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NanoPi NEO Air, the new "zero"?

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 5:03 pm
by iSP
At this moment I'm doing research in a better Gameboy "zero" which involves a custom case which I will draw in CAD.
This also means looking into alternative boards and formfactors, as the zero is limited in N64 and PSX performance, as it allows for future expansion/upgradability.
The raspi3 is the current popular choice if you want to play these consoles at the cost of some hefty modding.
Let me present a new board which has been introduced 2 weeks ago; the NanoPi Neo Air;

Image


The board is 40 x 40mm (vs 30 x 65mm for the zero) and features the following;
  • - Allwinner H3 A7 quadcore @ 1,2 GHz
    - 512MB DDR3
    - 8GB onboard storage (!)
    - Broadcom AP6212 Bluetooth 4.0
    - Broadcom AP6212 Wifi b/g/n
Ofc it has all the other features the zero has like a Micro SD slot for expansion and hdmi and all that good stuff.
The one and only thing I haven't been able is to find what pin does composite video, the PDF manual lists this;
Two interfaces may be active in parallel
- HDMI V1.4 output with HDCP1.2, up to 4K@30fps
- TV CVBS output <- this is the composite video signal
Anyway it can be ordered from here; http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?ro ... uct_id=151
So what do you guys think, is this a winner or what? Remember; it's so small it even fits inside a Gameboy cartridge if you want to go that way(!).

Re: NanoPi NEO Air, the new "zero"?

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 5:38 pm
by beerman
Doesn't look like it has a video out. The Nano Pi M1 looks like it could work. I'd be wary of giving my credit card details over though as I've never heard of them.

edit: after doing a bit more research they seem legit.

Re: NanoPi NEO Air, the new "zero"?

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 5:40 pm
by iSP
The manual claims it but I couldn't find it either, so I hope the more technical bright people here can find it :D.
But if it truly has composite video it's the perfect board.

Re: NanoPi NEO Air, the new "zero"?

Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 6:03 am
by HoolyHoo
Pretty sure your going to have a hard time getting Retropie to work with this board.

Re: NanoPi NEO Air, the new "zero"?

Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2016 6:20 am
by iSP
This is a movie showing off Retropi with some problematic titels on an orangepi with the same Allwinner H3 chip;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whNcQTWwvhg

So not only is retropi already ported, cpu wise that is gpu wise don't know, it does run well!
I'm pretty sure I can get it to work given there's composite or dsub (we know for certain the latter is not on there)

Re: NanoPi NEO Air, the new "zero"?

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2016 3:22 pm
by Perifferal
Sadly though, the FriendlyARM wiki states: The NanoPi NEO AIR has no display interface. If you don't have a serial communication board to connect your AIR to a PC you can log in your AIR via SSH. http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index. ... #SSH_Login

If you really want to give this a go though, have a look at VGA over SPI/TTL as it does have those ports: https://hackaday.io/project/6309-vga-gr ... l-vgatonic
and get an lcd with VGA support like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/182101827933

I have the same screen, haven't tested it though, so I can't say anything about the quality of the screen, ghosting, etc.

Not sure, but found this as well: http://www.4dsystems.com.au/product/uVGA_III/
MAybe someone knows if this could be useful?

Re: NanoPi NEO Air, the new "zero"?

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2016 3:33 pm
by iSP
Yeah, there's more info out there by now, sadly this isn't the upgrade we are waiting for.
Been looking out for others but nothing as nice as the zero feature wise.
In mean time started with my case but I'm not yet ready to make mounts for the zero or any other boards; http://www.sudomod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1661

Also I do have that screen too, just don't like using vga as it's a mess to connect within the narrow space in the case.

And if you happen to find any nice micro pc boards out there, let me know in that topic...