FriendlyELEC has announced a new version of its dual gigabit ethernet mini-router, the NanoPi R2C, as spotted by CNX Software. This deceptively tiny SBC is much smaller than a Raspberry Pi and houses plenty of power to act as a soft router and as a miniature file server, all be it with only USB2.0 for drives.
Based on the Rockchip RK3328 SOC, and with a USB 2.0 port and GPIO pins for expansion, the NanoPi R2C comes in a metal case measuring just 2.4 x 2.4 x 1.1 inches (60 x 60 x 27.5 mm). Alongside the SOC, which runs a quad-core Cortex-A53 at 1.5 GHz with a Mali-450MP2 GPU and 1GB of DDR4, you get a bootable Micro SD slot, a single USB 2.0 port for expansion, and a USB-C port for power. Ethernet is taken care of by a MotorComm YT8521S Gigabit Ethernet transceiver on the way in (replacing the Realtek RTL8211E from the previous model, the NanoPi R2S), and a Realtek RTL8153 USB 3.0 to Ethernet controller on the way out, giving 941Mbps each way. There’s a footprint for an SPI flash chip too, along with a three-pin serial header for debugging and a ten-pin GPIO that breaks out I2C, UART, IR_Rx, 5V, 3.3V and GND.
The router should work with FriendlyWrt, UbuntuCore, and Armbian, and options for the USB port include 4G modems, webcams, or Wi-Fi modules. It’s available now from FriendlyArm, but unlike prior boards in the series, it’s not available without its metal case. For more details, check out the FriendlyArm wiki. If you prefer your SBC with a Raspberry flavor, there is a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 powered dual gigabit router from Seeed.
