In terms of the time period ‘Raspberry Pi clones’, probably the most that they actually clone is the shape issue, as no one is creating clones of Broadcom VideoCore-based SoCs. At the least not in the event that they need to keep secure from Broadcom’s vicious authorized workforce. That stated, the Walnut Pi 1B single-board laptop (SBC) that [Silly Workshop] not too long ago took a gander at appears to be taking a reasonably typical method to a Raspberry Pi 4 type issue suitable board.
A part of Walnut Pi’s line-up, the Allwinner H616/H168-equipped 1B feels prefer it takes hints from each the RPi 4B and the Asus Tinkerboard, particularly with its properly coloured GPIO pins. There’s additionally a beefier Walnut Pi 2B with an Allwinner T527 SoC that’s not being reviewed right here. Translating the Chinese language-language documentation for the board means that both the H616 or H618 could also be put in, with each that includes a quad-core Cortex-A53, so within the ballpark of the Raspberry Pi 3.
There are additionally a number of RAM configurations, starting from 1 GB of DDR3 to 4 GB of LPDDR4, with the 1 GB model being enjoyable to try to run benchmarks like GeekBench on. In the end the impression was that it’s simply one other Allwinner SoC-based board, with a half-hearted ‘customized’ Linux picture, no {hardware} acceleration as a result of lacking (proprietary) Allwinner IP block drivers, and so on.
Whereas cheaper than a Raspberry Pi SBC, if you happen to want something greater than the essential Allwinner H61* assist and Ethernet/WiFi, there clearly are higher choices, a few of which can even contain repurposing an e-waste Android TV field.
