First Thoughts on the Renegade ARM

There really is no question that the Raspberry Pi form factor has become a de facto standard for the single-board computer market. In recent months, we’ve seen big commercial manufacturers like ASUS with their Tinker Board, as well as smaller manufacturers like Pine64 with their ROCK64, FriendlyARM with the NanoPi K2, and even hobby projects like the Z-Berry, duplicate the form factor.

In the past, Libre Computer have also used the same form-factor for their “Le Potato” and Tritium boards which raised on Kickstarter. Now Libre is back with another board, this time on Indiegogo, called the Renegade.

The new board is built around a Rockchip RK3328 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with an ARM Mali-450MP2 GPU, and features 1, 2 or 4GB of DDR4 RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, two USB 2.0 ports, and one USB 3.0 port. While that’s one fewer USB ports than the Raspberry Pi 3, or their previous board “Le Potato” board, if you need it that USB 3.0 port could make all the difference. Overall the specifications are similar to the ROCK64, but the Renegade board uses DDR4 memory instead of LPDDR3, which again could make a difference if you need the extra speed that it should bring.

Like their previous boards, the 40-pin GPIO header is (mostly) Raspberry Pi compatible, however the board also has a 3-pin ADC Header with two analog inputs on board which could prove useful.

During the Indiegogo campaign, the 1GB version of the board costs $35, discounted from a retail price of $45, while the 2GB board costs $45, discounted from $60. Shipping for the boards is an extra $9, and Libre is predicting they will ship in January as the first batch of 1GB and 2GB boards are already back from production.

The higher specification 4GB boards cost $70, discounted from $80, with an extra $9 for shipping on top. Libre is currently estimating that they can deliver the 4GB boards in February, or perhaps even late January, well ahead of their originally estimated March shipping dates.