Though the situation is improving, it can still be difficult to find a Raspberry Pi in stock. Meanwhile, companies from around the world continue to offer their own alternatives to the world's most popular single-board computer. A product of Polish Electronics Maker EVEO, the Urve Board Pi has identical dimensions and a nearly-identical layout to the Raspberry Pi 3B / 3B+ but throws in unique features such as an M.2 SSD port, a real-time clock and a power-over-Ethernet (PoE) connector.
Available now for the equivalent of $90 on Polish web store TEM, the Urve Board Pi has an all-white PC PCB that's the same 85 x 56 mm size as the Pi 3B and it has pretty-much the same ports in the same locations so it should fit into a case that would accept a Pi 3B / 3B+.
Also, just like on a Raspberry Pi, the Urve Board Pi has a MIPI CSI camera connector and MIPI DSI display connector. Its set of 40 GPIO pins has a pinout that appears to match that of all recent Raspberry Pi computers. So it's quite possible that some of the best Raspberry Pi HATs could work with it.
More importantly, there's an M.2 socket that the company lists as an M.2 SATA port on most of its spec sheets, but as an M.2 PCIe 2.0 NVMe SSD in the instruction manual. The socket appears to be M keyed as we would normally see for an NVMe SSD so it's unclear. Either way, you're getting much faster storage than you would from the built-in eMMC Flash memory or even one of the best microSD cards.
There's a coin cell battery slot for a real-time clock (RTC) that will keep the time even if the Urve Board Pi is unplugged. There are also pins for a power-over-Ethernet connection (PoE) and there's some kind of microphone connector on the back side of the board. The board has Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth connectivity.
| Processor | 1.8-GHz Rockchip RK3566 Quad-Core, Cortex A55 |
| GPU | Mali-G52 (up to 4K, 60 fps) |
| RAM | 2GB LPDDR4 |
| Onboard Storage | 8GB eMMC |
| Video Out | 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x MIPI DSI |
| Storage connectors | microSD reader, M.2 SSD |
| USB | 2x USB 2.0, 1x USB 2.0 OTG, 1x USB 3.0 |
| Networking | 1x Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 |
| Camera Port | 1x MIPI CSI Port |
| Power | 1x USB-C, 1x PoE Connector |
| Audio In / Out | 3.5mm audio, Microphone input |
| GPIO | 40 GPIO Pins |
| Dimensions | 85 x 56 mm |
| Weight | 50g |
The Urve Board Pi is powered by a Rockchip RK3566 Quad Core Cortex A55 CPU running at 1.8 GHz. It's unclear if this would be faster or slower than the 1.5-GHz Broadcom BCM2711 Cortex-A72 chip in the Raspberry Pi 4B, but it's likely a lot faster than the 1.4-GHz BCM2837 Cortex A53 CPU in the Raspberry Pi 3B+. It comes standard with 2GB of LPDDR4 RAM and a built-in 8GB of eMMC Flash memory.
As with any Raspberry Pi competitor, it cannot run Raspberry Pi OS, but it can run Debian 11 (Raspberry Pi OS is based on Debian) and Android. However, if it can work with Raspberry Pi HATs and accessories, there's a good chance it could serve as a competent substitute for the Raspberry Pi 3B+.
via Lilliputing
