The team behind Firefly-RK3288 development board has designed a new board with the less powerful but cheaper and more power efficient Rockchip RK3128 quad core Cortex A7 processor. FirePrime comes with 1GB RAM, 8GB Flash, Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and various other ports and expansion headers.
As with many other new development boards, Firefly team has gone with a baseboard + system-on-module design (mini PCI-e connector), and will certainly sell the module separately to companies who want to design their own baseboard.
Fireprime board specifications:
- SoC – Rockchip RK3128 quad core ARM Cortex A7 @ 1.3 GHz with ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU
- System Memory – 1 GB LPDDR2 @ 533 MHz
- Storage – 8 GB NAND flash + micro SD slot
- Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0 (AP6212 module)
- Video Output – HDMI 1.4 output, CVBS (AV) as well as MIPI and LVDS via expansion headers
- Audio Output – HDMI, optical S/PDIF, AV, Line-In
- Video Codec
- Decode – H.265, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.263, H.264, AVS, VC-1, RV, VP6/VP8, Sorenson Spark, MVC up to 1920×1080 @ 60fps
- Encode – H.264, H.265, VP8, MVC (1080p)
- USB – 4x USB 2.0 ports + 1 x micro USB OTG port
- Misc – IR sensor, 2x LEDs
- Power Supply – 5V/2A
- Dimensions – Baseboard: 117 x 85 mm; CPU module: 67.6 x 31 mm
The board will run Android 5.1 and Ubuntu 15.04. Some documentation is available on the Wiki, and Rockchip’s Android Lollipop SDK can be retrieved from bitbucket.
The company has not provided an availability date, nor released pricing information, but for reference F6 RK3128 media player sells for $50 including shipping, and it has similar specifications expect its lacks Gigabit Ethernet (Fast Ethernet only) and Bluetooth. So it’s unlikely FirePrime-RK3128 can match Raspberry Pi 2 or ODROID-C1 boards’ price, but it should still probably be below $50.
Thanks to Developer x, Nanik, and Harley.
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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