Love this channel, always has a retro feel to it, Chris you are the man, everything clear and crisp on screen, no gimmicky video crap, no shouting, or rubbish music, just you and your knowledge, thanks Chris.
Adarsh Singh will you please help me building a desktop using PI4 in order from where to purchase pi4 board, cabels, power supply, cabinet ,cooling fan etc. Thanking you . I am from a village Muzaffarnagar ( UP)
It is amazing how much computer technology can be put into a board that size for that price. Thank you for the video and looking forward to your next video!
@@dsmyify Yep, and called it "Not a banana M2 Zero" :) But you are most correct because if the Pi stands for "pie" then it just has to be "kinda flat topped with appropriate color".
I think answer to the question "Which SBC should I buy?" has been for a while and will be for a long time: Latest full size Raspberry Pi for beginners and general use, latest versions of Zero and A for those who need something smaller or cheaper and lastly, these Allwinner and whatnot based SBCs for those who need something more specific. Further away from full size Raspberry Pis, more tinkering is needed. These SBCs are often good on paper, disappointments after launch and then they become good again, when the brilliant team behind Armbian does their magic. EDIT: To clarify, my "Latest Raspberry Pi" answer is to beginners, who don't have real use case in mind and they just want to start tinkering. Of course all these boards are different and there are use-cases for all of them. Thanks to the popularity and community, Raspberry Pi is the easiest to get started with. It's not only option, it's not answer to all possible needs, but it's a nice board to use when taking first steps into the fascinating world of linux and embedded stuff.
Like I said in my main reply most who use SBC's normally have a use case for it, not the oh look something cheap and shiny knee jerk purchaser. Personally ive got a few SBC's all doing stuff ( mainly building images / kernels ) everything from Beagle / Panda / Bones from Ti to Rock64/pro64's along with some RiscV systems with FPGA's, everything else is smaller Iron ( Cortex M and below needing at RTOS ) .. In the case of AllWinner the SBC's are very powerful no doubt about that, but like I said its the lack of BSP / Documentation that lets it down. But the caveat is this is the Linux world not Windows with binary proprietary drivers so in this space which is still very much in flux you have to take the bumps in the road in your stride. It is so inappropriate to expect 100% out of the box operation, if you want that stick with PC's and windows. I think you mean the amazing kernel team that provides the core to any and all SBC's and maintainers that make SBC's perform better pretty much with every new release.
@@sethrd999 Only real use I see for these SBC's would be running a Kodi box, and even then, the GPU performance is lacking for true 1080p 60 fps, and forget anything higher.
@@mikem9536 Mali is quite surprisingly powerful, I think they lend more to robotics / drones tbh. Many add on possibilites for that area with the GPIO's. Kodi in 512MB is a stretch.
I find it encouraging that this has hot the market. I look forward to the day that a 1080p-capable SBC retails for under $20.00, bringing total media freedom to the people!
@@ivorjawa I ran Speedscript on my C64. I told my Grandson that I typed it in out of a magazine listing and he just stared at me like he couldn't believe it.
@Benjamin Muller That's how I learned about backups! I had been typing that listing in for 3 hours and my daughter tripped over the power brick for the C64. I then started saving my work every 15 minutes or so.
I am impressed by this little board! It looks like a Rpi 2B in the form factor of a 0W. If only software support was better, this would be a killer one. Thank you, Chris, for your nice video!
Greetings! As you have pointed out many times, software support remains a fundamental reference in the evaluation of SBC. Once again, you have made an eloquent demonstration of this.
Hi Chris - your channel is now my go-to for SBC work; your clear configuration instructions are always useful and always seem to work for me, and I am tempted to dip my toe in the water again for a new project! Likely to be R.Pi4 under Raspbian.
@@ExplainingComputers Oh no, catastrophe! I found out that RPi4 (unlike RPi3) cannot be booted directly from USB/SSD. I don't trust the SD cards for a reliable system drive so the project will have to wait for RPi foundation fix.
Interesting. It's good to have options, especially for these smaller SBC's. I'm not sure the Banana Pi is worth twice as much $$ as the RPi Zero, but it's not a bad option (otherwise) if your project needs both speed and a compact size. Thanks for another great video Chris.
Another great video! As others have noted, it was made all the better by an appearance of Mr. Scissors. With respect to the Banana Pi, I, myself, am waiting for the Plantain Pi M2 Zero before taking the plunge!
Well if you need something smaller than Pi3 then it doesn't matter. If you don't need Pi0 W form factor then you can get e.g. NanoPi NEO2 LTS with Allwinner H5 with fairly similar performance to Raspberry Pi3 and with similar price to that BananaPi M2 Zero - so still pretty cheap and powerful; or you can aim for OrangePi Zero Plus H5 with similar form factor na WiFi instead of Ethernet. It's not like it was few years back when you didn't really have much of the competition. Now there's plenty of decent SBCs and with Armbian's more mature support for H2+/H3/H5 they are usually best bang for a bucks if raw performance is what you seek.
@@Promilus1984 That was a great comment. Thanks. Just a remark - I do realize that there is wide variety SBCs available on the market these days. I simply was following the selection presented in this video.
If you're designing from scratch and have the room for the larger form factor... yes. The faster speed is great. One thing that wasn't touched was power draw. There may be some advantages between the different models if current draw comes into play... especially for battery powered projects where the unit will need to be powered for long periods of time with short bursts of processing.
@@fakshen1973 Generally speaking yes, you're right. But some considerations : with Pi3 you have an option to downgrade performance (that is why there are 2 power feeds USB and 5V jack) and this Banana Pi showed temp core of 67C - makes me wander what is actual TDP of this set...
And here we are, 2 years later. Its August 2022, and right now the rpi zero 2 w is being scalped on amazon for 99 dollars, and sold out literally everywhere else... The bpi m2 zero, however is still available on aliexpress for $20.59. A possible contender is the orange pi i96. that board costs 6 bucks but is running ddr2 and a much slower proc.
G'morning, Chris and a very good morning to you, Mr. Scissors! I often wonder about the Banana Pi series (Orange Pi, too), thanks for video on this. Cheers!
I have seriously considered upgrading my prior purchase of a Raspberry Pi Model 3B+ to the Model 4. But, I just purchased a new Acer laptop with quad core 8th gen i7 processor running at 1.80GHz with boost to 4.6GHz. So, I'll have to wait a while. Great video!
I have a Prusa 3D printer. You can use a Pi 0 W with octoprint to provide a print server for the 3D printer. Using this I have enough power to attach the camera and create "videos" of the 3D printing process (and monitor the print). This is EXACTLY what I was looking for, I ordered one for that. Also, I have a Speccy Next on its way to me. I'm going to get another BananaPi and use it as the accelerator (4X the acceleration). Who doesn't want more power ;)
@@ExplainingComputers I'm planning on doing a video about it. What could I possibly say that EVERY other person hasn't already said? I grew up using the C64, Apple II and PC. I never touched a Spectrum. I have no nostalgia for it, but am highly interested in it. So, I'm going to do my review as a first time user of the Spectrum.
Bonjour Chris, thanks for making my Sunday a pleasant day, even though it is a gray and raining. I am justday-dreaming away for a Rpi Zero Wx, with a dual-core, USB3 and 1Gb of memory.
I wanted to say... The future is here old man... But obviously you are much younger than me! Great video and presentation as usually. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the video Chris. I guess Mr. Scissors would have sulked if Chris ripped the plastic bag open at the indents :D Perhaps Stanley the knife would have organised strike action. Best wishes.
Great review and good timing. I've wanted to buy a Banana Pi M2 Zero for a while now. It is supposed to fit in "most" Rpi Zero cases. I finally clicked your link and bought one along with two aluminum cases from same seller. I've had a few Rpi Zeros since they were available. They are fun little SBCs but really lacking in power. I will appreciate the extra speed on the Banana Pi M2 Zero. I wish they could have fitted it with 1GB RAM but you can't have everything. I'll be looking for some retro game emulation builds for it. Not sure I will find anything but I will be content running Armbian if I can't. I even bought a couple of custom machined aluminum cases for the Pi Zero Zeros when they were available a couple of years ago. The aluminum cases I bought from the seller at your link look every bit as good as my old custom cases. Now to find a mini antenna for the Banana Pi M2 Zero. I believe it will need one even more once trapped in an aluminum case. I still get decent WiFi with my Pi Zero W models in the aluminum cases but it could be better.
As usual, an excellent review. I always look forward to my Sunday Morning Coffee with you. The Banana Pi could be the step up that someone who is space constrained for speed and willing/able to do some programming. I see some comments that indicate that some believe that the developers of the hardware don't do enough software development. But, that's one of the beauties of OSHW and Software, the ability to make change and be more purposeful (was wondering if that was even a word but the spellcheck seems to like it).If you want little to none for hardware and software you buy into the Apple realm, if you was SOME software and lots of hardware you go the Microsoft route. When you want total control of it all, go OSHW and learn some Java or CircuitPython (shameless plug to the folks at Adafruit and the CircuitPython community), or C++ and Arduino. At any rate, I'll climb down from the soap box and say again, an excellent review and a great breakfast experience, for me anyway. Keep up the good work.
@@Duewester Thank you, Thomas. After I had discovered it's meaning (just before yoyur reply), I was almost going to delete this question but who knows, maybe someone else reading these comments will be starting at the same point I am currently at. :-)
These little machines are amazing, and this channel is something I enjoy watching. I just ordered my first two raspberry pi zeros. I dont know what project I wil use them for. Pi hole? Maybe. I have access to fast free dns serices, it will for sure replace my xbox for watching youtube.
One thing to keep in mind when comparing the Raspberry Pi Zero to other boards, it's been out for over four years and I still can't find anyone who will sell more than one per order, so be sure to add the shipping cost to each board. Really seems like it's being sold at cost or even a small loss.
Days like these, when I'm finally having an unplanned break from work are days to come and visit RUclips again. Thank you for your Banana Pi test. Although it may look nice, I find the specs quite comparable with the Orange Pi Lite which I bought back in 2017 for a similiar price. Sure it is bigger, and here the form factor plays a major role, but at least it outputs 1080p haha. I do hope to come back more often, and maybe nowadays I'd have a better opportunity to do so, since after 10 years I'm alone again. Oh well, talk about unfortunate events.
everything about this board and the 3A+ was so perfect...and then for some reason only 512MB of RAM? It just makes no sense to me to pair a quadcore with 512mb of RAM
This board looks great for Octopi, as it has approx 4x the performance of the Pi Zero, and also is available more readily and without maximum order quantities or useless "value packs" like included cases and power supplies.
Great video. I love these SBC vids. Very informative and nicely-presented. For my money, I would pay the $4 difference for the 3A+ just to have the GPIO connector already installed.
I love the zero, its an underdog! the stuff I have done with it is fun, I used oxm player to watch a high def video from the command line, I used it as a remote radio streamer with a usb sound card/speaker, even used it as a remote terminal just for testing compiling and running stuff on linux/arm, its pretty great just totally not suited to a gui / web browsing at all, barely enough ram not enough horsepower for modern sites.
Thank you so much Mr Brian for another great video showcasing a SBC. I am sure young tinkers appreciate you making this videos. You are great tech to those young tinkers, you are feeding those young minds to be the next Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
Btw instead of writing clear in the terminal to clear it you can use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+L that will clear it right away. Super simple. Another tip for new people is instead of holding backspace in when you accidentally did a typo in the terminal to delete everything you can use CTRL+U that will clear every input you have entered but haven´t executed yet.
sometimes I think why most of the creators are creating more number of SBC even at cheaper cost rather than they need to create softwares that make existing SBC more useful 🤔🤔🤔🤔
@@ExplainingComputers Chris I have one question recently I hosted ASP.net web application in windows IOT device and for database currently I am using SQLite is there any way I can install a dedicated SQL software in Windows IOT device ??
One key reason I stayed with the Raspberry Pi. The software isn't the best, but at least it is well supported... and therr is a strong community, should you need help.
And who are they you speak of?, perhaps you need to give more respect / props to the Open Community that gave you the ability to use these SBC's in the first place. If you want better software you have the same rights and tools to do so.
Hey Mr. Piyush are you from lndia ? If yes I need your help. Being from a village in district MUZAFFARNAGAR , l want to assemble PI4 to be used as desktop . Kindly help me from where to buy it and other components ie. data cable , cabinet , cooling fan , charger etc. I will be thankful.
I think it is important to mention that Raspberry Pi Zero (W) has a selling limitation of 1 piece / person. There are no webshops as of now in 2020.03.09 i know about where you can buy more than 1 piece of the product. There is a Raspberry Pi Zero WH (wifi with header pins) version which can be ordered without limitations, has a price tag of 17$/piece (here in Romania from an authorized reseller) and i think it is the best offer in the market right now because of the connectivity and the price/value ratio. .. the only issue is that it is not always on stock - they make too little of it.
Technically, the Banana Pi M2 Zero also has 100M ethernet. The four pins between the USB OTG and the USB-style DC connector are, left to right, bottom to top (if the USB ports are facing down): RXN, TXP, RXP, TXN. It can also be powered via the GPIO.
i am going to build a phone wifi presence detector for home automation using a SBC to trun on lights and unlock doors. wendel from level one techs wrote a blog about that, he used a RPi Zero W for this, but i haven't found his blog yet. while i'd prefer to use the BPi M2 zero because of the hardware, i'm leery of the software acceleration and compatibility. i'm also unclear of the dividing line between hardware and software, re video acceleration and OSs tailored for particular devices. i'm also wondering, if i'm going to run wire to power it, why not just run a wifi antenna to card on a computer and an OS in a container (ansible, docker, BSD jail). i believe wendel used battery power, but i might try wire. cross post: maybe
I have a banana pi m2 ultra, and still can not find same level of software support as rpi has; in my last try even Armbian didn't support it. In general for newcomers rpi is the best, however the hardware design and specification of the competitors' board are really enticing. Thanks for creating this wonderful video, I do learn a lot and surprised that it can run raspbian!
Informative as usual, thanks for sharing. On a separate note, I'm sure many would agree it's high time the scissors were given a name, seems only fair.
For the resolution, shouldn't the hdmi_mode=16 not 31? Or is that 60hz and you want 50hz? Just a guess, I've only skimmed over it. Pretty neat little board and the 67*c reminded me of something.(Sort of unrelated) I recently got a pi 4 Model B and I'm looking to apply some heat sinks to the chips (Got the ICE tower for the CPU, AWESOME! Thanks for that video) and having a heck of a time figuring out what 'tape' I should use for the fanless heat sinks. Suggestions? (Too many posts that say they don't transfer heat and I don't want to waste money or fry the board/chips) THANK YOU! Cheers!
@@KomradeMikhail HAHA Yeah, I wasn't going to put duct on it. I was looking for a brand or a specific link (affiliate maybe CB?) I didn't think I need to specify the tape needs to be thermal. I was reading about m3's 8810 and was getting mixed extreme results. Love or hate.
This may work: Go to /boot/bananapi/bpi-m3/linux open eEnv.txt uncheck line 40 save and reboot - and your screen should now boot into 1920x1080 If it works I'll try and find the source.
Thank you for coming back Chris! I really like your videos btw you dont an extra bpi for this humble follower hehe xD! Thanks for sharing this video! I enjoyed It! :)
I'm glad you enjoyed the video. But "coming back", what do you mean?! :) I've not gone anywhere. There's been a new video on the channel every Sunday for over 4 years. :)
@@ExplainingComputers oh sorry maybe I get stuck on old videos from you! Anyways! Thank u! And btw do you have an extra banana pi laying somewhere that you can give me?🙈
They forgot to include the Composite Video pins !!! I like to stick an RPi Zero W inside of an old CRT television, and solder all connections internally... Turning it into a RetroPie TV. But the lack of composite out pins, plus the resolution issues, makes this board no good for that.
I'm going to try this. Most old style TV sets should be able to do 480i. www.amazon.com/GANA-Composite-Converter-Supports-DVD-Black/dp/B06W9LQDBB/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3Q7DWO7Z1NBBE&keywords=hdmi+to+composite+adapter&qid=1583680894&sprefix=hdmi+to+composite%2Caps%2C206&sr=8-3
@@ninline2000 maybe, but I did testing over several months and someone made a 240p firmware, looked much better. I still have some test footage on my channel I think.
Now that I have one of these boards, I'm realizing something critically important about the Banana Pi Zero. They packed way too much CPU on this thing and not enough cooling,. Even with a heatsink, this thing thermal throttles like there's no tomorrow. The quad core chip is WAAAAAYYY more powerful than the Raspberry Pi 3A+, but it doesn't show up in benchmarks due to the thermal limits. If there was an easy way to attach a fan, this thing would kick some serious hind-quarters!
The fact, that Banana Pi M2 Zero went into 1080p mode before video drivers kicked in, makes me think HDMI might be reporting wrong monitor capabilities to OS. Is there any way to tell OS to ignore them?
Excellent !! I purchased this board a couple of months ago. I am trying to run the Kodi Leia for watching IPTV channels. Installed Armbian, so far it's the only OS that allowed me to somehow run Kodi. Because Kodi package is broken on Raspbian, all my efforts were unsuccessful, Ubuntu and DietPi, which does not officially support this board, are not loading. I overclock the CPU to 1.2 Ghz. While the Raspberry Pi zero reproduces 720p very clearly, the Banana Pi M2 has exactly the same content even in 800x600 resolution - complex video jerks, the sound, although reproduced normally, is out of sync with the image. All my playings with GL drivers and attempts to understand what is happening here with hardware acceleration have not yet been crowned with success, alas. I would be glad to advice how to improve :)
I gave up on Banana Pi products with their first model, because there are lots of little issues, like the resolution issue you found with this product. I also found that Banana Pi support is severely lacking. They definitely are a little faster than the Raspberry Pi products they are trying to compete with, but it's never fast enough to justify putting up with all the little annoyances theay have.
Funny, I've installed the server core on the Pi zero because when it's installed, it just has to stream the video across a network. If it turns out to be too weak for that, I now have an upgrade I can go to without a full-blown Pi4 - which, presently, is just for the controller and main display.
That's great, the Pi Zero's are still 12-18 dollars in the Netherlands because of the constant supply problems, these are about as cheap, you can actually just buy them (even thousands if you want) and it's quite powerful. Pretty much a no brainer!
The biggest problem is that we can't find a good GPU support for the SBC whichever using the Allwinner SoC. It seems like that this company does not release their GPU driver for all of the open-source systems, only available for their business partner. I am a Chinese and I had a SBC named OrangePi PC 2, it using the H5 chip and the website browsing is like a shit in all Linux that I could installed.
@@pilu9538 Software support being not entirely open source as far as I have read. Thus, it it will be difficult to get long term kernel/driver support because the Linux Foundation etc. have no way of maintaining code. At least that is what I understood, being a SBC Jon Snow.
It seems like the Banana Pi has TWO serial UARTS, which would make it quite interesting. I have a few projects where I've used the onboard UART and have had to attach a USB-to-Serial dongle in addition. Having two UARTS would eliminate that need, and I could free up the USB port. The fact that you can use an external antenna is also quite nice!
As usual, a great review ! with all the important need to know's ! maybe a foot note that the 3rd Pi has a full HDMI connector, but that's only a small detail. Thank you !
Mali 400 should technically handle 1080p but it wasn't really designed for it. Its usually still used in lowcost devices nowadays and almost all of them have max 1280x720 or 1280x800.
@@hagbarthr Darn...you were stylin'..lol! My first computer was the awful ZX81 with 1k of RAM, no hard drive and a cassette player for data in! Wish i still had it though...lol!
Like what you do. 4m 18sec in the Banana Pi M2 Zero, you say double cost the $ is roughly two times while the pounds is only 80% bigger, my MS Excel says £16.54 should be £19.50 or so. Regards from OC from down under! 160km N of Sydney NSW Always learning something e.g. enter £ from my US Keyboard. Regards Phil
This guy has the voice of an 80s TV presenter from a program like tomorrow’s world. Instant subscribe 👍🏾
Plus his hair!
Welcome aboard!
Love this channel, always has a retro feel to it, Chris you are the man, everything clear and crisp on screen, no gimmicky video crap, no shouting, or rubbish music, just you and your knowledge, thanks Chris.
The perfect Sunday morning, coffee, bagel, and explaining computers 👍👍👍
Mike Foxworth
Exactly 🍩☕
Yes
Man this guy just makes you smile. Such an awesome dude.
I concur
His delivery is excellent
Support this man at any cost !!! he literally saves you years of college.
Chris is back to save us from boring sundays :)
Yay!!!
Adarsh Singh will you please help me building a desktop using PI4 in order from where to purchase pi4 board, cabels, power supply, cabinet ,cooling fan etc. Thanking you .
I am from a village Muzaffarnagar ( UP)
It is amazing how much computer technology can be put into a board that size for that price. Thank you for the video and looking forward to your next video!
Luckily "a closer look" came back. I found out I somehow need it. It makes me feel home on your sweet channel! Much love to you!
Glad you are here.
It baffles me how you manage to post such high quality videos so frequently - I enjoy every one.
It bemuses me too! :) Thanks for watching.
they should have made the board curved to closer resemble a banana, missed opportunity i feel.
Haha sounds like a fun idea if a little impractical with peripherals unless peripherals come in bunches perhaps?!
3D printed banana shaped case with yellow filament ?...
They should have made it yellow.
@@dsmyify Yep, and called it "Not a banana M2 Zero" :)
But you are most correct because if the Pi stands for "pie" then it just has to be "kinda flat topped with appropriate color".
@@dsmyify ... but mine are all brown to black, and spotted.
I think answer to the question "Which SBC should I buy?" has been for a while and will be for a long time: Latest full size Raspberry Pi for beginners and general use, latest versions of Zero and A for those who need something smaller or cheaper and lastly, these Allwinner and whatnot based SBCs for those who need something more specific. Further away from full size Raspberry Pis, more tinkering is needed.
These SBCs are often good on paper, disappointments after launch and then they become good again, when the brilliant team behind Armbian does their magic.
EDIT: To clarify, my "Latest Raspberry Pi" answer is to beginners, who don't have real use case in mind and they just want to start tinkering. Of course all these boards are different and there are use-cases for all of them. Thanks to the popularity and community, Raspberry Pi is the easiest to get started with. It's not only option, it's not answer to all possible needs, but it's a nice board to use when taking first steps into the fascinating world of linux and embedded stuff.
I think it's mainly a choice between power on small formfactor vs. affordability & community
@@Sithhy and connectivity
Like I said in my main reply most who use SBC's normally have a use case for it, not the oh look something cheap and shiny knee jerk purchaser.
Personally ive got a few SBC's all doing stuff ( mainly building images / kernels ) everything from Beagle / Panda / Bones from Ti to Rock64/pro64's along with some RiscV systems with FPGA's, everything else is smaller Iron ( Cortex M and below needing at RTOS ) ..
In the case of AllWinner the SBC's are very powerful no doubt about that, but like I said its the lack of BSP / Documentation that lets it down. But the caveat is this is the Linux world not Windows with binary proprietary drivers so in this space which is still very much in flux you have to take the bumps in the road in your stride. It is so inappropriate to expect 100% out of the box operation, if you want that stick with PC's and windows.
I think you mean the amazing kernel team that provides the core to any and all SBC's and maintainers that make SBC's perform better pretty much with every new release.
@@sethrd999 Only real use I see for these SBC's would be running a Kodi box, and even then, the GPU performance is lacking for true 1080p 60 fps, and forget anything higher.
@@mikem9536 Mali is quite surprisingly powerful, I think they lend more to robotics / drones tbh. Many add on possibilites for that area with the GPIO's. Kodi in 512MB is a stretch.
I find it encouraging that this has hot the market. I look forward to the day that a 1080p-capable SBC retails for under $20.00, bringing total media freedom to the people!
The Pi Zero W works well at 1080p :)
Watching that bag cutting it looks like Mr Scissors needs Mrs Sharpener.
What bothered me was the bag had precut notches in it, making the scissors completely unnecessary XD
@@MacroPheliac Yeah, but do those ever work right? The bag always rips open horribly using the pre-cuts.
@@Rudofaux yeah it does make for a crooked tear most of the time.
@Ejuice Vaper or, I can simply use scissors.
I couldn't help but notice that in another vid you demonstrated how to open these bags sans scissors! ;)
Anyone: "Surely, you wouldn't want to run a word processor on 512MB of RAM?"
Chris: "I would, and don't call me Shirley."
*laughs in C=64 GEOS*
I wonder how many instances of Wordgrinder would fit in 512MB?
512 MB's of RAM? Is this 2005?
@@ivorjawa I ran Speedscript on my C64. I told my Grandson that I typed it in out of a magazine listing and he just stared at me like he couldn't believe it.
@Benjamin Muller That's how I learned about backups! I had been typing that listing in for 3 hours and my daughter tripped over the power brick for the C64. I then started saving my work every 15 minutes or so.
I am impressed by this little board! It looks like a Rpi 2B in the form factor of a 0W. If only software support was better, this would be a killer one. Thank you, Chris, for your nice video!
Sunday afternoon isn't complete without your video.
Greetings! As you have pointed out many times, software support remains a fundamental reference in the evaluation of SBC. Once again, you have made an eloquent demonstration of this.
Hi Chris - your channel is now my go-to for SBC work; your clear configuration instructions are always useful and always seem to work for me, and I am tempted to dip my toe in the water again for a new project! Likely to be R.Pi4 under Raspbian.
Thanks for this, appreciated. Have you seen the 2GB RAM Pi 4 is now $35. Very hard to beat.
@@ExplainingComputers Oh no, catastrophe! I found out that RPi4 (unlike RPi3) cannot be booted directly from USB/SSD. I don't trust the SD cards for a reliable system drive so the project will have to wait for RPi foundation fix.
Interesting. It's good to have options, especially for these smaller SBC's. I'm not sure the Banana Pi is worth twice as much $$ as the RPi Zero, but it's not a bad option (otherwise) if your project needs both speed and a compact size. Thanks for another great video Chris.
Another great video! As others have noted, it was made all the better by an appearance of Mr. Scissors. With respect to the Banana Pi, I, myself, am waiting for the Plantain Pi M2 Zero before taking the plunge!
These systems on a chip a more powerful than my "gaming" PC from the early 2000's. Good stuff.
i remember giving my amd k6-2 64mb ram back in the day and thinking it was a beast ........ now i have smart watches an order of magnitude faster
@@deadadam666 Yes, I remember buying a 32mb RAM stick and it improved the pc performance substantially.
Maybe on CPU side it is, but highly unlikely that this sbc has stronger GPU.
@@deadadam666 i did the same just for Quake 3
I love this channel and getting this notification every week.
I'd say extra $5 is totally worth for Pi 3A. Did you try to solder all those 40 GPIOs? Not mentioning performance....
Well if you need something smaller than Pi3 then it doesn't matter. If you don't need Pi0 W form factor then you can get e.g. NanoPi NEO2 LTS with Allwinner H5 with fairly similar performance to Raspberry Pi3 and with similar price to that BananaPi M2 Zero - so still pretty cheap and powerful; or you can aim for OrangePi Zero Plus H5 with similar form factor na WiFi instead of Ethernet. It's not like it was few years back when you didn't really have much of the competition. Now there's plenty of decent SBCs and with Armbian's more mature support for H2+/H3/H5 they are usually best bang for a bucks if raw performance is what you seek.
@@Promilus1984 That was a great comment. Thanks. Just a remark - I do realize that there is wide variety SBCs available on the market these days. I simply was following the selection presented in this video.
If you're designing from scratch and have the room for the larger form factor... yes. The faster speed is great. One thing that wasn't touched was power draw. There may be some advantages between the different models if current draw comes into play... especially for battery powered projects where the unit will need to be powered for long periods of time with short bursts of processing.
@@fakshen1973 Generally speaking yes, you're right. But some considerations : with Pi3 you have an option to downgrade performance (that is why there are 2 power feeds USB and 5V jack) and this Banana Pi showed temp core of 67C - makes me wander what is actual TDP of this set...
Another great vid, I always find myself watching your videos, thanks for a great channel
Thank you, nice to see the benchmarks as always. Keep them! Thanks ;-)
And here we are, 2 years later. Its August 2022, and right now the rpi zero 2 w is being scalped on amazon for 99 dollars, and sold out literally everywhere else... The bpi m2 zero, however is still available on aliexpress for $20.59.
A possible contender is the orange pi i96. that board costs 6 bucks but is running ddr2 and a much slower proc.
G'morning, Chris and a very good morning to you, Mr. Scissors! I often wonder about the Banana Pi series (Orange Pi, too), thanks for video on this. Cheers!
I have seriously considered upgrading my prior purchase of a Raspberry Pi Model 3B+ to the Model 4. But, I just purchased a new Acer laptop with quad core 8th gen i7 processor running at 1.80GHz with boost to 4.6GHz. So, I'll have to wait a while. Great video!
I have a Prusa 3D printer. You can use a Pi 0 W with octoprint to provide a print server for the 3D printer. Using this I have enough power to attach the camera and create "videos" of the 3D printing process (and monitor the print). This is EXACTLY what I was looking for, I ordered one for that.
Also, I have a Speccy Next on its way to me. I'm going to get another BananaPi and use it as the accelerator (4X the acceleration). Who doesn't want more power ;)
Congrats on having a Speccy Next on the way. :)
@@ExplainingComputers I'm planning on doing a video about it. What could I possibly say that EVERY other person hasn't already said? I grew up using the C64, Apple II and PC. I never touched a Spectrum. I have no nostalgia for it, but am highly interested in it. So, I'm going to do my review as a first time user of the Spectrum.
Bonjour Chris, thanks for making my Sunday a pleasant day, even though it is a gray and raining. I am justday-dreaming away for a Rpi Zero Wx, with a dual-core, USB3 and 1Gb of memory.
Was I the only one who felt cheated to see "Hello" without "World"? 😁
Not enough ram for that. :)
Nope. If you’re gonna do it, might as well do it right. #k&r
'Hello' is only for non-programming testing of applications. You can only use 'Hello World' once you have stepped up to programming.
Remember. He said “it’s the law”. Don’t want to break that
I wanted to say... The future is here old man... But obviously you are much younger than me! Great video and presentation as usually. Keep up the good work!
2 Jan 1967 .. oh gawd he's four years younger than me -- I didn't expect that!
Thanks for the video Chris. I guess Mr. Scissors would have sulked if Chris ripped the plastic bag open at the indents :D Perhaps Stanley the knife would have organised strike action. Best wishes.
Great review and good timing. I've wanted to buy a Banana Pi M2 Zero for a while now. It is supposed to fit in "most" Rpi Zero cases. I finally clicked your link and bought one along with two aluminum cases from same seller. I've had a few Rpi Zeros since they were available. They are fun little SBCs but really lacking in power. I will appreciate the extra speed on the Banana Pi M2 Zero. I wish they could have fitted it with 1GB RAM but you can't have everything. I'll be looking for some retro game emulation builds for it.
Not sure I will find anything but I will be content running Armbian if I can't.
I even bought a couple of custom machined aluminum cases for the Pi Zero Zeros when they were available a couple of years ago.
The aluminum cases I bought from the seller at your link look every bit as good as my old custom cases. Now to find a mini antenna for the Banana Pi M2 Zero. I believe it will need one even more once trapped in an aluminum case.
I still get decent WiFi with my Pi Zero W models in the aluminum cases but it could be better.
Nice Mr. Barnatt. Thanks to Mr. Scissor has unbox the banana pi for us to watch the review
Excellent stuff, especially the benchmark comparison. 👍
It's always good to know board performance stats.
Thanks 👍
As usual, an excellent review. I always look forward to my Sunday Morning Coffee with you.
The Banana Pi could be the step up that someone who is space constrained for speed and willing/able to do some programming.
I see some comments that indicate that some believe that the developers of the hardware don't do enough software development. But, that's one of the beauties of OSHW and Software, the ability to make change and be more purposeful (was wondering if that was even a word but the spellcheck seems to like it).If you want little to none for hardware and software you buy into the Apple realm, if you was SOME software and lots of hardware you go the Microsoft route. When you want total control of it all, go OSHW and learn some Java or CircuitPython (shameless plug to the folks at Adafruit and the CircuitPython community), or C++ and Arduino.
At any rate, I'll climb down from the soap box and say again, an excellent review and a great breakfast experience, for me anyway.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks for this Mark -- always great to hear from you and get your view. :)
Please excuse the dumb question but, what is OSHW? I just getting up to speed with the hobby.
@@3rd_Millennium_Engineering Open Source HardWare. Basically all the plans for design and building are available to be used by anyone.
@@Duewester Thank you, Thomas. After I had discovered it's meaning (just before yoyur reply), I was almost going to delete this question but who knows, maybe someone else reading these comments will be starting at the same point I am currently at. :-)
These little machines are amazing, and this channel is something I enjoy watching. I just ordered my first two raspberry pi zeros. I dont know what project I wil use them for. Pi hole? Maybe. I have access to fast free dns serices, it will for sure replace my xbox for watching youtube.
Enjoy your new Pis. :)
Love those small form-Factors, and those reviews
One thing to keep in mind when comparing the Raspberry Pi Zero to other boards, it's been out for over four years and I still can't find anyone who will sell more than one per order, so be sure to add the shipping cost to each board. Really seems like it's being sold at cost or even a small loss.
From the size of a room to the Pi's... I can't believe how much we have advanced since.
Days like these, when I'm finally having an unplanned break from work are days to come and visit RUclips again.
Thank you for your Banana Pi test. Although it may look nice, I find the specs quite comparable with the Orange Pi Lite which I bought back in 2017 for a similiar price. Sure it is bigger, and here the form factor plays a major role, but at least it outputs 1080p haha.
I do hope to come back more often, and maybe nowadays I'd have a better opportunity to do so, since after 10 years I'm alone again. Oh well, talk about unfortunate events.
everything about this board and the 3A+ was so perfect...and then for some reason only 512MB of RAM? It just makes no sense to me to pair a quadcore with 512mb of RAM
I was thinking the same thing. 512MB is just too little to really do much with nowadays, especially considering it shares RAM with the GPU chipset.
@@KanokYT Yeah totally. I'd pay more for it if they had a 1GB variant, it'd be perfect for portable consoles.
I had a phone with 512MB's of ram, and even when using a "swapfile" web pages would crash on a regular basis. Not sure what the use for this would be.
@@mikem9536 It's not meant to be a desktop, gui-running machine. But yes, more ram would be the first improvement to do with Banana Pi Zero.
ypu can upgrade it easy with BGA skills
This board looks great for Octopi, as it has approx 4x the performance of the Pi Zero, and also is available more readily and without maximum order quantities or useless "value packs" like included cases and power supplies.
Opinions on the banana pi are split. I'll see myself out.
Ya hey! :)
Hey man, as long as you include a scoop of strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate ice cream you're good
Well, you could fudge it.
OK, I'm going, too.
Chew on your just desserts on the way out🍌
How was it ?
came back across this channel after two years and absolutely lost it at the intro music.
Great video. I love these SBC vids. Very informative and nicely-presented. For my money, I would pay the $4 difference for the 3A+ just to have the GPIO connector already installed.
I love the zero, its an underdog! the stuff I have done with it is fun, I used oxm player to watch a high def video from the command line, I used it as a remote radio streamer with a usb sound card/speaker, even used it as a remote terminal just for testing compiling and running stuff on linux/arm, its pretty great just totally not suited to a gui / web browsing at all, barely enough ram not enough horsepower for modern sites.
"Coming up on Explaining Computers: Plugging the monitor into the keyboard/mouse combo unit."
Thank you so much Mr Brian for another great video showcasing a SBC.
I am sure young tinkers appreciate you making this videos. You are great tech to those young tinkers, you are feeding those young minds to be the next Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
Thankyou for this video sir. I was waiting for this . it will cost same as raspberry Pi zero w in my country.
Btw instead of writing clear in the terminal to clear it you can use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+L that will clear it right away. Super simple. Another tip for new people is instead of holding backspace in when you accidentally did a typo in the terminal to delete everything you can use CTRL+U that will clear every input you have entered but haven´t executed yet.
You can, but this is a video, and viewers can see what I am doing when I type "clear".
sometimes I think why most of the creators are creating more number of SBC even at cheaper cost rather than they need to create softwares that make existing SBC more useful 🤔🤔🤔🤔
There is so much truth to this.
@@ExplainingComputers Chris I have one question recently I hosted ASP.net web application in windows IOT device and for database currently I am using SQLite is there any way I can install a dedicated SQL software in Windows IOT device ??
One key reason I stayed with the Raspberry Pi. The software isn't the best, but at least it is well supported... and therr is a strong community, should you need help.
And who are they you speak of?, perhaps you need to give more respect / props to the Open Community that gave you the ability to use these SBC's in the first place. If you want better software you have the same rights and tools to do so.
@@sethrd999 they aka the firm selling the sbc, "lets by an electric car without decent software"
wiki.banana-pi.org/Getting_Started_with_M2_Zero
This channel is turning me into a nerd!!!!
And I like it.
Another EC Sunday, and another Single Board Computer. Thank you making boring Sundays fantastic. Yay !!!
Hey Mr. Piyush are you from lndia ? If yes I need your help. Being from a village in district MUZAFFARNAGAR , l want to assemble PI4 to be used as desktop . Kindly help me from where to buy it and other components ie. data cable , cabinet , cooling fan , charger etc. I will be thankful.
I think it is important to mention that Raspberry Pi Zero (W) has a selling limitation of 1 piece / person.
There are no webshops as of now in 2020.03.09 i know about where you can buy more than 1 piece of the product.
There is a Raspberry Pi Zero WH (wifi with header pins) version which can be ordered without limitations, has a price tag of 17$/piece (here in Romania from an authorized reseller) and i think it is the best offer in the market right now because of the connectivity and the price/value ratio. .. the only issue is that it is not always on stock - they make too little of it.
Harmonica playing: denied?!
But... £8.95 shipping for this £16.99 SBC; makes one of the cheaper Raspberry Pi's look better value.
When in doubt, use Armbian. The Armbian team at brilliant, and very helpful when things get screwy
Holy smokes I love this tiny little monster!
Technically, the Banana Pi M2 Zero also has 100M ethernet. The four pins between the USB OTG and the USB-style DC connector are, left to right, bottom to top (if the USB ports are facing down): RXN, TXP, RXP, TXN. It can also be powered via the GPIO.
i am going to build a phone wifi presence detector for home automation using a SBC to trun on lights and unlock doors. wendel from level one techs wrote a blog about that, he used a RPi Zero W for this, but i haven't found his blog yet. while i'd prefer to use the BPi M2 zero because of the hardware, i'm leery of the software acceleration and compatibility. i'm also unclear of the dividing line between hardware and software, re video acceleration and OSs tailored for particular devices. i'm also wondering, if i'm going to run wire to power it, why not just run a wifi antenna to card on a computer and an OS in a container (ansible, docker, BSD jail). i believe wendel used battery power, but i might try wire. cross post: maybe
We in the "Colonies" implemented daylight savings time overnight... had to wait an 'extra hour" for this morning's video.
Ah. Yes, there will be a time change here in the UK soon too.
@@ExplainingComputers Well worth the wait!! Thanks again from Austin.
I have a banana pi m2 ultra, and still can not find same level of software support as rpi has; in my last try even Armbian didn't support it.
In general for newcomers rpi is the best, however the hardware design and specification of the competitors' board are really enticing.
Thanks for creating this wonderful video, I do learn a lot and surprised that it can run raspbian!
Haha, "I once threatened to learn to play the harmonica..."
Informative as usual, thanks for sharing.
On a separate note, I'm sure many would agree it's high time the scissors were given a name, seems only fair.
For the resolution, shouldn't the hdmi_mode=16 not 31? Or is that 60hz and you want 50hz? Just a guess, I've only skimmed over it.
Pretty neat little board and the 67*c reminded me of something.(Sort of unrelated)
I recently got a pi 4 Model B and I'm looking to apply some heat sinks to the chips (Got the ICE tower for the CPU, AWESOME! Thanks for that video) and having a heck of a time figuring out what 'tape' I should use for the fanless heat sinks. Suggestions? (Too many posts that say they don't transfer heat and I don't want to waste money or fry the board/chips) THANK YOU!
Cheers!
"Thermal Tape"...
@@KomradeMikhail HAHA Yeah, I wasn't going to put duct on it. I was looking for a brand or a specific link (affiliate maybe CB?) I didn't think I need to specify the tape needs to be thermal.
I was reading about m3's 8810 and was getting mixed extreme results. Love or hate.
I am applying for this one from EE Times Taiwan(免費申請鴻海 Banana Pi BPI-M2 ZERO 開發板_電子工程專輯), this video is just what I need!
This may work:
Go to /boot/bananapi/bpi-m3/linux
open eEnv.txt
uncheck line 40
save and reboot - and your screen should now boot into 1920x1080
If it works I'll try and find the source.
I will try this at some point. Right now, the board is packed away and other things are set up! :)
Thank you for coming back Chris! I really like your videos btw you dont an extra bpi for this humble follower hehe xD! Thanks for sharing this video! I enjoyed It! :)
I'm glad you enjoyed the video. But "coming back", what do you mean?! :) I've not gone anywhere. There's been a new video on the channel every Sunday for over 4 years. :)
@@ExplainingComputers oh sorry maybe I get stuck on old videos from you! Anyways! Thank u! And btw do you have an extra banana pi laying somewhere that you can give me?🙈
They forgot to include the Composite Video pins !!!
I like to stick an RPi Zero W inside of an old CRT television, and solder all connections internally... Turning it into a RetroPie TV.
But the lack of composite out pins, plus the resolution issues, makes this board no good for that.
I'm going to try this. Most old style TV sets should be able to do 480i. www.amazon.com/GANA-Composite-Converter-Supports-DVD-Black/dp/B06W9LQDBB/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3Q7DWO7Z1NBBE&keywords=hdmi+to+composite+adapter&qid=1583680894&sprefix=hdmi+to+composite%2Caps%2C206&sr=8-3
@@ninline2000 don't. Old games are in 240p, not 480i. Looks completely different
@@ninline2000
You don't need a converter box with an RPi Zero W... It already has Composite video out pins directly on the board.
@@MrBrax It looks a hell of a lot better than it does on an LCD monitor.
@@ninline2000 maybe, but I did testing over several months and someone made a 240p firmware, looked much better. I still have some test footage on my channel I think.
Now that I have one of these boards, I'm realizing something critically important about the Banana Pi Zero. They packed way too much CPU on this thing and not enough cooling,. Even with a heatsink, this thing thermal throttles like there's no tomorrow. The quad core chip is WAAAAAYYY more powerful than the Raspberry Pi 3A+, but it doesn't show up in benchmarks due to the thermal limits. If there was an easy way to attach a fan, this thing would kick some serious hind-quarters!
So true.
i had to lol at the Hello font size change ^^ i love you!!
The fact, that Banana Pi M2 Zero went into 1080p mode before video drivers kicked in, makes me think HDMI might be reporting wrong monitor capabilities to OS. Is there any way to tell OS to ignore them?
6:06 I can't see anything but BananaPIMP
Excellent !!
I purchased this board a couple of months ago. I am trying to run the Kodi Leia for watching IPTV channels.
Installed Armbian, so far it's the only OS that allowed me to somehow run Kodi.
Because Kodi package is broken on Raspbian, all my efforts were unsuccessful, Ubuntu and DietPi, which does not officially support this board, are not loading.
I overclock the CPU to 1.2 Ghz.
While the Raspberry Pi zero reproduces 720p very clearly, the Banana Pi M2 has exactly the same content even in 800x600 resolution - complex video jerks,
the sound, although reproduced normally, is out of sync with the image.
All my playings with GL drivers and attempts to understand what is happening here with hardware acceleration have not yet been crowned with success, alas.
I would be glad to advice how to improve :)
I'm waiting to hear you play the harmonica!
I gave up on Banana Pi products with their first model, because there are lots of little issues, like the resolution issue you found with this product. I also found that Banana Pi support is severely lacking. They definitely are a little faster than the Raspberry Pi products they are trying to compete with, but it's never fast enough to justify putting up with all the little annoyances theay have.
I watched his video from few years ago and today he looks like he doesn’t age a bit. Geek effect?
I want Banana Pie with Ice cream now...What a Beautiful little Board...
if put 1gb ram, this board is my next buy
Yeah, 1GB ram would make it a real winner
Funny, I've installed the server core on the Pi zero because when it's installed, it just has to stream the video across a network. If it turns out to be too weak for that, I now have an upgrade I can go to without a full-blown Pi4 - which, presently, is just for the controller and main display.
$20 is way too much when a pi4 2GB is now $35
ain't that the price of 1GB version, with 2GB being $45
The RPi4 is too large for some applications.
I have seen this board for $17 USD. But it gets to hot. I decided to use the 3 A+ instead and then I also will have dual band WiFi.
@@MiniRockerz4ever Pi 4 2gb is permanently $35 right now.
@@MiniRockerz4ever they just lowered the price of the 2GB version.
That's great, the Pi Zero's are still 12-18 dollars in the Netherlands because of the constant supply problems, these are about as cheap, you can actually just buy them (even thousands if you want) and it's quite powerful. Pretty much a no brainer!
“Hello” - it’s not just a good idea - it’s the law.
The biggest problem is that we can't find a good GPU support for the SBC whichever using the Allwinner SoC. It seems like that this company does not release their GPU driver for all of the open-source systems, only available for their business partner. I am a Chinese and I had a SBC named OrangePi PC 2, it using the H5 chip and the website browsing is like a shit in all Linux that I could installed.
0:24 The packaging looks like a medicine!
It contained this week's dose of EC.
Very good review. I've seen these small board computers used as security cameras. This helps out based on performance and speed. Thanks so much!
You are awesome bro on my first look im hope this rpi zero w...
Thanks for the video, interesting alternative card. I keep it in mind; fair price and fast enough for non-graphic applications.
"Allwinner CPU" Oh dear, that's never good news.
@@pilu9538 Software support being not entirely open source as far as I have read. Thus, it it will be difficult to get long term kernel/driver support because the Linux Foundation etc. have no way of maintaining code. At least that is what I understood, being a SBC Jon Snow.
It seems like the Banana Pi has TWO serial UARTS, which would make it quite interesting. I have a few projects where I've used the onboard UART and have had to attach a USB-to-Serial dongle in addition. Having two UARTS would eliminate that need, and I could free up the USB port. The fact that you can use an external antenna is also quite nice!
They would have scored if the board was yellow instead of blue ;)
this banana pi is literally better than all computers up to 90s :D
Mr Scissors oh yeah
Awwwwwww yeeeeeeah
I love my little Banana Pi zero but I only managed to get Armbian on to it. Thanks for the review
harmonica reveal and recital video at 1m subs ? - go on ;)
It's a deal. :)
I'd like to see that happen!
As usual, a great review ! with all the important need to know's ! maybe a foot note that the 3rd Pi has a full HDMI connector, but that's only a small detail. Thank you !
Foolishly I thought having M2 in it's name would mean it has an M.2 connector.
With that little RAM I don't think it could really put an M.2 to use anyway
R Completely agree - clearly the name is just for marketing - enough to make me suspicious of anything from Banana in the future
Thats what i was hoping for.
Mali 400 should technically handle 1080p but it wasn't really designed for it.
Its usually still used in lowcost devices nowadays and almost all of them have max 1280x720 or 1280x800.
80's show, 80's powered computers, 80's scissors and 80's hair!
I got my first computer about 1991. It had a 286 processor (single core 12 MHz), 1 MB RAM, 50 MB hard drive, and a 1.44MB 3.5" floppy drive.
@@hagbarthr Darn...you were stylin'..lol! My first computer was the awful ZX81 with 1k of RAM, no hard drive and a cassette player for data in! Wish i still had it though...lol!
Am I the only one which had a first computer with 512mb of ram
I am not that old though
Like what you do. 4m 18sec in the Banana Pi M2 Zero, you say double cost the $ is roughly two times while the pounds is only 80% bigger, my MS Excel says £16.54 should be £19.50 or so. Regards from OC from down under! 160km N of Sydney NSW Always learning something e.g. enter £ from my US Keyboard. Regards Phil