There are many small and compact Arm Linux SBCs, starting from the NanoPi NEO to the Raspberry Pi Zero or Rock Pi S, but lately a smaller board based on the MStar MSC313E Cortex-A7 SoC from BreadBee with a 64MB RAM appeared, enough to run embedded Linux.
Despite MStar MSC313E being a camera processor, the camera interface does not seem exposed in the board, so it looks to be designed to control I/Os over Ethernet. There’s no WiFi for now, but there may eventually be a future model that replaced the Ethernet jack with an Ampak WiFi module.
Source: https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/04/14/breadbee-tiny-embedded-linux-sbc-mstar-msc313e-camera-soc/
BreadBee specifications:
- SoC – MStar MSC313E Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ ~1.0 GHz with NEON, FPU, 64MB DDR2
- Storage – 16MB SPI NOR flash
- Networking – 10/100M Ethernet (RJ45)
- USB – 1x Micro USB 2.0 port
- Expansion
- 24-pin dual-row header (2.54mm pitch) with SPI, I2C, 4x 10-bit ADC, 3x UART, GPIOs
- 21-pin header (1.27mm pitch) with SD/SDIO, USB 2.0, GPIOs
- Misc – RTC, Watchdog timer
- Power Supply – 5V via micro USB port
- Dimensions – 32 x 30mm
Source: https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/04/14/breadbee-tiny-embedded-linux-sbc-mstar-msc313e-camera-soc/
Raspberry Pi increase in IoT significance
More and more engineers and technology providers believe that it is suitable for industrial applications in the real world. Over the past few years, there has been a lot of discussion about the use of Raspberry Pi in industry, most of which emphasize that Raspberry Pi is a great tool for engineering experiments, but not so much for industrial applications in the real world. While it is true that the Raspberry Pi is not considered the best choice for mission-critical applications, it is also true that the Raspberry Pi is no longer a platform for experimentation.
Latest Raspberry Pi 4 development board, equipped with a 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 processor (approximately 3 times better performance than previous Cortex-A53 powering Raspberry Pi 3+ Model B and Compute Module 3 and 3+). can be chosen from 1GB / 2GB / 4GB LPDDR4 SDRAM options.
Raspberry Pi 4 continues the tradition of one of the most versatile and cheapest computer devices. It can be used for virtually anything from proprietary IoT solutions to a full-fledged desktop computer. The new Malinka has two micro-HDMI ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 3.0 type A ports and two USB 2.0 type A ports.
Industrial use of Raspberry Pi 4
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.
Over 10 million Raspberry Pi’s have been sold and the Raspberry Pi is likely to stay as a new standard in the industry. Official Raspbian OS is free operating system based on Linux Debian optimized for the Raspberry Pi comes with over 35,000 packages, pre-compiled software bundled in a nice format for easy installation. ModBerry devices are compatible with Raspberry Pi accessories, supported by Raspberry Pi Foundation. ModBerry M500 now with Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ / Raspberry Pi 4 Model B support.
