Powerful alternatives to Raspberry Pi

Navio was primarily designed to be used with Raspberry Pi. It is a great single board computer, but not the only one that Navio can be used with. We’d like to share information about alternative boards that are pin-to-pin compatible with Raspberry Pi and thus should be compatible with Navio.

Banana Pi

Created by Lemaker.org, the Banana Pi duplicates the layout and footprint of the Raspberry Pi and packs more power and connectivity. One of the downsides is that 26-pin header was moved closer to the RCA connector and to fit Navio properly you will have to desolder it. Actually, we remove RCA connector from Raspberries anyway to reduce the size.

• SOC: Allwinner A20 Cortex-A7 Dual-Core clocked to 1GHz
• GPU: ARM Mali400MP2
• RAM: 1GB
• Ports: 1000Ethernet, SATA, HDMI, LVDS, CSI, 2xUSB host, 3.5 audio
• Features: IR-receiver, CAN, OTG connector, microphone, power switch

HummingBoard

Developed by Solid-Run, the creator of the CuBox product line with which the HummingBoard is similar in features. Design and layout are also the same as in Raspberry Pi, but even more powerful with quad-core processor and 2GB of memory. It’s specifications:

• SOC: Quad-core Cortex-A9 Freescale i.MX6 clocked to 1GHz
• GPU: Vivante GC2000
• RAM: 2GB
• Ports: 1000Ethernet, mSATA, HDMI, LVDS, MIPI CSI, mini-PCI-E, 2xUSB host, 3.5 audio
• Features: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FlexCAN, Real-time clock, IR-receiver, SPDIF out

We hope to get our hands on these boards soon and test them with Navio.