Although the state of affairs is enhancing, it will probably nonetheless be troublesome to discover a Raspberry Pi in inventory. In the meantime, corporations from around the globe proceed to supply their very own alternate options to the world’s hottest single-board pc. A product of Polish Electronics Maker EVEO, the Urve Board Pi (opens in new tab) has an identical dimensions and a nearly-identical structure to the Raspberry Pi 3B / 3B+ however throws in distinctive options reminiscent of an M.2 SSD port, a real-time clock and a power-over-Ethernet (PoE) connector.
Out there now for the equal of $90 (opens in new tab)on Polish net retailer TEM, the Urve Board Pi has an all-white PC PCB that is the identical 85 x 56 mm dimension because the Pi 3B and it has pretty-much the identical ports in the identical places so it ought to match right into a case that may settle for a Pi 3B / 3B+.
In lieu of the Pi 3B’s micro USB charging port, it has a USB-C port and, whereas it has a block of 4 USB Sort-A ports similar to a Raspberry Pi, one in every of these is USB 3.0 the place the Pi 3 solely had USB 2.0. One of many USB 2.0 ports is a USB OTG host. Video out is supplied by a single, full-size HDMI 2.0 port that may output as much as 4K, 60 fps whereas a Gigabit Ethernet port and three.5mm audio jack seem in the identical locations as on a Raspberry Pi.
Additionally, similar to on a Raspberry Pi, the Urve Board Pi has a MIPI CSI digital camera connector and MIPI DSI show connector. Its set of 40 GPIO pins has a pinout that seems to match that of all current Raspberry Pi computer systems. So it is fairly potential that among the finest Raspberry Pi HATs may work with it.
Extra importantly, there’s an M.2 socket that the corporate lists as an M.2 SATA port on most of its spec sheets, however as an M.2 PCIe 2.0 NVMe SSD within the instruction handbook. The socket seems to be M keyed as we might usually see for an NVMe SSD so it is unclear. Both method, you are getting a lot sooner storage than you’d from the built-in eMMC Flash reminiscence and even top-of-the-line microSD playing cards.
There is a coin cell battery slot for a real-time clock (RTC) that may preserve the time even when the Urve Board Pi is unplugged. There are additionally pins for a power-over-Ethernet connection (PoE) and there is some sort of microphone connector on the again aspect of the board. The board has Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth connectivity.
| Processor | 1.8-GHz Rockchip RK3566 Quad-Core, Cortex A55 |
| GPU | Mali-G52 (as much as 4K, 60 fps) |
| RAM | 2GB LPDDR4 |
| Onboard Storage | 8GB eMMC |
| Video Out | 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x MIPI DSI |
| Storage connectors | microSD reader, M.2 SSD |
| USB | 2x USB 2.0, 1x USB 2.0 OTG, 1x USB 3.0 |
| Networking | 1x Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 |
| Digital camera Port | 1x MIPI CSI Port |
| Energy | 1x USB-C, 1x PoE Connector |
| Audio In / Out | 3.5mm audio, Microphone enter |
| GPIO | 40 GPIO Pins |
| Dimensions | 85 x 56 mm |
| Weight | 50g |
The Urve Board Pi is powered by a Rockchip RK3566 Quad Core Cortex A55 CPU operating at 1.8 GHz. It is unclear if this could be sooner or slower than the 1.5-GHz Broadcom BCM2711 Cortex-A72 chip within the Raspberry Pi 4B, however it’s doubtless loads sooner than the 1.4-GHz BCM2837 Cortex A53 CPU within the Raspberry Pi 3B+. It comes normal with 2GB of LPDDR4 RAM and a built-in 8GB of eMMC Flash reminiscence.
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As with all Raspberry Pi competitor, it can not run Raspberry Pi OS, however it will probably run Debian 11 (Raspberry Pi OS relies on Debian) and Android. Nonetheless, if it will probably work with Raspberry Pi HATs and equipment, there is a good likelihood it may function a reliable substitute for the Raspberry Pi 3B+.
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