"Open source is a very tempting word for electronic engineers. As one of the most popular open source platforms, raspberry school, which is popular all over the world, has a good reputation in the eyes of electronic engineers. It has gradually changed from being used for learning and development to DIY all kinds of new creative electronic products, and many developers enjoy it. This is the charm of open source, However, with the continuous upgrading of hardware, raspberry school has gradually stepped into the pattern of "honest and old, can still eat or not". Especially after the advent of a series of open-source single board computers with strong hardware performance, such as pcduino, beaglebone black and Intel Galileo, electronic enthusiasts and engineers also began to take performance as an important assessment standard of open-source hardware.
Not long ago, aiban.com got a special open-source single board computer - Banana PI, which translates to banana pie. I believe most engineers will think of raspberry pie. What exactly is banana PI like? Does it have anything to do with raspberry pie? Hearing is believing, and seeing is believing, as shown below
Open source platform banana pi
When I first got banana PI, I was really surprised. No wonder how the appearance and interface layout look like the larger raspberry pie. Although it has nothing to do with raspberry pie, its intention is obvious. I don't chew the root of my tongue. I believe all my friends who have seen it can understand its tortuous story, Show you two pictures of banana PI and raspberry pie, as follows
Banana PI and raspberry pie
No doubt, it's just like that. I believe everyone can see the "Sima Zhao's heart". Banana Pi is a lemaker banana in Shenzhen An open source project designed and developed by the PI development team seems to have the intention to use banana Scratch software (children's computer programming software) promoted by PI allows many young users to use banana pie to give full play to their imagination and creativity. However, in my opinion, this product is still more brilliant in the hands of engineers or electronics enthusiasts. Let's see if the banana PI development board can resonate with everyone.
Open source platform banana pi
As a single board open source computer, banana PI adheres to the excellent and highly integrated DNA of its predecessors. Its body shape is only 92mm * 60MM, which is slightly larger than that of raspberry pie. However, the PCB board is very thin, and the number of layers is unknown for the time being, at least more than 4 layers. However, it is easy to misunderstand the good open source. At present, there is no way to obtain the information about the schematic diagram, layout and other related hardware boards, I don't know. Isn't it ready yet? Or this part of the data is not open source for the time being. Helpless, let's introduce something about banana PI
Overview of banana PI development board resources
Quanzhi A20 ARM ® Cortex ™- A7 dual core processor, integrated GPU ARM Mali400 MP2 compatible OpenGL ES 2.0/1.1
1GB DDR3 ( Shared with GPU), SD card ( Maximum (64GB) / MMC card slot can be extended to 2T SATA hard disk
Gigabit Ethernet port, USB host2.0 * 2, support USB WIFI Dongle, infrared receiver
CSI camera module interface, DSI display interface, microphone input, HDMI, CVBS , LVDS / RGB video output, 3.5mm audio output interface
GPIO(2X13) Port expansion base: GPIO, UART, I2C bus, SPI bus, can bus, ADC, PWM
Via microusb (DC) Or microusb ( OTG) provides 5V DC voltage
Power status LED (red), network port status LED light ( Blue), user defined LED Light (green), reset key, power key, u-boot key
Recommended development board
ATMEL at91sam9g25-ek evaluation board It is suitable for industrial applications and integrates soft cat, USB and Ethernet ports
ATMEL atsam3u-ek evaluates the MPU based on Cortex-M3 core, the first integrated on-chip high-speed USB interface in the board industry
Banana Pi is based on Quanzhi A20 SOC dual core processor, on-board 1GB DDR3 memory. According to the current market situation, this configuration undoubtedly belongs to an entry-level tablet computer or smart TV scheme. As a single board computer with open source platform, the performance is at least very good.
Of course, in the context of strong performance, the functions of banana PI are no less. There are extremely rich video output interfaces: Standard HDMI output, analog AV video interface output and LVDS interface video output; MIC input terminal and USB OTG interface of human-computer interaction function; Unique external mobile hard disk interface; The infrared receiver that can realize remote control is shown in the figure below
Banana PI peripheral interface
The playability content of banana PI development board is richer than the raspberry School of "the same shape". However, the lack of board data is an unavoidable factor. As it is a new product, there are very few relevant data, which also makes the above advantages unable to be brought into full play in a short time. The hero has no place to play is the most true portrayal at this time.
Banana PI can supply power through a 5V / 1A power adapter. In case of heavy load of peripheral equipment (such as connecting LCD display, mobile hard disk and other peripherals), it can be considered to use a power adapter with greater maximum output current to ensure the normal operation of external equipment. Like raspberry pie, banana PI does not have an on-board flash chip storage system. At present, it cannot start the system through an external mobile hard disk (I believe this function will be realized in the future). It needs to burn the system into the SD card through software to start the development board.
Quanzhi A20 SOC dual core processor
If you carefully taste the banana PI board, you will find that in fact, there are very few on-board chips. What is the basis of such rich functions of the board? There is no doubt that this highly integrated Quanzhi A20 SOC processing chip carried by banana Pi is the basis for realizing on-board functions, as shown in the figure below
Quanzhi A20 SOC processing chip
Hardware block diagram of Quanzhi A20 SOC processing chip
Quanzhi A20 SOC processing chip on-chip resources
Based on arm cortex-a7 dual core and arm Mali400 MP2 GPU
Support H.264 2160p video decoding and H.264 1080p@30fps or 720p@60fps Video coding
Support system startup from NAND flash, SPI nor flash, SD card and TF card, and support downloading system code through USB OTG
It supports 2GB SDRAM expansion at most, NAND flash and SD / MMC storage interfaces, and 128GB storage at most
Timer, high-speed timer, DMA, CCU, GIC support, analog audio input (FM, microphone, etc.) / output (headset, audio DAC)
Video input (CMOS sensor, TV decoder) / output (HDMI, LVDS), digital audio input / output (I2S, PCM, etc.)
USB2.0 OTG、USB EHCI/OHCI、EMAC、GMAC
SPI, I2C, UART, PS2, IR, SATA, can, keypad, PWM, lradc, etc
Quanzhi A20 dual core processor is an intelligent dual core application processor SOC of Zhuhai Quanzhi technology, a dual core A7 processor based on ARM ultra-high energy efficiency ratio and mali400 MP2 GPU supports the decoding of 2160p video and the encoding of H.264 1080p video. In addition, A20 integrates many peripheral resources, such as HDMI, SATA, USB, GMAC, etc. (for details, please refer to the on-board A20 SOC peripheral resources above).
In addition, A20 is pin to pin compatible with the previous generation of Quanzhi A10 SOC (single core), which enables manufacturers using A10 to update their products without redesigning schematic diagrams and drawing PCBs. A20's ultra-high energy efficiency, good image processing and rich external resources make it mainly used in vehicle navigation terminals, smart TVs Tablet computers and other application terminals that pay attention to power consumption and multimedia image processing.
On the banana PI development board, the highly integrated Quanzhi A20 SOC processor is equipped with a corresponding complete power management system chip - axp209 of x-powers. This is a power management scheme integrating two DC / DC step-down converters and five LDO linear regulators, which integrates multi-channel ADC detection such as charging, power output and voltage / current / temperature. It can provide seven different voltage outputs. It is very suitable for handheld mobile devices, application processor power system and other battery and multi power system applications.
Recommended development board
ATMEL at91sam9x25-ek evaluation board Integrate rich peripheral resources, including soft cat, 3-way USB, 2-way Ethernet port and 7-way UART
ATMEL sam4l xplained Pro Starter Kit cortex-m4 core MCU evaluation board with minimum power consumption
Power on the open source platform banana PI development board
For those who are familiar with the use of raspberry pie, the operation of banana PI development board is natural and very simple. Banana PI supports familiar Android, Debian, Ubuntu, raspberry PI and other operating systems (modified). Next, the author will have a hands-on experience.
First of all, the necessary hardware shall be fully prepared. One banana Pi is indispensable, and the other hardware accessories are as follows:
1 power adapter with 5V / > = 1a microusb interface, 1 SD card above 4GB class 4, 1 SD card reader
1 monitor, 1 standard HDMI to HDMI cable or standard HDMI to DVI cable or AV video cable (depending on the connector type on your monitor)
Some peripherals used according to their own needs, such as keyboard, mouse, network cable, hard disk, etc. (optional)
Preparation for banana PI burning
Secondly, software burning tools and system image files are also essential. You can download the operating system image files on the official website of banana PI. Here, the author takes raspbian as an example_ For_ BananaPi_ Take the v2.0 image system as an example, the burning tool can use Win32 diskimager. Put the SD card into the card reader, connect the computer, open Win32 disk imager, load the image path, and click write to start burning.
Burning raspbian images using Win32
The burning speed of nearly 11mb / S is mostly due to the author's class 10 SD card. I think the writing speed of a class 4 SD card presented by raspberry pie is only about 1.5. After burning, remove the SD card, insert it into the card slot of banana PI, connect the display, mouse, keyboard, network cable and other peripherals through hdmin cable, and power on. It is worth mentioning that the microusb power supply interface and USB OTG interface of banana PI can supply power to the board.
Banana PI power on and start
Friends who have played raspberry pie believe that they are quite familiar with the raspbian system, but the desktop background is changed to banana PI. The system comes with quite a lot of software, such as the electronic design tool Arduino IDE and scratch programming for teenagers (scratch should be a software promoted by the official, and there is a system image specially made for the software on the official website), Users who like to simplify the system may be annoyed by this, but it is very powerful and convenient for beginners. Wouldn't it be better if two versions of image system files (full version and simplified version) were officially released.
Due to the default DHCP network allocation protocol of banana PI, you can directly open the browser to surf the Internet by plugging in the Internet cable. Compared with raspberry pie, banana pie experience is much smoother
Banana PI networking
For users who are not familiar with banana PI, after several times of experience in crossing the river, they can get started quickly and become more and more smooth. The method is right and very simple. However, I have to complain that the official website provides a total of five optional image system files. At first, I felt very powerful and courageous, but I didn't praise so much in actual experience. Instead, I added a lot of exclamations. I don't know if it's because of the recent bad luck, On the official website of banana PI, two images of Ubuntu and Android systems with relatively small compression packages were selected for download. As a result, the burning failed to start in banana PI. It took a long time to find out the cause. The power adapter was changed, and SD cards of different class levels and sizes were used to burn the image system. There was no print information started by u-boot when connected to the serial port, As a result, I tossed around all afternoon and wondered if the board was broken. Finally, I downloaded another image system file with the mentality of a dead horse as a living horse doctor, which is also the raspbian tested by the author above_ For_ BananaPi_ The v2.0 system is finally OK, which leads the author to complain about banana PI. The image system on the official website must have been uploaded to users without repeated verification, which is a bit of a pit.
Summary
The banana PI open source single board computer brought to you by lemaker team is introduced. Its strong hardware configuration and rich software system support make people see a more powerful "raspberry school", thanks to the arm cortex-a7 dual core processor with ultra-high energy efficiency ratio and arm supporting 2160p decoding Mali400 MP2 GPU, 1GB DDR3 memory, banana PI development board based on Quanzhi A20 application processor has strong performance and rich functions. In addition, various storage system support, many video output interfaces and rich operating system transplantation greatly enhance the learning, development and playability. You can use it as a computer, a network server A high-definition video player and so on, and the price of only 299rmb makes it cost-effective. A few years ago, there was a raspberry pie in the world, which ignited the enthusiasm of DIY, a global electronics enthusiast. Now, if there is a banana pie, what will happen? Let's wipe
Our other product:
