANs” connected to the various ports. See this OpenWRT page for a good diagram:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/uci/network/switch
There is no doubt you do media codec well with ARM, but the IO throughput(be it network or SATA) is always a big concern to me, really, how fast will the NAS and Ethernet can go here?
Same as banana-pi, this one is missing wireless.
@xxiao
It has RTL8192CU
@onebir
xxiao ment that the network and sata is connected via usb2-hub which has 450MBit/s and thus cannot do full speed…
@Christian
A20 soc supports native sata and ethernet so usb is used only for wifi module.
@miska
correct, A20 *supports* native Sata and stuff. But that does not mean that Sata is connected natively to A20 and not over a usb-bridge. See BananaPi and Cubieboard which both have SATA and 1GB/s Ethernet, but is connected via a USB2-Bridge which has 450MBit/s max.
Same counts for the RaspberryPi, its ethernet is connected via USB-Bridge. Don’t know whether its Broadcom SOC supports native SATA though.
@Christian
In case of raspberry pi you are right, Broadcom soc does not support native ethernet so USB-ethernet bridge chip is in use.
As of A20 there is no usb bridges in use nor BananaPi or Cubieboard. Not internally not by usb-bridge chip. Look here for benchmarks http://hardware-libre.fr/2014/06/raspberry-vs-banana-hardware-duel/ http://hardware-libre.fr/2014/06/raspberry-vs-banana-vs-a10-olinuxino-powering-and-sata-performance/
It’s true that you don’t get full1 Gbit/s but over 600 MB/s looks pretty good to me. I suspect that you mixed up imx6 with a20, imx ethernet trully had/have speed problems.
@miska
Thank you, those are some interesting articles.
Whenever a new board comes out i try get my hands on the datasheet. Perhaps I mixed something up when reviewing bananapi and cubies. But generally i find datasheets a lot less marketing-speech-y thus more reliable.
Thanks a lot.
@Christian
As an owner of an A20-based Cubietruck, I can assure you the SATA and GigE are both native and not done through USB. See the DeviceTree file for the A20 has entries for both “emac” (100M) and “gmac” (1G) Ethernet, and “ahci” SATA:
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch/arm/boot/dts/sun7i-a20.dtsi
Also, running “lsusb” shows only my host ports because I don’t currently have anything plugged in.
Available on Aliexpress:
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Banana-PI-BPI-R1-Open-Source-Router/302756_2052210993.html
On Deal Extreme too for $86 – http://www.dx.com/p/banana-pi-r1-4-ch-wireless-router-opensource-development-board-blue-silver-381346?Utm_rid=93072394&Utm_source=affiliate