I was going through Microcenter's website before I go to their store and pick up a few things when I found this: pcDuino8 Uno for $50.
http://www.microcenter.com/product/456243/pcDuino8_Uno_Development_Board It's an Octa-Core CPU Arm system - 8 cores at $50! What's the catch? Most Octa-core systems start at $120! But wait, the FriendlyArm Nano Pi (Nano PC T3) is also an Octa-core system and its website has it for $60! Is a price war going on?
http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=123 The catch with the pcDuino comes in 2 hooks, or parts:
One: It uses the H8 Allwinner CPU, which is a 32/64 bit CPU. There is no issue with that software wise as it is compatible with the Arm 8 and Arm 7 CPUs. It just means that it is slow on some operations and fast on others. It is like the Intel CoreDuo, Core2Dup and Core2Quad CPUs. Compared to today's Intel i3, i5, and i7 CPUs, te Core2Quad will beat the pants off the i3 and i5, and give the i7 a run for its money. But because they are labelled as old... you know the story. The Nano Pi Octa-core system uses a A53, which is Arm 7 Compatible but running at 64bit all the time. This is similar to the A53 Quad Core used on the Raspberry Pi 3 but with double the cores., and those systems using the A53 Quad Core (notably Orange Pi) had some software issues with it.
Two: This is a major one... The pcDuino 8 does not have a Raspberry Pi GPIO. Instead it has an Arduino Uno GPIO.
The Bad - that's 30 pins compared to 40 on the Raspberry Pi, so its lower in I/O capabilities. You also have to program it as if it were an Arduino.
The Good - you have 8 analog inputs and 16 PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) Digital I/O. I'm guessing the Digital I/O is 5V and not 3.3V as in the Arduino and not the R-PI. Plus you have all those board that you can use on the Arduino , you can use on this pcDuino 8.
Everything else it is still a Pi system or sorts, with the multiple USB ports, the SD Card for Disk I/O and the HDMI/Audio Jack Ports. The only issue is the limited pins to the GPIO, but the functionality is more broad with the Analog and pulse width modulation. The R-Pi has 0 Analog Ports and you have simulate pulse width modulation in the program you are creating.
Another issue is the size of the board. It is as big or bigger than an Arduino Megs 2560 board, more than twice the size (length) of a R-Pi Model B. The Nano Pi (PC T3) is about 3/4 the size of an R-Pi board, and uses the R-Pi GPIO.
Despite all this, the pcDuino 8 looks like an interesting set up to play with. It uses Linux like an R-Pi but real world I/O of an Arduino. And the price is interestingly affordable.
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