NanoPi M2 Review: Low Cost Raspberry Pi 3 Alternative

Product Summary

The NanoPi M2 is another Samsung 4418 based ARM board released by FriendlyARM after the NanoPi 2 and NanoPi 2 Fire. It is only two thirds the size of the Raspberry Pi. It is an open-source. It works with Ubuntu Core, Ubuntu Mate, Debian, Android 5.1 and etc.

Compared to the Raspberry Pi 2 the NanoPi M2 uses the Samsung Cortex-A9 S5P4418 Soc. It integrates Gbps Ethernet, AXP228 PMU which supports software power-on/off and wake up functions. It can be powered via the MicroUSB port

In such a small board it still integrates rich interfaces and ports. Besides the popular HDMI, 3.5mm audio jack, onboard microphone, four USB hosts, and Gbit Ethernet it has a Raspberry Pi compatible 40 pin GPIO pin header and various video interfaces such as a DVP camera interface, an LCD interface which supports I2C capacitive LCD and etc. In addition, for user’s convenience, it has a serial debug port for debugging and development.

NanoPi M2 Specif actions:

SoC: S5P4418, 400Mhz~1.4GHz
DDR3 RAM: 32bit 1GB DDR3
1x Micro SD Slot
RTC: RTC Pins
Connectivity: Gbps Ethernet port(RTL8211E)
Audio: 3.5 mm audio jack/Via HDMI
Microphone: 1 x on-board Microphone
2.54 mm pitch pin headers
Micro USB: 1 x USB 2.0 Client
HDMI: HDMI 1.4A, Type-A, 1080P60
Debug Serial Port: 4Pin 2.54 mm pitch pin header
User Key: 1 x Power , 1 x Reset
LED: 1 x Power LED, 1 x System LED
Power: DC 5V/2A
PCB Dimension(mm): 64 x 56, Six Layer
OS/Software: u-boot, Android 5.1, Debian Jessie 8
USB Host: 4 x USB 2.0 Host, two are standard Type-A ports and the other two are
LCD Interface: 0.5 mm pitch SMT FPC seat, for full-color LCD (RGB: 8-8-8)
DVP Camera Interface: 0.5 mm pitch FPC socket. It includes ITU-R BT 601/656 8-bit, I2C, and IO
PMU Power Management Unit: AXP228, support software power-off, sleep functions.
GPIO1: 2.54 mm pitch 40 pins, compatible with Raspberry Pi’s GPIO. It includes UART, SPI, I2C, PWM, IO, etc