FriendlyElec Releases New NanoPi R1 SBC with Allwinner H3

FriendlyElec has launched its new NanoPi R1 open source development board with an Allwinner H3 aimed at low-cost IoT applications. The Linux-driven board brings 10/100 and 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet ports, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities. FriendlyElec claims, “With some additional settings it will work like a router. It’s good networking performance, and features make it a good platform for various network applications.”

On the hardware end, the NanoPi R1 packs an Allwinner H3 SoC with a quad-core Arm Cortex-A7, up to 1Gb of DDR3 RAM, and optional 8Gb of eMMC. Connectivity options include Gigabit Ethernet port, Fast Ethernet port, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (with SMA antenna interface), and Bluetooth 4.0 dual mode (classic/LE). The board also includes a micro SD card slot, 2X USB Type-A host ports, a micro USB OTG port, a 3-pin 2.54mm pitch pin-header (for serial console), and 4-pin 2.54mm pitch UART header.

On the software side, the NanoPi R1 is compatible with FriendlyCore (modeled after UbuntuCore-16.04), U-boot 2017–11, Linux 4.14, eFlasher, and OpenWRT. The board is available in two flavors, primarily affecting storage options- with one offering 512Mb of DDR3 and no internal storage (boots using SD card), and the other outfitted with 1Gb of DDR3 and 8Gb of eMMC.

They are priced at $29 and $39, respectively, and come in kit form with an included metal enclosure, heat sink (with thermal paste and mounting screws), an external antenna, and a micro USB cable. More information on the NanoPi R1 can be found on FriendlyElec’s Wiki page, as well as the product page mentioned earlier.