SinoVoip has released specifications for the Banana Pi BPI-M5 SBC, which has the same Amlogic S905X3 SoC and many of the same features as Hardkernel’s Odroid-C4. SBC updates the Banana Pi flagship design, including the latest Banana Pi BPI-M4 based on the A53 Realtek RTD1395 quad. The latest Banana Pi was the April BPI-F2P built around the A7 SunPlus SP7021 quad.

Banana Pi BPI-M5

Characteristics of BPI-M5

  • Processor — Amlogic S905X3 (4x Cortex-A55 @ up to 2GHz); 12nm fab; Mali-G31 GPU @ up to 650MHz
  • Memory/storage:
    • 4GB LPDDR4 RAM
    • 16GB eMMC with optional up to 64GB
    • MicroSD slot
  • Networking — Gigabit Ethernet port
  • Media I/O:
    • HDMI 2.0 port for up to 4K@60Hz with HDR, CEC, EDID
    • 3.5mm audio jack
  • Other I/O:
    • 4x USB 3.0 host ports
    • USB Type-C port for power
    • Serial debug header
    • 40-pin GPIO header (UART, I2C, SPI or PWM, 5V, 3.3V, GND, 28x GPIO)
  • Other features — IR receiver; 2x LEDs
  • Power — 5V DC via Type-C; power, reset, and boot switches
  • Dimensions — 92 x 60mm
  • Weight — 48 g
  • Operating system — Android, Linux

Source: http://linuxgizmos.com/fifth-gen-banana-pi-goes-amlogic/

Industrial use of market Banana Pi-like SBCs

A year ago, TECHBASE released an updated version of the ModBerry M500 industrial IoT computer, replacing the aging Raspberry Pi 3 with a 3B+, giving it better performance. With the recent launch of the Raspberry Pi 4, TECHBASE has yet again, announced another upgrade to the M500, which now packs the latest single-board computer.

ModBerry M500 with Raspberry Pi’s 4

ModBerry M500 also utilizes many more SBC platforms, such as Orange Pi, NanoPi and Intel-based UpBoard. Find more information here: https://iiot-shop.com/product/modberry-m-series/

The new Banana Pi BPI-F2P has the same layout and list of functions as the BPI-F2S. The biggest difference is the addition of two serial ports and the addition of a new Power-over-Ethernet function on one of the two 10/100 Ethernet ports. Meanwhile, the FPGA connector on the optional Artix-7 FPGA module has been removed.

The Banana Pi design also revealed Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 AIoT SBC, which does not work under Linux, but to some extent looks like an array. Separate reports state on on BPI-F2P and BPI-EAI80 AIoT. BPI-F2P and BPI-F2S appear to be supported by the Banana Pi community, but there is no indication that they are open source hardware boards like most Banana Pi SBCs. The BPI-F2 diagram has not yet been published.

Banana Pi BPI-F2S

Characteristics Of The SP7021

  • Easy-to-use LQFP package.
  • Quad-core 1GHz Cortex-A7 CPU, plus A926 and 8051 cores.
  • Single 3.3V power*.
  • Integrated 128MB or 512MB DDR3 DRAM.
  • Eight 8-bit 5V-tolerant IO ports, plus one high-current port.
  • Flexible Peripheral Multiplexing (PinMux).
  • Dual PinMuxable Ethernet MACs.
  • Four PinMuxable Enhanced UARTs, plus one console UART.
  • Industrial operating temperature range: -40C ~ +85C.
  • Low EMI simplifies certification.
  • Modern, Yocto-based Linux distribution.
  • 10-year supply guarantee.
  • Robust ready-to-run modern Linux distribution available

Source: https://www.electronics-lab.com/banana-pi-bpi-f2p-low-power-iot/

Industrial use of market Banana Pi-like SBCs

A year ago, TECHBASE released an updated version of the ModBerry M500 industrial IoT computer, replacing the aging Raspberry Pi 3 with a 3B+, giving it better performance. With the recent launch of the Raspberry Pi 4, TECHBASE has yet again, announced another upgrade to the M500, which now packs the latest single-board computer.

ModBerry M500 with Raspberry Pi’s 4

ModBerry M500 also utilizes many more SBC platforms, such as Orange Pi, NanoPi and Intel-based UpBoard. Find more information here: https://iiot-shop.com/product/modberry-m-series/

New industrial single-board computer from Banana Pi

A new industrial-class single-board computer, called Banana Pi BPI-F2S, was released with Linux 4.19. Banana Pi BPI-F2S is a new SBC from BPI Tech – a daughter company of SinoVoIP. The heart of Banana Pi BPI-F2S is the SP7021 chip from SunPlus containing a 1GHz Cortex-A7 quad-core ARM processor, A962 type ARM coprocessor and 8051 controller. More information about the SP7021 chip is available in the Wiki.

Industrial Banana Pi BPI-F2S
Banana Pi BPI-F2S

For storage, the Banana Pi BPI-F2S has an 8 GB eMMC flash and a microSD card slot. Here is the rest of the list of specifications:

  • Video output: HDMI 1.4
  • I / F camera: MIPI CSI connector
  • Connectivity: two 10/100 Ethernet
  • USB: two USB 2.0 ports, one micro USB port
  • Power supply: 12 VDC
  • Expansion: 40-pin GPIO compatible with Raspberry Pi
  • Two 50-pin FPGA interfaces for Trenz Electronic Trix Electronic TE0725LP-01-100-2D Artix 7 board

Banana Pi BPI-F2S a new industrial SoC on the market

SunPlus SP7021 is a revolutionary SoC that has the power of a Linux-grade chip and the integration simplicity of a microcontroller. With ARM Cortex-A7 Quad core, ARM926 real-time core. Designed by Sunplus Technology in collaboration with Tibbo Technology, PLUS1 takes all the sophisticated elements typically found in modern industrial-grade embedded Linux chips, adds a plethora of features targeting IoT and industrial control applications, and delivers the resulting design in a simple microcontroller-like package that needs few external components, simplifies the schematic diagram, and reduces the PCB complexity.”

Industrial Banana Pi BPI-F2S
Banana Pi BPI-F2S (SP7021)

SP7021 is a SoC solution of industrial control. It meets customers’ full demand on function but with low cost so that will improve customers’ competitiveness in the market. SP7021 provides rich GPIOs, storage and USB interface. And it provides MIPI CSI interface for video input and HDMI interface for video output. It also provides FPGA interface for function extension. SP7021 also has 4 Ethernet ports providing customers a high competitive solution.

Source: https://www.hackster.io/bananapi/banana-pi-bpi-f2s-with-sunplus-sp7021-chip-design-e108ff

Industrial use of previous BananaPi-like development boards

Introduced in November 2017, the ModBerry M300 series, based on NanoPi NEO revolutionised the economic segment of Industrial IoT devices and proved, that automation and monitoring can be done effectively with low expenditure on industrial installations.

ModBerry M300 O1 based on OrangePi Zero Plus features Allwinner H5 (Quad-core Cortex-A53) SoC, moderate 512MB RAM, storage memory option with microSD slot, USB and Gigabit Ethernet port. The wireless communication is supported with onboard Wi-Fi module.

Offering much higher performance and wider feature range, the ModBerry M300 O2 features same SoC as M300 series, but thanks to OrangePi Zero Plus2 means, the device is equipped with onboard 8GB eMMC, extra microSD expansion slot as alternative and wired/wireless interfaces, e.g. HDMI, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0.

Coral Dev Board - a new Raspberry Pi-like platform from Google

The Coral platform launched by Google is expected to contribute to the easier creation of systems in the field of the Internet of Things. During CES 2020, the manufacturer will devote a lot of attention to her.

Google presented a new, miniature accelerator module for the Coral platform. The sensor has dimensions of only 10×15 mm, so it is smaller than the American one-cent coin. Coral is a Google platform created to facilitate the construction of equipment compatible with the Internet of Things technology, equipped with artificial intelligence.

Components produced by Google have already been used to create many intelligent systems used, for example, in healthcare, agriculture or technologies supporting the functioning of cities. Coral works well also in offline mode and with limited connectivity. The new module is expected to increase its functionality.

The Coral Dev Board together with the USB and PCIe accelerator went on sale in 2019, and is now being sold in 36 countries. We can expect many innovations related to this technology during CES 2020. Google announces that it has prepared various demonstrations of the new module capabilities for this meeting.

Google’s Coral Dev Board

Coral Dev Board

Unlike popular single board, Raspberry Pi or Raspberry’s Chinese competitors, according to Google, Coral Dev Board is to be a specialized computer – it is primarily targeted at developers who want to have a device on which algorithm learning is possible. The computer is running Mendel Linux built on Debian, we will also find Tensor Flow Lite libraries with ready-to-compile models. No internet connection is required in the learning process – the entire process is done locally.

From the hardware side, the most important here is the Edge TPU coprocessor – a Google tensor system designed to be used together with the Tensor Flow library used in machine learning. In addition, the board got the ARM 4-core NXP i.MX 8M processor, GC7000 Lite Graphics, as much as 1 GB of RAM (LDPRR4) and 8 GB of eMMC memory. Coral connects to other devices via Wi-Fi oral USB Accelerator and Bluetooth 4.1.

Therefore, it cannot be said that, compared to other SBC Coral, it is hardware limited. What’s more, it has a microSD card slot, two USB type C sockets (one for power supply, the other for data transfer), minijack output, HMDI output, GPIO pins. The device can also be connected to the Internet via a cable with an RJ-45 plug. It is also possible to buy a camera useful in machine learning image processing algorithms.

Industrial use of Raspberry Pi-like development boards

Introduced in November 2017, the ModBerry M300 series, based on NanoPi NEO revolutionised the economic segment of Industrial IoT devices and proved, that automation and monitoring can be done effectively with low expenditure on industrial installations.

ModBerry M300 O1 based on OrangePi Zero Plus features Allwinner H5 (Quad-core Cortex-A53) SoC, moderate 512MB RAM, storage memory option with microSD slot, USB and Gigabit Ethernet port. The wireless communication is supported with onboard Wi-Fi module.

Offering much higher performance and wider feature range, the ModBerry M300 O2 features same SoC as M300 series, but thanks to OrangePi Zero Plus2 means, the device is equipped with onboard 8GB eMMC, extra microSD expansion slot as alternative and wired/wireless interfaces, e.g. HDMI, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0.

New Orange Pi 4/4B with six-cores and Neural Processing Unit (NPU)

Shenzhen Xunlong Software recently introduced a new Orange Pi microcomputer. According to information provided by the Chinese company, the Orange Pi 4 measures 91 x 56 mm and features a Rockchip K3399 six-core system-on-chip SoC (ARM Mali-T860 MP4 GPU, 4GB of LPDDR4 memory, 16GB of storage). eMMC (expandable via a microSD card), a 24-pin connector, and a 40-pin General-purpose input / output (GPIO) connector.

Orange Pi 4 six-core system
Orange Pi 4B with Neural Processing Unit (NPU)

This microcomputer is also equipped with two camera connectors, one USB 3.0 jack, two USB 2.0 jacks, one USB 3.0 Type-C jack, HDMI 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet and 3.5mm audio jacks, and includes support for Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.1 LE.

The secondly introduced Orange Pi 4B model includes a Gyrfalcon Lightspeeur SPR2801S Neural Processing Unit (NPU), two USB 2.0 sockets, as well as a USB 3.0 Type-C socket.

Orange Pi 4/4B preliminary specifications:

  • SoC – Rockchip K3399 hexa-core big.LITTLE processor with two Arm Cortex A72 cores, four Cortex A53 cores, and an ARM Mali-T860 MP4 GPU with support for OpenGL 1.1 to 3.1 support, OpenVG1.1, OpenCL and DX 11
  • System Memory – 4 GB LPDDR4
  • Storage – 16 GB eMMC flash, micro SD card
  • NPU (Orange Pi 4B only) – Gyrfalcon Lightspeeur SPR2801S NPU delivering up to 2.8TOPS @ 300mW, 5.6 TOPS @ 100 MHz (peak performance)
  • Video Output/Display Interface
    • HDMI 2.0 up to 4K @ 60 Hz
    • LCD connector for MIPI DSI display
    • USB-C port with DisplayPort Alternate mode
  • Video Decode – 4K VP9 and 10-bit H.265 video codec support up to 60 fps
  • Audio – 3.5mm audio jack for headphones; HDMI digital audio output; built-in microphone; ALC5651 codec
  • Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet port (via  RTL8211E transceiver), dual-band 802.11ac 2×2 MIMO WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0 (Ampak AP6256 module)
  • USB
    • Orange Pi 4 – 1x USB 3.0 port, 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x USB 3.0 type C port
    • Orange Pi 4B – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x USB 3.0 type C port
  • Camera – 2x camera headers
  • Debugging – 3-pin serial header
  • Expansion
    • 40-pin GPIO 2.54mm pitch female header with 2x I2C, 1x SPI/UART, 8x GPIO, etc…
    • 24-pin connector for PCIe signals
  • Power Supply
    • 5V/3A via DC jack
    • 5V via type C portRK808 PMU
  • Dimensions – 91 x 56 mm

Source: https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/11/19/orange-pi-4-4b-sbc-rockchip-rk3399-soc-gyrfalcon-2801s-npu/

Industrial use of previous OrangePi development boards

Introduced in November 2017, the ModBerry M300 series, based on NanoPi NEO revolutionised the economic segment of Industrial IoT devices and proved, that automation and monitoring can be done effectively with low expenditure on industrial installations.

ModBerry M300 O1 based on OrangePi Zero Plus features Allwinner H5 (Quad-core Cortex-A53) SoC, moderate 512MB RAM, storage memory option with microSD slot, USB and Gigabit Ethernet port. The wireless communication is supported with onboard Wi-Fi module.

Offering much higher performance and wider feature range, the ModBerry M300 O2 features same SoC as M300 series, but thanks to OrangePi Zero Plus2 means, the device is equipped with onboard 8GB eMMC, extra microSD expansion slot as alternative and wired/wireless interfaces, e.g. HDMI, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0.

Introduced in November 2017, the ModBerry M300 series, based on NanoPi NEO revolutionised the economic segment of Industrial IoT devices and proved, that automation and monitoring can be done effectively with low expenditure on industrial installations.

Read more: http://linuxgizmos.com/automation-controller-runs-linux-on-a-nanopi-neo-sbc/

https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/11/15/techbase-modberry%E2%80%8B-m300-linux-iot-gateway-%E2%80%8Bis-powered-by-nanopi-neo-board/

To ensure constant development of TECHBASE’s solutions and cutting-edge technology, the NanoPi platform part of ModBerry series is expanded by updated ModBerry M300 N2 product, based on NanoPi NEO2. The new addition features Quad-core Cortex-A53, twice more RAM than previous version of NanoPi NEO and Gigabit Ethernet for fast communication.

For even wider range of communication interfaces and application possibilities, TECHBASE offers now ModBerry M300 N2+ based on the NanoPi NEO Plus2. M300 N2+ is equipped with 8GB eMMC, features more USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet port like M300 N2 and is supported with onboard Wi-Fi/Blutetooth 4.0 to ensure many channels of data management.

ModBerry M300 series can optionally support an external 2.5″ SATA hard disk and 2242 SSD storage units with M.2 interface thanks to onboard JMS567 USB to SATA controller. With extra storage space, data management of specific installations would be more convenient than sending all unprocessed data into cloud or directly to user.

OrangePi capabilities

To meet the Industrial IoT market demands the ModBerry family joined new embedded computer platform, offering adjustable solutions for every industrial installation. ModBerry M300 O1/O2 series is formed by two OrangePi module boards offering different approach to IoT than NanoPi solutions.

ModBerry M300 O1 based on OrangePi Zero Plus features Allwinner H5 (Quad-core Cortex-A53) SoC, moderate 512MB RAM, storage memory option with microSD slot, USB and Gigabit Ethernet port. The wireless communication is supported with onboard Wi-Fi module.

Offering much higher performance and wider feature range, the ModBerry M300 O2 features same SoC as M300 series, but thanks to OrangePi Zero Plus2 means, the device is equipped with onboard 8GB eMMC, extra microSD expansion slot as alternative and wired/wireless interfaces, e.g. HDMI, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0.

ExCard modules to peak the performance

Every TECHBASE’s industrial computer is supported by ExCard add-on modules for extra RS-232/485 serial ports, Ethernet ports, PCIe slots, analog input and output, digital I/Os, relays, M-Bus interface, opto-isolation, accelerometer, etc. To provide specific communication paths, ModBerry can be rigged with additional Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module, 3G/LTE, NarrowBand-IoT, LoRa, ZigBee, GPS and Wireless M-Bus.

The latest options for ModBerry series are:

  • SuperCap expansion, to provide constant power supply as a UPS option
  • OLED 0.96” & new OLED 1,3″ screen, allowing the control without the need of connecting into the device
  • ESP32 module as a security chip, to add a firewall into control installation and ensure constant operation of the device, even with power drops and random events
  • Aluminum case, to grant much higher durability for extra harsh industrial conditions
  • Mentioned earlier SATA/M.2 SSD controller for extra data storage

The updated M300 availability

Currently all the updated M300 samples, including M300 N2, N2+, O1, O2 are available on demand. Please contact TECHBASE’s sales department via https://iot-industrial-devices.com/ contact form with specific requirements to receive an offer that will suit the project’s needs. Since the M300 update is still under the development, specific datasheets will be available in mid-February. The pricing of each unit may vary on the basis of configuration and order quota.