Banana Pi M2 Magic development board was first unveiled in February of this year with an Allwinner R16 SoC, 512 MB RAM, and 8GB eMMC flash, and its main selling points were support for MIPI DSI LCD displays, CSI cameras, and 3.7V LiPo batteries. AFAIK SinoVoIP never sold that version of the board, at least on Aliexpress.
Possibly due to the intricacies of Allwinner business units, the company has now officially launched Banana Pi M2 Magic (aka BPI M2M), but replaced Allwinner R16 by the similar Allwinner A33 processor, and removed the 8GB eMMC flash to bring the price down to $23 plus shipping. The “old” Allwinner R16 based Banana Pi M2 Magic board will apparently be sold as M2 Magic Plus soon.
Banana Pi BPI-M2 Magic (A33) specifications:
- SoC – Allwinner A33 quad core ARM Cortex-A7 processor with ARM Mali 400 MP2 GPU
- System Memory – 512MB DDR3
- Storage – micro SD slot
- Display Interface – 4-lane MIPI DSI connector
- Camera Interface – CSI connector supporting up to 5MP sensor, 1080p30 H.265 video capture (OV5640 module)
- 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) with u.FL antenna connector
- 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, LEDs,
- Power Supply
- 5V/2A via DC power barrel
- 3.7V Lithium battery support via 6-pin header
- AXP223 PMIC
- Dimensions – 51 x 51 mm
- Weight – 40 grams
The Wiki indicates the board support Android and Linux, and provides some further information about the interface. Bear in mind SinoVoIP is often not quite fully correct, so make sure to double check if one of the feature is important to you.
[Update: October 30, 2017. M2 Magic with 8GB flash, Allwinner R16 sold for $28 + shipping]
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Guess I need to nab one of these. X-D
So again a Mali400 GPU with no mainline kernel support?
@alevan
Didn’t the kernel-side of mali r6p2 for allwinner make it to “mainline” with http://free-electrons.com/blog/mali-opengl-support-on-allwinner-platforms-with-mainline-linux/
@zzz The kernel side for ‘Mali support’ was never the problem since all the time open sourced but Maxime managed to get properly licensed userspace blobs from Allwinner so that old, dog slow and boring Mali400 now is usable with 32-bit software on systems running mainline kernel (that’s the whole news in the link you referenced). Of course using blobs and not a ‘free’ driver, limited to Mali400 and 32-bit. BTW: The target audience that could make use of the overpriced device above and ‘needs’ Mali support usually doesn’t care about licensing, closed vs. open and which kernel runs Lakka/RetroPie… Read more »
Overpriced indeed !
About the 6-pin battery connector, I wonder if even the Bpi guys know the pinout, but for sure they must have seen that connector on sale somewhere, think “it looks nice and cheap” and had bought the whole lot! 🙂
But not all is bad, at least on my Bpi M2U R40, I know where to connect the battery cables.
A Pi is cheap enough. These manufacturers should focus on value, IO, software support and use cases. Or there is little incentive to bother for the vast majority of users. Things have stagnated badly in the whole ARM boards segment for years now without software support. A C2 or Pi3 would do but no next step has been made. IO is severely limited and everyone knows the state of software and drivers. Third party developer support is valued but at some point its ceases to be worth it without ARM and SOC developers taking interest in the segment which they… Read more »
What is the point of all these cheap boards with outdated cpu’s and just 512mb?
raul : A Pi is cheap enough. We get nice, small, inexpensive H2+/H3 based IoT boards with very low consumption for less than 10 bucks currently (Xunlong, FriendlyELEC, of course not this vendor here). If Olimex price list is real Allwinner’s H3 costs the same as A33/R16 bundled with AXP223 PMIC. So why can’t we get nice, small, inexpensive A33/R16 based IoT boards with very low consumption and battery support too? Fortunately A33 is rather old so mainline linux support is pretty mature in the meantime: http://linux-sunxi.org/Mainlining_Effort#Status_Matrix — and everybody thinking about buying this overpriced thing above should really be… Read more »
@Jeroen ‘Cheap board’? Are you kidding? 🙂 While Allwinner’s A33 might be the definition of ‘Android tablet thingie as cheap as possible’ this board here is obviously just expensive like hell (go to Aliexpress –> search for ‘allwinner a33’ –> bunch of hackable tablets for less than 50 bucks shipping included) I would love to see an inexpensive A33/R16 battery powered IoT board with maybe just 256 or even 128 MiB DRAM (way enough) and a reasonable amount of SPI NOR flash to get a minimal distro or just OpenWRT running. Why is no one doing this? Really curious… A33… Read more »
Why does anyone care about the A33? The A64 has almost the same IO and there are a lot more boards available for it. Maybe someone is just trying to come up with a way to sell a pile of A33’s they don’t know what to do with.
@raul
People buy RPi because of the GPU driver situation. They want a HTPC/game emulator for playing illegal pirate movies and stolen unlicensed unpaid games.
Video showing BPI-M2 Magic with MIPI CSI camera, MIPI DSI display, and OLED display
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yquPXChZhTU&feature=youtu.be
They did not care to show the output from the camera on the display, so we don’t know if it is actually working…
@Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)
Yes, CSI camera works with my modified Guvcview. I have the 8GB R16 and A33 model.
There is a good chance motion will work too although i haven’t test it.
M2 Magic with Allwinner R16, 8GB flash is up for sale ($28) -> https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/BPI-M2-Magic-Allwinner-R16-chip-design-with-quad-core-A7-SoC-and-512MB-DDR3-RAM/302756_32837692472.html