A new, compact alternative to the “Raspberry Pi” is now available at a very affordable price. The board supports connecting external sensors and motors, and comes with an easy-to-use video output. The Radxa Cubie A7S can be purchased from AliExpress for about $44 (plus shipping), while Araca Tech lists the model for about $25. For the latter price, customers get a single-board computer with just 4GB of RAM; The model is also listed with options of 8 or 16GB of LPDDR5 memory. 256GB eMMC storage is optionally available. As is typical of single-board computers, a microSD card slot is included, allowing for easy installation of the operating system.
The device is based on the “Allwinner A733” processor, which combines two “Cortex-A76” cores and six “A55” cores. The specific capacity of the neural processing unit (NPU) is 3 trillion operations per second (TOPS). The image is output directly, but not via HDMI, but rather via USB-C, which supports “DisplayPort” and 4K resolution at a rate of up to 60 frames per second. The “Cubie A7S” can also Receiving video signals via “MIPI CSI”, mainly from specialized cameras, allowing automatic image analysis, and network connectivity is available via “Gigabit Ethernet” and “WiFi 6”. It also supports Bluetooth 5.4, allowing for easy connection of devices such as keyboard and mouse.
Power is also provided via USB-C, with USB 2.0 and USB OPT support as well. Furthermore, a total of 45 general input/output (GPIO) headers are available, and the 51 x 51mm board features an FPC connector with PCIe 3.0 (single lane), allowing NVMe SSD storage to be connected.
