Tiny Rock Pi S SBC gets PoE & audio HAT add-on board

Powered by a Rockchip RK3308 quad-core Cortex-A35 processor, Radxa Rock Pi S single board computer was launched with specifications listing PoE support via an add-on board. Just one little problem though: it was not available for sale.

The good news is that Radxa has now launched a PoE HAT for the Linux SBC adding support for 802.3af PoE up to 10W input, making it one of the smallest single board computers with PoE support in the world, and adding audio features with a 3.5mm audio jack, and an FPC connector for a microphone array. It can be purchased on Seeed Studio for $13.00.

Here are the specifications of the complete solution with Rock Pi S SBC and PoE HAT:

• SoC – Rockchip RK3308 quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 processor @ up to 1.3 GHz with built-in Voice Activity Detector (VAD)
• System Memory – 512MB RAM
• Storage – 1GB SD NAND flash, MicroSD card socket, EEPROM for HAT identity and driver probe
• Connectivity
  • 100Mbps Ethernet with 802.11af PoE expansion board
  • 802.11 b/g/n WiFi 4 + Bluetooth 4.0 (via RTL8723BS) with external antenna
• USB – 1x USB 2.0 OTG Type-C port, 1x USB 2.0 host type-A port
• Audio
  • 3.5mm headphone jack
  • FPC connector for microphone extended interface 
• Expansion
  • 26-pin Pi GPIO header with 4x I2C, 3x PWM, 2x SPI interfaces, 3x UART, GPIO (2x optional 26-pin GPIO pass-through header included)
  • 26-pin voice/audio header with I2S
• Misc – Maskrom and reset keys
• Power Supply
  • 5V via USB-C port
  • 802.11af PoE via Ethernet port up to 10W (5V/2A)
  • 12V power output with 2P connector
• Dimensions – 3.8 x 3.8 x cm

Rock Pi S with PoE HAT is not quite the world’s smallest SBC with PoE as Vocore2 takes the crown, but it’s getting close and is much more powerful with a quad-core processor and is equipped with more memory and storage, and beside OpenWrt, also runs Ubuntu 18.04 and Debian 10, as well as community images built with Armbian.

If you look at the photo you’ll notice GPIO header pins are not accessible anymore, and that’s why there’s a version with optional GPIO pass-through headers, but sadly it’s not offered on Seeed Studio at this stage. According to information in the wiki, the version of the board with longer pins is called the Rock Pi S PoE HAT “FSL“. The FPC connector for a microphone array looks nice, but I could not find any such microphone array.

Another important point is that there are three versions of Rock Pi S board, and only one supports the PoE HAT. If you have a board with 256MB RAM, or no SD NAND flash, it will not work with the add-on board. So you have to make sure you already own Rock Pi S with 512MB RAM, and 1GB SD NAND flash, or order it for $23.99 on Seeed Studio or AllNetChina. There should also be an option to add the PoE HAT on the ordering page, which brings the total to $36.99 plus shipping.

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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