Today it arrived, my new toy :). A Orange Pi PC from Aliexpress.
Orange Pis are the chinese born brothers and sisters of the Raspberry Pi. Unlike it's older sibling it is a whole family with many kids and already grand childs. I thought I post a few unboxing pics and will follow up with a more detailed description on the software side, setup and usability later.
So what is it? It's a micro-PC driven by a 4 core 1.6GHz Cortex A7 (Allwinner H3), that is a 32bit ARM processor similar to the one used in the Pi 2 (the Pi 3 uses a 64bit A53). The small thing comes with 1GB of RAM and a lot of connectivity options, 4x USB (which was an important criteria to choose this model, Ethernet, HDMI, video, an audio plug and extension port and SD card slot.
The package came bundled with a tiny USB Wifi stick that will enable the small thing to connect to the rest of the world. I choose this bundle as there are supposedly some issues with different Wifi adapters.
So here we go :)
First boot up with Raspbian. The baby is alive :)