Banana Pi The new Raspberry? for £34 1GB RAM and GB Ethernet!

Danny091 · 22 Apr 2014 at 20:34

Banana Pi The new Raspberry? for £34 1GB RAM and GB Ethernet! (Fake?)

http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/gadget-show/gadget-news/getting-fruity-banana-pi-raspberry-pi-clone-mini-pc-boasts-faster-cpu-and-doubles-memory-for-under-35

http://www.bananapi.org/

BananaPi has 1Ghz ARM7 Dual-Core CPU, ARM Mali400MP2 GPU, Gigabits Ethernet, plus 1G DDR3 Memory with SATA Support.

Seems interesting! I bet this will run XBMC a lot better than the raspberry pi if it does ill be picking one up for a media center! Also with a SATA port and a gigabit ethernet you could have a cheap attached drive to your network.

Crowze · 22 Apr 2014 at 21:04

A website by a non-existent company with poor spelling, no working links, pictures that could very easily be Photoshopped, and no substance. Colour me sceptical. Having an article on the gadget show website doesn't do their credibility any favours

K1LLSW1TCH · 22 Apr 2014 at 21:15

'Dat website.

quickshot89 · 22 Apr 2014 at 21:23

Well thats a photoshop if I ever saw one...

K1LLSW1TCH · 22 Apr 2014 at 21:34

Easily move your Raspberry Pi parts or modules to Banana Pi without any inconvenient.

Now, You real can do your daily works on it.

BananaPi has same GPIO and circuit layout like RPi, But it got control button and TTL interface. BananaPi work perfectly with Debian. With this powerful hardware, This easy to set up an great internet service platform on it.

Sounds like it was written by an Indian call centre employee.

Vulcan · 22 Apr 2014 at 22:00

K1LLSW1TCH said:
Sounds like it was written by an Indian call centre employee.

The guy behind it is Taiwanese.

abbotsmike · 23 Apr 2014 at 00:18

The board shown on the gadget show website is completely different to that on the bananapi website as well. It looks smaller than a raspberrypi, and the rpi guys spent a lot of time and effort on making the rpi as small as possible. And as said, the website has only one working link!

kitkat9933 · 23 Apr 2014 at 01:18

Seems fake..

d_brennen · 23 Apr 2014 at 01:27

There's a market for a more powerful Pi like board, but it needs to be well supported. I like messing about with RPi because its well documented and the community is great. If I had to figure everything out myself, probably not

abbotsmike · 23 Apr 2014 at 10:51

d_brennen said:
There's a market for a more powerful Pi like board, but it needs to be well supported. I like messing about with RPi because its well documented and the community is great. If I had to figure everything out myself, probably not

The best place for it to come from would probably be the raspberrypi foundation. They have the backing and the links with ARM to make it happen.

However, Things like XBMC are constantly being refined and improved to run more slickly. IMO, better coding is a more elegant solution than simply throwing more power at things!

Steveocee · 23 Apr 2014 at 11:32

Looks fake but I wouldn't mind paying a bit more to Rpi foundation for a slightly higher powered board.

bledd · 23 Apr 2014 at 12:52

Hmm

http://forum.lemaker.org/cn/viewthread.php?tid=89&extra=page=1

Danny091 · 23 Apr 2014 at 13:59

Yeh i guess you guys are right about it being false, damn i was excited for a more powerful PI i personally would pay more money if the PI had Gigabit ethernet and USB 3 or a sata port. Would allow you to do more things with it

sibeer · 23 Apr 2014 at 15:45

The latest cheap Celeron (Bay Trail) Intel NUC seems to tick most of the boxes people are looking for when they want to upgrade a Pi for a better XBMC experience

abbotsmike · 23 Apr 2014 at 16:21

sibeer said:
The latest cheap Celeron (Bay Trail) Intel NUC seems to tick most of the boxes people are looking for when they want to upgrade a Pi for a better XBMC experience

Massively more expensive though. An RPi is £33. A basic Celeron NUC is £120, plus what, another £80-£100 for a storage drive and some RAM?

£35 vs £200, it would want to be a lot better!

sibeer · 23 Apr 2014 at 16:46

abbotsmike said:
Massively more expensive though. An RPi is £33. A basic Celeron NUC is £120, plus what, another £80-£100 for a storage drive and some RAM?

£35 vs £200, it would want to be a lot better!

I paid £100 for mine. Included in the machine is a NIC, WiFi, PSU, IR Reciever and Case, all of which would have been extras (as well as a USB hub) that I needed for a Pi. Would you agree that would add at least another £35 to do half decently?

You need to buy storage for both so it is not a cost factor, the NUC offering an additional option of a 2.5" SATA drive which many people have spare anyway. So the only extra it is missing from the Pi is RAM at under £10 for 2GB from eBay.

£70 vs £110 sounds a more accurate comparison

TwsT · 23 Apr 2014 at 16:57

Danny091 said:
http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/gadget-show/gadget-news/getting-fruity-banana-pi-raspberry-pi-clone-mini-pc-boasts-faster-cpu-and-doubles-memory-for-under-35

http://www.bananapi.org/

Seems interesting! I bet this will run XBMC a lot better than the raspberry pi if it does ill be picking one up for a media center! Also with a SATA port and a gigabit ethernet you could have a cheap attached drive to your network.

XBMC will probably run as well as it possibly can on improved specs. The software I always found to be very clunky and basic which is why it was never really strained on the rasberry pi, So I would expect if this is all true that it would be effectively maxed out on the banana pi

abbotsmike · 23 Apr 2014 at 17:11

sibeer said:
I paid £100 for mine. Included in the machine is a NIC, WiFi, PSU, IR Reciever and Case, all of which would have been extras (as well as a USB hub) that I needed for a Pi. Would you agree that would add at least another £35 to do half decently?

You need to buy storage for both so it is not a cost factor, the NUC offering an additional option of a 2.5" SATA drive which many people have spare anyway. So the only extra it is missing from the Pi is RAM at under £10 for 2GB from eBay.

£70 vs £110 sounds a more accurate comparison

I'd disagree there. No need for storage on the Rpi, All my media is networked. The £3 one comes with an 8gig SD card for the OS. Connected to the network via ethernet, and I control it using the yatse app. Case would be nice, but not needed. The only extra is a PSU, but many people run them off the TV USB port, I run mine off an old phone charger.

£35 all in!

The NUC needs something to put an OS on (not included) and a power supply (which people are less likely to have lying around) and the RAM.

Still around £150...

C.R.A.Z.Y · 23 Apr 2014 at 17:18

sibeer said:
Included in the machine is a NIC, WiFi, PSU, IR Reciever and Case, all of which would have been extras (as well as a USB hub) that I needed for a Pi. Would you agree that would add at least another £35 to do half decently?

Not even close, IR receiver is about 99p, USB WiFi can be had for £5 on ebay (WiFi sucks for a media player), PSU again £5. It already has a NIC.

Most people have the spare parts needed to get a Pi up and running (Small SD, USB Pen, Old Micro charger ...etc

sibeer · 23 Apr 2014 at 17:41

abbotsmike said:
I'd disagree there. No need for storage on the Rpi, All my media is networked. The £3 one comes with an 8gig SD card for the OS. Connected to the network via ethernet, and I control it using the yatse app. Case would be nice, but not needed. The only extra is a PSU, but many people run them off the TV USB port, I run mine off an old phone charger.

£35 all in!

The NUC needs something to put an OS on (not included) and a power supply (which people are less likely to have lying around) and the RAM.

Still around £150...

It comes with the PSU and can run as easily of a USB drive for the OS.