Banana Pi BPI-M2 Berry, A Quad Core Single-Board Computer

29 June, 2017

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Raspberry Pi is a powerful on-board computer series launched few years ago. Many similar boards appeared providing cheaper price or more features. The Chinese company “SinoVoIP” is manufacturing its own board “Banana Pi“, and recently they unveiled a new board that is similar to Raspberry Pi 3 and called “BPI-M2 Berry“.

The BPi Berry features the Allwinner R40 32-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU giving it the same power of Raspberry Pi 2 version 1.0. It is similar to the BPi M2 Ultra that was released a few months back, but with 1 GB DDR3 SRAM instead of 2 GB and without eMMC Flash Memory. BPi Berry has a different size of other BPi boards, making it the first RPi size-compatible BPi with the same size and connector placement as the RPi3.

Banana Pi BPI-M2 Berry specifications:

SoC – Allwinner V40 quad Core ARM Cortex A7 processor with ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU
System Memory – 1G DDR3 SDRAM
Storage – micro SD slot, SATA interface
Connectivity – 1x Gigabit Ethernet port, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 (AP6212 module)
Video Output – HDMI 1.4 port up to 1080p60, 4-lane MIPI DSI display connector
Audio I/O – HDMI, 3.5mm headphone jack, built-in microphone
USB – 4x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port
Camera – CSI camera connector
Expansion – 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible header with GPIOs, I2C, SPI, UART, ID EEPROM, 5V, 3.3V, GND signals.
Debugging – 3-pin UART for serial console
Misc – Reset, power, and u-boot buttons
Power Supply – 5V via micro USB port; AXP221s PMIC
Dimensions – 85mm x 56mm

Compared with RPi3, BPi Berry adds a SATA port that allows the connection of an external hard disk or DVD/CDROM drive, which is convenient for applications that require lots of storage or faster throughput compared to USB memory sticks. Also there are differences in camera and display connectors, they are in the same place but with different sizes and the SD card slot is wider too.