sunrat Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 So the Raspberry Pi is great but not quite great enough? Try delicious Banana Pi! From liliputing.com :- Banana Pi: A $57 Rasperry Pi clone with a faster CPU, more memory While the Raspberry Pi features a 700 MHz single-core Broadcom BCM2835 ARM11 processor, the Banana Pi has a 1 GHz Allwinner A20 dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor. The Raspberry Pi has up to 512MB of RAM, and the Banana Pi has 1GB. The Banana Pi features an SD card slot, HDMI and composite video jacks, a 3.5mm audio jack and built-in microphone, Gigabit Ethernet, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a micro USB port for power.... Benchmark shootout: Raspberry vs Banana : hardware duel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 Now, if it ran Raspbian, we would be good to go. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted July 31, 2014 Author Share Posted July 31, 2014 It does. Read the hardware duel page. They used Raspbian on both boards for the tests. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 Ah! The first page made it sound like the software was not up to par. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted July 31, 2014 Share Posted July 31, 2014 Hmmm... For the tests, I used the 2 new, exact same SD cards : SANDISK Ultra – SDHC Class 10 On the Raspberry Pi, I « burned » a fresh 2014-01-07-wheezy-raspbian image. On the Banana Pi, I « burned » a fresh Raspbian_For_BananaPi_v2_0 image. According to the developpers, the Banana Pi image is perfectly compatible with a Raspberry Pi. I tried it, and it’s true : the Raspberry boots normaly from the Banana Pi’s image. So, I conducted the benchs one more time, using a Raspberry model B with the Banana image. I will use the results to see the OS performance hit (if any) and to what extend those benchs are trustable. From that and other parts of the benchmark, it seems to be that the Raspberry Pi will run the banana pi image, but not the other way around. Am I reading it right? Or, am I missing something? It seems that the utility of the banana pi would tie directly to its ability to run the Raspbian image without modification. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 1, 2014 Share Posted August 1, 2014 Yea, that makes sense. It is not identical. But what a great little Bananbian LOL! Very nice sunrat! Love it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 These little SOCs are interesting but they seem rather underpowered for general use - rather like an old Dell desktop from 2003. What are folks doing with them other than use them to stream video or maybe as a specialized server or camera platform? Granted power consumption is very low compared to a typical X86 setup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 These are basically just Raspberry Pi's with souped up design components. It is not intended to be a computer replacement. There are generally for special single use computers, or remote control robotics, or to be the computer that runs a webcam and support stuff, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 Banana Pi Review – First Impressions Might make a nice Banana PI TV/DVR with the built-in SATA up to 2TB. Raspberry Pi clone beefs up CPU, adds SATA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 They are selling them on Amazon too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 Yes, single purpose specialty computers. I have several running in this house. One runs my IRC client software. I connect to it via SSH and pull up my chat session, so it runs continuously. The other runs my cryptocurrency miners. It functions as a controller and interface to the crypto network. Raspberry Pis are great since they are small and run on 5W of power. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 Exactly. I use my Raspberry Pi for IRC chat as well. I am wondering if the Banana PI would make a nice cheap DVR for time-shifting off-air digital antenna content for those who actually watch TV that way since you can use SATA on it, plus faster processor and 1GB RAM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 Probably would but since where I live you'd get maybe 2 TV channels without cable or satellite it doesn't seem optimal. I need to use what Mr. Rogers provides (HD-PVR.) Maybe for streaming video from the Net, but I have a Roku box for that. We are about 40 miles from Ottawa and our US network stations are beamed from (wait for it) Detroit and Seattle. Not a lot of local news and weather that's relevant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 The Pi (either type) does not make an ideal streaming device anyway. If you have a lot of content stored locally, it works fine for that, but as you said, the Roku does streaming just fine. Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted August 2, 2014 Share Posted August 2, 2014 The Banana Pi could do fine for streaming really. Not ideal but not bad at all if you have excellent bandwidth. But the Roku already has that job for you so no worries for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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