Banana Pi BPI-M2 Magic is an Allwinner R16 Development Board with LCD and Camera Interfaces

Allwinner R16 is a quad core Cortex A7 processor found in Nintendo NES Classic Mini game console, but so far there was no development board based on the processor apart from Allwinner Parrot board that does not appear to be for sale. But Banana Pi has designed their own R16 development board, and released some information about BPI-M2 Magic board.

Banana Pi BPI-M2 Magic specifications:

  • SoC – Allwinner R16 quad core ARM Cortex-A7 processor with ARM Mali 400 MP2 GPU
  • System Memory – 512MB DDR3
  • Storage – 8 GB eMMC flash (option: 16, 32 or 64GB) + micro SD slot
  • Display Interface – 4-lane MIPI DSI connector
  • Camera Interface – CSI connector supporting up to 5MP sensor, 1080p30 H.265 video capture
  • Video Decoder – Multi-format FHD video decoding, including Mpeg1/2, Mpeg4, H.263, H.264, etc H.264 high profile 1080p@60fps
  • Audio – On-board microphone
  • Connectivity – Wifi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 LE (AP6212)
  • USB – 1x USB 2.0 host, 1x micro USB 2.0 OTG port
  • Expansion – 40-pin header with GPIOs, UART, I2C, SPI, PWM…
  • Misc – Reset & power buttons, RGB LEDs,
  • Power Supply
    • 5V @ 2A via DC power barrel
    • 3.7V Lithium battery support
  • Dimensions – 51 x 51 mm
  • Weight – 40 grams

Allwinner R16 is apparently pin-to-pin compatible with Allwinner A33, as the company also offers the board with the latter. Note that there’s no HDMI port, so it will only be useful for headless application, or if you connect it to an LCD display via the MIPI DSI interface. The board will run Tina IoT Linux, a lightweight Linux distributions optimized for Allwinner R-Series processor.

Serial Console Output for BPI-M2 Magic Board running Tina IoT Linux

You’ll find some extra info on the Wiki, but as of writing, most pages are currently blank or links not setup. SinoVoIP has not announced pricing and availability yet either. [Update October 30, 2017: The board is now for sale for $28 + shipping]

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5 Comments
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tkaiser
tkaiser
7 years ago

@Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft): After looking through tinalinux stuff (cloned their github repo) I had to come to the conclusion that this is not a ‘lightweight Linux distribution optimized for Allwinner R-Series processor’ but instead the proof that Allwinner has a serious (management) problem. Tinalinux is a weird mixture of horribly outdated softwares containing probably more security flaws than features. They release a kernel 3.4.39 at the end of 2016 (3.4 LTS is at 3.4.113 at the moment) together with outdated OpenWRT and Android stuff and their BSP scripts try to create a so called ‘LiveSuit’ image in the end which… Read more »

zoobab
7 years ago

@tkaiser
I was looking if the CHIP could do some power saving with some kind of ACPI S3 suspend to ram, last time I looked it was not supported by the CHIP kernel and al. Every tablet is doing it, so there should be some way to get it working, and that would be a game changer for battery based applications.

willy
willy
7 years ago

@tkaiser
Thank you Thomas, I don’t feel alone trying to educate users against such crap vendors shipping totally outdated kernels 🙂

Albert Trotter
Albert Trotter
7 years ago

does any one know how to connect arduino to android mobile??? please rely as soon as possible. i am doing my thesis on it

tkaiser
tkaiser
7 years ago

https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-M2M-bsp/commit/e42c5eec39efff10a9b9bdac903acf59b778a111

Yeah, an IoT device released in 2017 shipping with ‘brand new’ kernel 3.4.39 (not even updated to latest 3.4 LTS version 3.4.113). Fortunately network bandwidth is rather limited so if this magic thingie becomes part of the usual IoT botnets it can not cause that much harm. 😛

Khadas VIM4 SBC