LeMaker Guitar is a $25 Single Board Computer Powered by Actions Semi S500 Processor

LeMaker, better known for the Banana Pi, has recently unveiled three boards at an event in China:

• LeMaker Bass – a 96Boards compliant board powered by Actions Semi S900 quad core processor
• LeMaker Piano – An industrial grade single board computer based on Freescale i.MX6 Solo, Dual or Quad
• LeMaker Guitar – A low cost board powered by Actions Semi S500 processor

There are plenty of Freescale i.MX6 industrial boards on the market, and LeMaker Bass appears to be the previously announced Bubblegum-96 board now supported by Lemaker, so I’m going to focus on LeMaker Guitar in this post. It’s good to see at least one company dropped the “fruit + pi” theme for their new boards…

The Guitar board is comprised of a system on module (SoM), and a baseboard. The SoM comes with the following technical specifications:

• SoC – Actions Semi S500 quad core Cortex A9r4 processor @ 1.3 GHz with 512KB L2 Cache and a PowerVR SGX544 GPU with OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0, OpenVG 1.0.1, and OpenCL support
• Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM (Option: 2GB)
• Storage – 8GB eMMC (SK Hynix H26M41103HPR), with optional ranging between 4GB and 32GB eMMC (or NAND flash)
• PMU – ATC2603C (also audio codec)
• Misc – LCD interface switch to select different voltages depending on the LCD interface such as RGB/LVDS/MIPI.
• SoM Connector – 204-pin SO-DIMM edge connector
• Dimensions – 67.6 x 42.2 mm

The baseboard will feature the following:

• Processor/Memory/Storage – Via Guitar SoM
• External storage – micro SD card slot
• Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet (RJ45), 802.11 b/g/n WiFi (AP6181 module)
• Video Output – HDMI up to 1080p, AV output (composite), LVDS & MIPI-DSI for LCD panels.
• Audio – 3.5mm audio jack (AV port), built-in microphone
• Camera – MIPI -CSI/Parallel 8-bit camera interface
• USB – micro USB 3.0 host/device port, 2x USB 2.0 host ports
• Debugging – COM3 port for serial console
• Expansion – 40-pin header with 28x GPIO, that can also be configured as UART, I2C, SPI, PWM, I2S, ADC, FM-IN
• Misc – IR receiver, power button, power and user LEDs, RTC + battery slot, 1KB EEPROM
• Power Supply – 5~12V / 2A input in 5.5/2.1mm power barrel
• Dimensions – 88mm x 88mm

The company announced support for Android 5.0 for the board, but Linux is also likely to be supported. It might be something to confirm on their forums.

The board is somewhat similar to what is offered by Lemon Pi, but at $25 it should be cheaper, if the price announced during the event is indeed for the complete SBC. Launch is scheduled for summer 2015. Some more information is available on the product page, and more details should eventually be added to the Wiki.

Thanks to quillan for the tip.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

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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