The ASUS Tinker Board is a full system in a tiny form factor, similar to Raspberry Pi or Arduino's products to name a few competitors in the now busy market. At its heart is the Rockchip RK3288, four ARM Cortex-A17 CPU cores running at 1.8GHz with a Mali-T764 GPU at 600MHz. They are available now for slightly more than the announced $54.99 and will run a Debian based OS called ASUS TinkerOS.
Inside are an array of options for add-ins, including a 40-pin GPIO header, a 15-pin MIPI DSI and a15-pin MIPI CSI as well as a2-pin contact point for PWM or S/PDIF signals. Externally you will have four USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI and a 3.5mm audio jack to give you flexibility in how you utilize your Tinker Board. For connectivity there is a wired NIC as well as 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0. You can read the full PR below.
Fremont, CA (April 19, 2017) — ASUS, maker of the world’s best-selling, most award-winning motherboards, is excited to launch the ASUS Tinker Board in North America today. Imagine the freedom to make your ideas come alive, the ability to invent an IoT device for a connected home or just having fun creating an entertainment hub for the family or powering your DIY robot project at school. With Tinker Board, the possibilities to create personalized devices are endless. Tinker Board is a single-board computer (SBC), which makes it the ideal foundation for makers, hobbyists, educators, and electronic DIY enthusiasts to develop and build low-cost, great-performing computers.
Features & Functionality
ASUS Tinker Board offers class-leading performance, robust multimedia support, IoT connectivity, and enhanced DIY design and compatibility with a wide range of leading SBC chassis and accessories. The result is a near credit card sized computer that offers people the freedom to tinker and apply their ingenuity to create platforms for a wide variety of uses.Key features of Tinker Board include:
- CPU: 1.8GHz Rockchip RK3288 SoC quad-core processor
- GPU: Mali-T764 GPU Video:
- HD/UHD video playback support – including H.264/H.265 decoding Audio: 192kHz/24-bit audio support
- Memory: 2GB of dual-channel LPDDR3
- Storage: Micro SD(TF) slot features SD 3.0 support
- Connectivity: Bluetooth° 4.0 + EDR and on-board 802.11b/g/n WiFi
- Networking: 1Gb Ethernet
- Ports: (4) USB2.0 ports, (1) HDMI 1.4 out port, (1) 3.5mm audio jack
- I/O Ports: (1) 40-pin GPIO interface header, (1) 15-pin MIPI DSI, (1) 15-pin MIPI CSI, (1) 2-pin contact point for PWM and S/PDIF signals
- Power: Suggested 5V/2A AC adaptor via the micro-USB port (power adaptor not included)
- OS: (Debian-based Linux) & Android Support
- Dimensions/Weight: 85.60mm x 56mm x 21mm, 45g without included heatsink
You are always going to find
You are always going to find crazily overpriced boards like this on Amazon. And they may or may not actually have the boards to ship you when you buy them.
I’d wait until a reputable seller has them in stock.
Faster processor and double
Faster processor and double RAM compared to the Pi3, but also double the price and massively less software support. Hard to see how Asus think they’ll sell many when the primary use of these boards (imho) is product development, home projects, and learning electronics/coding. All three of these need a product to be cheap and online support is critical.
Thanks for that point of
Thanks for that point of view. 🙂
I was wondering how it compared to a Raspberry Pi. I read somewhere that you can install Windows on a Pi. For my project, *nix would be ideal.
If you’re making a commercial
If you’re making a commercial product, be very careful suggesting the use of an RPi board. The Foundation has been known to say “Oh, you’re using it commercially, well, these boards are meant for education, so no help for you.”
I’ve been avoiding buying a
I’ve been avoiding buying a Pi, because I don’t support the politics of those behind it. I might jump at this option.
You might consider the XU4
You might consider the XU4 from HardKernel. Or, if you don’t need that much processing power, there are a bunch of boards from Xunlong in the Orange Pi line.
Plenty of community support FWIW. HK even does a lot of support that you won’t see from the RPi or Orange Pi community.
Yeah, it’s a shame that the
Yeah, it’s a shame that the Pi itself is such a neat little product but the company actively engages in unsavory politics.
Hi – Could you tell me a
Hi – Could you tell me a little bit about the bad politics for the Rpi foundation?
To put it simply, the company
To put it simply, the company engages in identity/gender politics which I personally don’t agree with.
Yeah, more accurately it’s
Yeah, more accurately it’s not that I don’t agree with the positions particularly. It’s that I don’t care for them being pushed through my dinky recreational little hobbiest piece of hardware that I want to play with. All things being equal, I’d rather companies I give money to not use virtue-signaling as part of their marketing.
Interesting little thingy, I
Interesting little thingy, I can see putting libre/openelec on that and have little htpc which plays everything I want.
Yeah, more accurately it’s
Yeah, more accurately it’s not that I don’t agree with the positions particularly. It’s that I don’t care for them being pushed through my dinky recreational little hobbiest piece of hardware that I want to play with.