Many development boards have followed Raspberry Pi 2/3 form factor in recent years, including Hardkernel ODROID-C2 and Pine64 ROCK64, but so far I had not seen any boards leveraging Raspberry Pi Zero (W) form factor.
SinoVoIP will change that, as they’ve just launched Banana Pi M2 Zero (aka BPI-Zero) board powered by Allwinner H2+ quad core processor, leveraging Raspberry Pi Zero W form factor, and now selling on Aliexpress for $15 plus shipping.
Banana Pi M2 Zero specifications:
- SoC – Allwinner H2+ quad core Cortex A7 processor @ up to 1 GHz with Mali 400MP2
- System Memory – 512 MB DDR3
- Storage – micro SD card slot up to 64GB
- Video/Audio Output – mini HDMI
- Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth LE (AP6212 module with options for AP6181, AP6335)
- Camera – 1x MIPI CSI connector supporting 8-bit YUV422 CMOS sensor, CCIR656 protocol for NTSC and PAL, 5MP camera, 1080p video @30Hz
- USB – 1x micro USB OTG, 1x micro USB port for power only
- Expansion – 40-pin mostly compatible Raspberry Pi header with
- Misc – Reset and power buttons; power and status LEDs, 3-pin UART header
- Power Supply – 5V/2A via micro USB port
- Dimensions – 60 x 30 mm (Mistake? RPi Zero W is 65 x 30 mm)
- Weight – 35 grams
The board is said to support Android, Ubuntu, Debian and “Raspberry Pi” images. The latter obviously means Raspbian with Allwinner H2+ Linux kernel and U-boot, not the actual Raspbian for Raspberry Pi images. But currently, only Ubuntu 16.04 Mate image with Linux 3.4.113 appears to be available for download, and documentation is not ready yet. You might consider trying Armbian image for Orange Pi Zero, or even Ubuntu 16.04.2 image for NanoPi Duo. Both images might need some tweaking with device tree file, and the WiFi module.
A few more details may be available on the product page. Shipping on Aliexpress varies a lot depending on destination, with reasonable $4-$7 fee to the US and Germany, but I’ve seen between $15 and $30 to other countries.
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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$15, but shipping costs $28.12 to Spain. In total $43.12, that’s too much.
@Robotijin
Time to move to Portugal: $6.36! 🙂
Could be nice Octoprint board. I wonder if that camera interface is Raspberry PI camera module compatible.
Next Busstop: Zero3 = Pi0W with 4 X a53, double sided PCB and 20 USD pricepoint (without postage and packing)
Nice idea but the H2+ CPUs can get pretty toasty. I can’t see this lasting.
/me gets popcorn ready and waits to see what tkaiser says 🙂
@Jan Lukeš Not compatible of course, the connector itself is different and due to pinout you can only use SinoVoip’s own OV5460 camera module. You can also forget about adjusting HDMI resolution the ‘Raspberry way’ (relying on EDID which does not work here or being able to define exotic display resolutions in /boot/config.txt) and same with everything else video/graphics related for Raspberries (since needing VideoCore IV and not Allwinner’s video engine and boring Mali400). This is the fex file from the Ubuntu image: https://pastebin.com/fvC6ryUE (please have a look at line 593 — these SinoVoip copy&paste monkeys are really funny and… Read more »
@–
tkaiser is definitely the man!
@– According to the fex file (hardware description) they use, there’s no voltage regulation and they use the same settings for the Zero’s bigger (and only compatible) Banana sibling: M2+. That would mean it’s 1.3V which would be really bad news wrt overheating (on all other small H2+/H3 SBC the respective vendors Xunlong and FriendlyELEC allow to switch between 1.1V and 1.3V and it’s a well known and working strategy to limit the boards to 912MHz/1.1V to fight overheating — well, not possible here it seems). There are no schematics released I know of (and even if they would be… Read more »
If you don’t need the small size a Nano Pi A64 starts at $19.99 1GB , WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet.
NanoPi2 limited edition is @$14.99 in USA form Andahammer and that includes US p&p!
https://andahammer.com/nanopi-2
@Jan Lukeš
Definitely not.
@Jan Lukeš
I’m also curious about the camera compatibility… Although I haven’t found that Octoprint needs more processing power than the RasPi Zero W can provide.
Shipping to Czech Republic is same as Spain- 6.36$. Waiting for tkaiser’s opinion. 🙂
SinoVoIP seems worse quality than Shenzhen Xunlong, but still costs twice as much. Not good..
@tkaiser
Banana Pi M2 Zero schematics: http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/bpi-m2-zero-schematic-diagram-public/4111
There’s also no evidence that any of the BPi boards are FCC certified. Yes I have seen this, no that is not the same as being certified. Show me an FCC ID number. Yeah, didn’t think so.
http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/bpi-m64-ce-fcc-rohs-certification/2747
Thus it is likely illegal to be sold in the United States. I’m certainly not going to touch it as an integrator.
@Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) In the meantime they announced this Banana forum post also in Armbian forum: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/4801-banana-pi-zero/?do=findComment&comment=42458 (Why on earth? Why not just starting to care about technical documentation and push all this stuff to their respective Github repos instead of Google drive links spread through forum posts?) So it seems there is voltage regulation on this board, it seems it’s 1.1V and 1.3V (as all the small Orange Pi and NanoPi also use) and by looking at schematics it’s PL01 pin used to switch between voltages while according to the hardware documentation (Allwinner fex file) there’s no voltage regulation… Read more »
@tkaiser
A word like “lookalike” would be more accurate, but “clone” is more widely used, and I’ve seen large US based websites use the word “clone” for boards that looks the same but not really an exact clone/copy.
It’s still a clone as in mechanically, and (mostly) electrically compatible.
cnxsoft : It’s still a clone as in mechanically, and (mostly) electrically compatible. Sure, but I was solely focusing on user expectations. Why do people want to buy a ‘clone’ (especially when the ‘clone’ is more expensive than the original)? I would assume consumers expect compatibility and I would also assume that the use cases this device will be bought for are focused on mobility, camera and maybe display usage (digital signage). Since the device is advertised as being able to run Raspbian users expect full compatibility and might be surprised that neither raspistill/raspivid nor omxplayer can be used here.… Read more »
@tkaiser
Thanks you thorough reply. Yes, I do expect a little bit more than just similarity, PI drop in replacement is the goal. We need to be able to use most of the software that is avalilable on Pi.
Jan Lukeš : Yes, I do expect a little bit more than just similarity, PI drop in replacement is the goal. That’s simply impossible if you do not also use the same SoC (BCM2835 or BCM2837 being more or less the same VideoCore IV chip just with different CPU cores). There existed one real Raspberry Pi clone back in 2014 already been way better than what the RPi foundation came up with when copying the design principle of Hardkernel’s clone later: ODROID-W (almost same dimensions like RPi Zero but allowing to be powered also from batteries, able to use eMMC… Read more »
@Jan Lukeš, hardkernel tryed to to something software-compatible (same SoC), but Broadcom didn’t like their idea…
No it isn’t, and Thomas is right, why call this a clone??
Please, do not mislead your readers, it’s just a “lookalike”, since in the end what really matters is the software and applications, and they are not compatible.
CNX,
Want a analogy?
Imagine you get a mechanically, and (mostly) electrically “Apple compatible” nice white notebook – not hard to do – advertised as “a Apple clone”.
Then you discover it only runs Windows…..
Capice??
And, of course, this Banana is too much expensive for such a mundane fruit….
Trouble with stuff like this is it ends up a race to the bottom with regards profit. What is really needed is to add value, a Nano Pi Duo Premium with 2GB of ram. Shake things up abit.
BPI-M2 Zero DXF file:
http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/bpi-m2-zero-dxf-file-public/4110
@sinovoip
Interesting, instead of commenting on the VDD_CPUX issue (and potential overheating) or software compatiblity the vendor feels the need to provide a link to DXF files. But why? They advertise this M2 Zero being mechanically compatible to RPi Zero so why is there a need to provide this? Is this the confession that there’s not even mechanical compatibility and M2 Zero is really smaller than RPi Zero?
(it’s close to unbelievable but the company still lists their M2 Zero as being 60×30 mm in size instead of 65×30 mm)
@–
Silly me brought 2, mostly because you cant get real raspberry pi zeros w over here (well you can, if you want to pay more in shipping than for the product) . At idle with GUI disbaled, its sits at 78c in ambient 20c. running armbian
Also no one has mentioned the needing a external antenna vs the onboard of the real thing.
It will probably do what I want, when mounted on block of alu.
Dust : At idle with GUI disbaled, its sits at 78c in ambient 20c. running armbian You’re not running Armbian since Armbian currently does not support this board and will most probably never do. You chose a hardware vendor never listening to community and not willing to improve anything even if they get advise and patches for free: https://archive.fo/mB1HH Even if been told multiple times to use the 912 MHz OPP they refuse to do and so your board is more prone to throttling and bad performance than necessary. In case you want to continue with the fake Armbian they… Read more »
Banana pi m2 zero is a 64bit or 32bit I m confused please Rply
32-bit. The Arm Cortex-A7 is a 32-bit core.