This morning I went off to the post office to pick my new new Pixie Pro – making sure that the tax man got his share and that the post office got their rip-off “handling fee” of £8 – yes that’s £8 pounds not dollars. Not that you have any alternative but to let them “handle” the package. You’d think the government would give them some of the duty or VAT!
Anyway I digress with my deep-seated dislike of being ripped.. Opening video – well, you have to have an opening video..
The Pixie Pro – so firstly – this is NOT one of the cheapest small PC boards indeed for the cost of it you could buy 2 or more of the others – but then it is not just another Raspberry Pi!
My Pixie Pro came with a HONKING great heat sink – which bearing in mind that my Orange Pi could cook eggs, is a welcome addition. This will end up in Spain with me where it gets very warm and so a cool running board is a good start.
Taking a look at the specification, not 512meg of 32 bit RAM, not one gig but 2GB of 64-bit DDR3 RAM!! The processor offers a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 running at 1Ghz plus 2D and 3D GPUs. The wireless interface is described as state of the art, offering 802.11b/g/n/ac. Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, GPS and mobile broadband interfaces. Not your average Pi then.
The board measures 52mm by 91mm and has 2 USB type A ports, one OTG port, a micro-HDMI output, 2 microSD slots and a 3.5mm line out with TOSLINK optical.
No, I’m not finished – Gigabit Ethermet, PCIe, SDIO, 2 MIPI, SATA II, RGB555, USB2.0 HS, CAN, SPI, 2 Uarts, 2 I2c and several GPIO ports.
I’m done now.
So there it is – a veritable powerhouse – but is it any good – that will be the subject of my next related blog – you can have as much power as you like but without the software – what use is it? Now, normally I tend to put Debian on these things but I’m half inclined given the claims above, to start with Android. Until the next time.
Do you know pinouts of extension ports? How to attach ethernet? I can’t find this info on web. I want to buy one, so I must know this. Thank you.
Thanks my friend for such a quick reply. This does seem like a very interesting device.
Do you have another URL for this company?
http://www.4geeks.com gives me an RV Dealer [in the USA]
http://www.4geeks.co is a developers site which looked promising but I did not see any product link.
http://treats4geeks.org/wiki/index.php?title=OoBES
So you bought a small PC? 😉
Well of course there is a continuous spectrum between “controller” and “PC” these days 🙂
DHL in Germany takes 28,50 € (a whopping £22) to “handle” customs if you authorize them. Usually this happens when there is no invoice/declaration of value outside and customs wants to inspect your package. Customs is not allowed to open packages but the mail carrier is.
But you may as well drive to the customs office yourself after receiving their note, pay only the tax if necessary and happily go home with your package. No handling, no fee for them. Good to know.
Or even better you may phone your customs officer to discuss the topic and email the invoice or a screenshot of the buy. This last way is so citizen/customer friendly that I still cannot belive that it is not illegal yet.
I learned not to use DHL in Spain – bunch of crooks – they delivered a parcel from China to Spain – encouraged the supplier to increase the value of the package so they could then charge me a higher fee – I ended up paying total fees worth more than the goods. I will never voluntarily use them again.