Build Yourself an Entirely Open-Source Unix SBC

By on September 1, 2018
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Blueberry Pi is just “another fruit single-board computer” based on the Allwinner V3s system on chip (SoC). These are the words used by the maker Marcel Thürmer on the GitHub page to describe his creation.

But what makes this open source SBC different from other unix-inspired boards is that Thürmer has made it cheap and simple enough to build without needing your own pick-and-place robot. That particular SoC, intended for cameras, is useful because it comes with an easy-to-solder TQFP or ‘thin quad flat-pack’ package, which allowed him to choose a two-layer printed circuit board and is cheaper than an eight-layer PCB.

The Blueberry Pi is equipped with an Allwinner V3s. The V3s has an Arm Cortex-A7 core running at 1.2GHz, along with 64 MB of RAM and Ethernet built-in on the chip.

The Blueberry PI features:

  • 100 mbps Ethernet
  • 1 USB Host Port / 1 mini USB port
  • MIPI CSI interface (unfortunately no support in the linux kernel yet)
  • Pinheader for an OV2640 and an OV7670
  • Wifi and bluetooth
  • RGB interface for connecting displays
  • Audio jack
  • an onboard microphone
  • four buttons for play, pause, next and previous
  • a Raspberry PI compatible header
  • SPI Flash
  • SD card slot

The Blueberry PI can boot from an SD card or SPI Flash. Thürmer notes that the V3s doesn’t have a standard video output, but he plans to create a video add-on board for VGA or HDMI.

 

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