Coming up, reviews of FriendlyArm’s latest offerings – the NanoPC-T3 and the little M1. I’ll cover both of these later in the week with testing etc.. but for now a taster of the more powerful unit.
You may recall I have the older NanoPC-T2 running Debian as user PI – with pretty much everything running as it would on a Pi except for IO and that’s because I’m too thick to figure out how to use their drivers – I have pointed out that Raspberry Pi makes GPIO so easy, others should keep up and make compatible drivers. I also have a unit running Debian on their cheap touch LCD module – running Imperihome on my desk to monitor and control house functions. It’s marvelous but not a lot between that and a Pi.
The new T3 is a monster, more expensive than a Raspberry Pi at $60 but with Ghz Ethernet, WIFI, Bluetooth, 64 bit Octal processor from Samsung etc. At least on paper it is very impressive.
A53 Octa-core soc, 1.4Ghz dynamic frequency scaling, 8GB eMMC internally (or a full size SD), 1Gbps Ethernet, WIFI, Bluetooth, 4 UARTS, microphone, headphone socket, HDMI, 2 USB and another pair on connectors, RTC battery connector, 1GB RAM (I need to confirm that – may be 2GB), 2 camera interfaces and more.
All of this is nice of course – but that’s on paper. I wsa impressed by the last model – this time I’m expecting more. Keep eyes open – I’m off on a hunt for materials for a new pergola today but tomorrow I should be back at my desk and I’ll go into these units in detail.