intro from Friendlyarm staff + NanoPi NEO info + questions

Hi,

I am a new member of the community here, and on the staff of Friendlyarm. I'd like to introduce myself and what I'm doing with the NanoPi NEO, and hope to keep you up to date about what I'm doing.

You can read about the NanoPi NEO announcement here:

Smaller & Faster than Raspberry Pi Zero: Meet NanoPi NEO ARM Linux Development Board
www.cnx-software.com/2016/07/07/smaller-than-raspberry-pi-zero-meet-nanopi-neo-arm-linux-development-board/#ixzz4EMwsoj5o

[Admin: we also have our own write-up: "Size breakthrough: smaller than Raspberry Pi Zero board" which may have attracted this poster to join our community].

Personally, I've been on a bit of a roll with Raspberry Pi this year, and I really want to get a Raspberry Pi Zero, but it has been out of stock. I am instead playing with two NanoPi NEO boards, made by my company.

I can't wait to tell you guys about the NanoPi NEO specifications and what I'm doing with these boards. The NanoPi NEO uses ALLwinner H3 cpu, and the board designed and released by my company Friendlyarm. It is open-source, and works with UbuntuCore.

Here are the NanoPi NEO specifications:

• SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.2 GHz with an ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 600 MHz
• System Memory – 256 or 512 MB DDR3
• Storage – micro SD card slot
• Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet
• USB – 1x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port, 2x USB via headers
• Expansion headers:

• 24-pin header with I2C, 2x UART, SPI, PWM, and power signals
• 12-pin header with 2x USB, IR pin, microphone and Line OUT signals

• Debugging – 4-pin header for serial console
• Misc – Power and status LEDs
• Power Supply – 5V/2A via micro USB port or VDD pin on headers.
• Dimensions – 40 x 40 mm (Raspberry Pi Zero: 65mm × 30mm)

As compared with a Raspberry Pi Zero, which I haven't gotten yet, it is about 12% smaller, although not quite as thin at all due to its Ethernet jack and USB connector, and much faster than Raspberry Pi Zero, with NanoPi NEO board powered by Allwinner H3 quad core processor.

There are not any display interfaces to connect any display module, so I just can only use serial or ssh tools to connect to the NanoPi NEO. Now I'm ready to use my NEO to build a download machine - since I am not an expert but on staff, if someone could give me advice to build the download machine, I would appreciate it. It only has 512M memory, so it probably can't install an Android system, as I'm used to. Friendlyarm only supports UbuntuCore for it, but I know they we have a NanoPi M1 that uses H3 CPU, and that the M1 can install Android system. So I would like to use it in a similar way, using UbuntuCore.

I will stay in touch with the community and tell you guys good news of my NEO and how I am starting to use it.