Category: Allwinner H-Series

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 31 Comments on $15 Banana Pi M2 Zero Board is a Raspberry Pi Zero W Clone with a Quad Core Processor

$15 Banana Pi M2 Zero Board is a Raspberry Pi Zero W Clone with a Quad Core Processor

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 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments on NanoPi Duo Quick Start Guide – Ubuntu, Breadboard, Mini Shield & mSATA SSD

NanoPi Duo Quick Start Guide – Ubuntu, Breadboard, Mini Shield & mSATA SSD

As far as I know NanoPi Duo is the only quad core ARM Linux development board that can fit on a breadboard. We’ve already seen it’s much smaller than Raspberry Pi Zero, and the company offer a mini shield exposing USB ports, Ethernet, a few I/Os, and an mSATA slot in in NanoPi Duo Starter Kit Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Assembly. I’ve finally played with it this week-end, and will report what I had to do to blink a LED when connected to breadboard, and my experience using the mini shield with  an mSATA SSD, WiFi connectivity, and cooling under load. Flashing Ubuntu 16.04.2 firmware image to NanoPi Duo As with many other Allwinner development boards, you should first check if Armbian is available for the board. NanoPi Duo is not supported, but it’s said to work with Orange Pi Zero image minus support for WiFi. Since the […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 179 Comments on Giveaway Week – NanoPi NEO NAS Kit with NEO 2 Board

Giveaway Week – NanoPi NEO NAS Kit with NEO 2 Board

Time has come to organize another giveaway week. I used to mainly give away TV boxes, but due to recent regulations that will not be possible anymore, and instead this giveaway week will include Linux and IoT development boards, and other accessories. I’ll start with NanoPi NEO NAS Kit v1.2. NanoPi NEO NAS Kit v1.2 is a low cost kit NanoPi NEO or NEO 2 board that takes a 2.5″ hard drive. I’ve tested it with NanoPi NEO 2 board and OpenMediaVault, and found to perform optimally for this type of device (USB 2.0 to SATA), with SAMBA reads & writes achieving 40 MB/s. The hardware given away includes the NAS Kit v1.2 and a NanoPi NEO 2 board. You’ll just need to add a micro SD card with the OMV image, a hard drive, and a 12V/2A (or greater) power supply. To enter the draw simply leave a comment […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 68 Comments on Linux Benchmarks – Intel J3455 Apollo Lake vs Z3735F Bay Trail vs RK3399 and Other ARM Platforms

Linux Benchmarks – Intel J3455 Apollo Lake vs Z3735F Bay Trail vs RK3399 and Other ARM Platforms

Since I’ve just installed Ubuntu 17.10 on MeLE PCG35 Apo, I decided I should also run some benchmarks comparing with other ARM and x86 Linux platforms I’ve tested in the past.I was particularly interested to compare the performance of Intel Apollo Lake processors (Celeron J3455 in this case) against higher end ARM processors like Rockchip RK3399 (2x A72, 4x A53) since systems have a similar price (~$150+), as well as against the older Bay Trail processor to see the progress achieved over the last 2 to 3 years. To do so, I used Phoronix Benchmark Suite against Videostrong VS-RK3399 results (RK3399 development board):

The benchmark first issued a warning about “powersave” governor, but I still went ahead, and once completed I change it to “performance” governor:

…and ran the tests again. All results are available on OpenBenchmarking. Let’s address the governor results first. cpufreq-info reports that powersave governor […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Beelink GS1 Allwinner H6 TV Box Sells for $60

Beelink GS1 Allwinner H6 TV Box Sells for $60

Allwinner H6 is the latest “Home Entertainment” SoC from the company. Designed for 4K HDR TV boxes and set-top boxes, it supports 6K/4K H.265, H.264 and VP9 hardware video decoding, HDR10 and HLG video processing, and features TS interfaces for digital TV tuners, and high speed interfaces such as USB 3.0 and PCIe. So far only one device was equipped with the processor: Zidoo H6 Pro TV Box launched last August, and no other companies offers H6 based products. This may be about to change, as Beelink GS1 is now up for pre-order on GeatBest for $69.99 shipped. But if you read the fine prints on the product page, you’ll find a $10 coupon code: GBGS1. Beelink GS1 specifications: SoC – AllWinner H6 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor with Mali-T720MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB RAM Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, micro SD card slot Video Output – 1x HDMI 2.0a up […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments on Zidoo H6 Pro (Allwinner H6) TV Box Review – Part 1: Unboxing & Teardown

Zidoo H6 Pro (Allwinner H6) TV Box Review – Part 1: Unboxing & Teardown

Allwinner H6 is a quad core Cortex A53 processor designed for 4K HDR set-top boxes and TV boxes that also comes with high speed interfaces like USB 3.0 and PCIe. While at least one other company is working on an Allwinner H6 development board, Zidoo is the only company that I can find whose made a TV box based on the processor: Zidoo H6 Pro. They’ve just send me a sample from their local supplier for review, and as usual, I’ll start by checking out the hardware inside out, before testing the firmware and multimedia capabilities in the second part of the review in a few weeks. Zidoo H6 Pro Unboxing The company has slightly changed the design of their retail package. It also shows some icons with the main features like 4K, 3D,  H.265, 2GB DDR4, Android 7.0 with ZIUI, etc… The box ships with a HDMI cable, a […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on OpenBSD 6.2 Adds Support for Orange Pi PC 2, Firefly-RK3399

OpenBSD 6.2 Adds Support for Orange Pi PC 2, Firefly-RK3399

OpenBSD has been supporting 32-bit (ARMv7) and 64-bit (ARM64) ARM targets, but the just released OpenBSD 6.2 adds support for two more ARM64 boards: Orange Pi PC 2 and Firefly-RK3399. Those two add to the ARM64 list comprised of Raspberry Pi 3, Pine A64/A64+, and AMD Opteron A1100 based development board and SoftIron OverDrive 1000 servers. Other platforms based on Allwinner A64 & H5, and Rockchip RK3399 could likely also be supported. If you want to try it on your board, visit OpenBSD 6.2 ARM64 page to download the files: INSTALL.arm64 – Installation notes SHA256 – Output of the cksum(1) program using the option -a sha256, usable for verification of the correctness of downloaded files. SHA256.sig – The above file, signed with the OpenBSD signing key for the 6.2 release, usable for verification of the integrity of the above file, and thus of the downloaded files. miniroot62.fs – A miniroot […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Orange Pi Lite Based Seedi Retro Gaming Console Takes Your Old DVDs or CD-ROMs (Crowdfunding)

Orange Pi Lite Based Seedi Retro Gaming Console Takes Your Old DVDs or CD-ROMs (Crowdfunding)

Shenzhen Xunlong’s Orange Pi family is a nice collection of low costs ARM Linux development boards that can be used in all sort of projects, just like Raspberry Pi boards, but cheaper at the cost of requiring more skills, and/or efforts to complete a project. One popular use for Orange Pi boards is retro gaming thanks to community supported images like RetrOrange Pi supporting games for Atari, Amiga, DreamCast, and other consoles. The implementation looks good enough for startups to sell their own products based on Orange Pi  hardware and RetrOrangePi software, as we’ve already seen with RetroEngine Sigma Retro Game Console which had a very successful Indiegogo campaign with $629,368 USD raised. “Seedi Team” has now launched their own game console apparently based on Orange Pi Lite, but it’s a little different as instead of copying “ROMs” , you can simply insert your old CD-ROMs or DVDs. Seedi game […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC