banana pi News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

October 23, 2024October 23, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Banana Pi BPI-M1S RK3528 SBC features HDMI 2.0, 2.5GbE, WiFi 6, and more

The Banana Pi BPI-M1S, also known as the ArmSoM-Sige1, is a low-profile single board computer (SBC) based on the Rockchip RK3528 quad-core Cortex-A53 SoC initially designed for entry-level 4K TV boxes. Contrary to the two other RK3528(A) SBCs we’ve covered, namely the Radxa Rock E20C and FriendlyELEC NanoPi Zero2 focusing on low-cost and small footprint for headless networked applications, the Banana Pi BPI-M1S integrates more features such as HDMI 2.0 for 4K video output and audio, 2.5GbE and WiFi 6 networking, and a 40-pin GPIO header for expansion. Banana Pi BPI-M1S specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3528 CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 @ 2.0 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G450 GPU with support for OpenGL ES1.1, ES2.0, and OpenVG 1.1 APIs VPU H.264, H.265, and AVS2 decoder up to 4Kp60 H.264 and H.265 encoder up to 1080p60 Memory – 4GB LPDDR4x Storage 32GB eMMC flash (by default) MicroSD card slot Video Output – […]

October 2, 2024October 2, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 39 Comments

OpenWrt One WiFi 6 router with Filogic 820 SoC launched for $89

The “OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY” is a Filogic 820-based WiFi 6 router board manufactured by Banana Pi whose software is directly managed by OpenWrt developers with assistance from MediaTek. The router was first announced in January 2024, and developer samples became available sometime in April with some early units auctioned away at the OpenWrt Summit which took place in Cyprus on May 18-19. The good news is that the OpenWrt One is now available to anyone on Aliexpress for $89 including a metal enclosure, a PoE module, three antennas, and a power supply. Here’s a reminder of the OpenWrt One router specifications: SoC – MediaTek MT7981B (Filogic 820) dual-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.3 GHz System Memory – 1GB DDR4 Storage 128 MB SPI NAND flash for U-boot and Linux 4 MB SPI NOR flash for write-protected (by default) recovery bootloader (reflashing can be enabled with a jumper) Two types of flash devices […]

September 16, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Linux 6.11 Release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.11 is out with Linus Torvalds’ announcement on the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML): I’m once again on the road and not in my normal timezone, but it’s Sunday afternoon here in Vienna, and 6.11 is out. The last week was actually pretty quiet and calm, which is nice to see. The shortlog is below for anybody who wants to look at the details, but it really isn’t very many patches, and the patches are all pretty small. Nothing in particular stands out – the biggest patch in here is for Hyper-V Confidential Computing documentation. Anyway, with this, the merge window will obviously open tomorrow, and I already have 40+ pull requests pending. That said, exactly _because_ I’m on the road, it will probably be a fairly slow start to the merge window, since not only am I on my laptop, there’s OSS Europe starting tomorrow and then the […]

September 9, 2024September 9, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro – A Rockchip RK3576-powered Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with up to 16GB RAM, 128GB flash, a 6 TOPS NPU

Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro, also called ArmSoM-CM5, is a Rockchip RK3576 system-on-module electrically and mechanically compatible with the Raspberry Pi CM4 while offering up to 16GB LPDDR5 memory, 128GB eMMC flash, and a 6 TOPS AI accelerator embedded into the RK3576 SoC. It comes with a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless module, a PMIC for power management, and two 100-pin connectors mostly compatible with the pinout of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. ArmSoM also provides a CM5-IO carrier board to make use of the extra USB 3.0 and PCIe interfaces, and the company told CNX Software they tested the module successfully with the official Raspberry Pi CM4 IO board. Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3576 CPU – 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 cores at 1.8GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MC3 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0, and 3.2, OpenCL up to 2.0, […]

September 2, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

DietPi 9.7 and Armbian 24.8 released with improved support for Rockchip, Amlogic, and Allwinner SBCs

Armbian and DietPi are two separate projects that provide Linux-based OS images optimized for Arm-based single board computers. The last time we had a look at both projects was in June with the release of Armbian 24.5.1 and DietPi 9.4, but there have been several updates since then including the releases of the latest DietPi 9.7 and Armbian 24.8 Yelt just a few days ago. So let’s check out the latest changes. DietPi 9.7 DietPi is a lightweight Debian-based Linux distribution for SBCs and server systems that ships as a minimal image but users can install any packages they want, including the ones required for desktop environment, to match the requirements of the applications. It’s notably used by the Linamp project – a Raspberry Pi 4-based project that brings WinAMP to real life – that we covered a few weeks ago. DietPi 9.7 was released on August 25, 2024 with […]

August 21, 2024August 20, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

$30 Banana Pi BPI-WiFi6 Mini is a dual GbE and WiFi 6 router board with optional 4G LTE or 5G cellular connectivity

Banana Pi BPI-WiFi6 Mini is an inexpensive WiFi 6 and dual Gigabit Ethernet router board with an M.2 Key-B socket and Nano SIM card slot to add 4G LTE or 5G cellular connectivity. It’s a smaller version of the Banana Pi BPI-WiFi 6 router board based on the Triductor TR6560 dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 processor and Triductor TR5220 WiFi 6 chipset that follows the form factor of the Banana BPI-R3 Mini low-profile router board based on MediaTek Filogic 830 processor. Banana Pi BPI-WiFi6 Mini specifications: SoC – Triductor TR6560 dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 processor @ 1.2 GHz with LSW (Line-Card Switching) and hardware NAT up to 5 Gbps WiFi chipset – Triductor TR5220 WiFi 6 chipset System Memory – 128MB DDR3 Storage – 128MB SPI NAND flash Networking 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports WiFi WiFi 6 with 2×2 MIMO @ 2.4 GHz, 2×2 MIMO @ 5GHz Antennas – 2.4GHz antenna connector, 2.4GHz/5GHz […]

July 15, 2024July 16, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linux 6.10 Release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux Torvalds has announced the release of Linux 6.10 on LKML: So the final week was perhaps not quote as quiet as the preceding ones, which I don’t love – but it also wasn’t noisy enough to warrant an extra rc. And much of the noise this last week was bcachefs again (with netfs a close second), so it was all pretty compartmentalized. In fact, about a third of the patch for the last week was filesystem-related (there were also some btrfs latency fixes and other noise), which is unusual, but none of it looks particularly scary. Another third was drivers, and the rest is “random”. Anyway, this obviously means that the merge window for 6.11 opens up tomorrow. Let’s see how that goes, with much of Europe probably making ready for summer vacation. And the shortlog below is – as always – just the last week, not some kind […]

July 9, 2024July 9, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

Banana Pi BPI-R4-NIC-BE14 WiFi 7 module for BPI-R4 SBC launched for $74

The Banana Pi BPI-R4 was introduced last year as a WiFi 7 router board with two 10GbE SFP cages and four GbE ports based on MediaTek Filogic 880 SoC. The only issue is that WiFi 7 is implemented through a dual mini PCIe module that was not available until now. The good news is that the tri-band Banana Pi BPI-R4-NIC-BE14 WiFi 7 module for the Banana Pi BPI-R4 board can now be purchased for $73.69 on Aliexpress. It is based on MediaTek MT7995AV WiFi 7 chipset, MT7976CN dual-band (2.4GHz and 5 GHz) chipset, and MT7977IAN 6GHz chipset. Banana Pi BPI-R4-NIC-BE14 specifications: MediaTek MT7995AV WiFi 7 – IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be compliant 32-bit RISC-V MCU for Wi-Fi protocols and Wi-Fi offload Embedded SRAM and ROM UART interface with hardware flow control MediaTek MT7976CN dual-band 2.4GHz 2×2 MIMO and 5GHz 3×3 MIMO MediaTek MT7977IAN 6GHz 3×3 MIMO Bandwidth 2.4 GHz – 20 and […]