FriendlyELEC Launches NanoPi R4S Powered by Rockchip RK3399
After FriendlyELEC NanoPi R2S, this board possesses better specifications than several cheap boards for headless applications.
FriendlyELEC has launched a single-board computer designed for headless applications with better specifications than its predecessor NanoPi R2S. The NanoPi R4S board comes with up to 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, dual GBPS Ethernet ports, and two USB 3.0 ports.
NanoPi R4S board gives tough competition to several cheap boards, including Orange Pi Zero Plus Board and its own predecessor NanoPi R2S. The boards were coupled with around 2GB RAM and were based on Rockchip RK3328 and Allwinner H5. At the heart of NanoPi R4S, FriendlyELEC has chosen Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor with dual-core Cortex-A72 up to 2.0GHz and quad-core Cortex-A53 up to 1.5GHz for IoT based applications.
The NanoPi R4S doesn’t come with a video out port, but has two GBPS Ethernet ports and two USB 3.0 ports. For headless applications, this can be used to connect it to a work network. The Mali-T864 GPU supports OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenCL, DX11, and AFBC.
There are also GPIOs, two 5-pin headers with one SPI, one I2C, status LED lights, an RTC battery input connector, and an optional 5V fan connector. USB Type-C port to provide 5V/3A power to the board. The single-board computer comes with a MicroSD slot for external storage of up to 128GB and has no onboard eMMC (Embedded Multimedia Controller).
Additionally, FriendlyELEC has confirmed the board will support several operating systems, including Ubuntu-based FriendlyCore 20.04 64-bit with Linux 4.19.111 and OpenWrt-based FriendlyWrt 19.07.4 64-bit with Linux 5.4.75. Interested developers can find out more about how to get started on the FriendlyARM Wiki website.
The board is now available in the FriendlyELEC store for $45 for the board with 1GB RAM and $55 with 4GB RAM.
Abhishek Jadhav is an engineering student, freelance tech writer, RISC-V Ambassador, and leader of the Open Hardware Developer Community.