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ASUS Tinker Board Competes with the Raspberry Pi

With the advent of the Raspberry Pi (RBPi), the popularity of single board computers (SBCs) has risen rapidly over the last five years. The RBPi has easy software and a low price that has won it a vibrant community consisting of not only coding hobbyists, but also teachers and children, whose minds and hearts it has captured. This success of the RBPi has led to scores of other vendors pitching in with their SBCs. Among them, ASUS is the latest with its Tinker Board SBC, challenging the RBPi.

The Tinker Board from ASUS offers an SBC with somewhat higher premium hardware compared to that offered by the RBPi. According to ASUS, its Tinker Board tries to meet the demands of enthusiasts who are looking for better performance. Although their efforts are commendable and they have created a great piece of hardware, the real hurdle they have yet to overcome are the software and support.

If you are not careful with the Tinker board, at first glance you might mistake it for a more colorful RBPi. However, the tweaks exhibited by the Tinker Board design makes it feel more like a premium product. For instance, icons covering the board depict its various functions, such as they clearly differentiate between the display and the camera connectors.

Color-coding on the Tinker Board helps identify most of the pins on the general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header. For instance, the +5 V pins are all colored red, while the ground pins are black. Moreover, ASUS has maintained the same pin configuration for the GPIO as that followed by RBPi. Therefore, transferring your projects over to the Tinker Board is very easy. The Tinker Board comes with a stick-on heatsink. This is really helpful as, under load, its SOC runs far hotter than that of the RBPi does.

The Tinker Board sports a faster system-on-chip, the Rockchip RK3288, a quad-core running at a maximum frequency of 1.8 GHz. Not only is this faster than that of the RBPi3, the Tinker Board also has double the RAM. On the ASUS site, they have benchmarks to show the speed of the Tinker Board as far above its competitor, the RBPi. Comparatively, the site claims double the CPU power and GPU performance over that of the RBPi.

Apart from the faster chip and the extra RAM, ASUS has also added the Gigabit Ethernet connector in place of the 10/100 Ethernet of the RBPi. The Tinker Board also has an uprated sound chip and an upgradable Wi-Fi antenna. According to ASUS, the performance of the USB storage is superior and the operation of the SD card is faster. ASUS attributes this to the dedicated controller of the Gigabit Ethernet, which does not allow any reduction in LAN speed during USB data transfers. Comparatively, the RBPi has a USB-to-Ethernet bridge, which makes the two functions interdependent.

However, unlike the Tinker Board, the RBPi has a website full of useful information. The RBPi also has the NOOBS installer, which simplifies installation of a number of operating systems. Comparatively, the website of the Tinker Board has two images, one for the Debian-based Tinker OS, and another based on Android.

Tinker Board: Raspberry Pi Competitor from ASUS

The community of single board computer users is passionate and the DIY enthusiasts are growing daily. While they are infatuated with the amazingly tiny package called the Raspberry Pi (RBPi), they are constantly clamoring for more performance and connectivity features. This demand has produced several competitors to the RBPi, and the tech giant, ASUS Computers is now providing one in the form of a Tinker Board.

The ASUS Computers product is a mini-PC based on the ARM core, and its actual model number is the ASUS 90MB0QY1-M0EAY0. However, it is easier to remember it as the Tinker Board. The smart name from ASUS for the product is the exact demographic of its intention, offering a tiny, all-in-one product for makers and tinkerers, to use in media servers, fun projects, and embedded applications. For instance, the Tinker Board allows one to build a personal NES Mini alternative.

Although a 64-bit ARM Cortex-A47 quad-core processor, the Broadcom BCM2837, powers the RBPi3 at 1.2 GHz, a 32-bit ARM Cortex-A17, the quad-core Rockchip RK3288 processor powers the Tinker Board, operating at 1.8 GHz. ASUS claims the Tinker Board is almost twice as fast as the RBPi3 model B. Additionally, against the 1 GB RAM configuration of the RBPi3, the Tinker Board offers 2 GB of RAM.

The Tinker Board has other advantages as well. The hardware includes the complete H.264 4K video decode capability, supported by a far stronger graphics performance from the ARM Mali-T764 with a graphics core of the Rockchip RK3288. The audio capabilities are also better with the Asus minicomputer offering audio sample rates at 192K/24-bit, while the RBPi3 offers only 48K/16-bit, which necessitates an add-on board for HD audio from the RBPi3.

The integrated, Gigabit Ethernet port at full speed on the Tinker Board gives it a substantial boost over the 100 Mb LAN on the RBPi3. Similar to that available on the RBPi3B, the Tinker Board also has an 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4 capability. In addition, it has support for SDIO 3.0, and offers swappable antennas for the built-in 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi module.

Similar to the RBPi3B, the Tinker Board also supports the Debian Linux (modified by ASUS) operating system and KODI, with its slick media streaming interface. Similar to the RBPi, the Tinker Board also comes with no on-board storage, and you have to use a micro SD card. However, the additional capabilities on the Tinker Board make it about twice as expensive as compared to the market price of the RBPi3B.

Physically, both single board computers are of the same size, with mounting holes in the same position. Obviously, ASUS wants the Tinker Board to be a drop-in replacement for the RBPi3. The same configuration of the GPIO pins for both boards lends further support to this credence.

The RBPi concept has spawned a whole new era of tiny computer devices, selling in several schools, colleges, and universities. Many other device manufacturers have since piled on and released their own version of the credit-card sized powerhouse.

In this chaotic, crowded environment, the specifications of the Tinker Board, although not ground breaking, could play nicely in the existing RBPi-based projects.