Overview
This is the first single-board produced by Asus and out of the box it gives you the impression of it being a fantastic piece of hardware.
It is very much alike to the Raspberry Pi micro computer – in both functionality and hardware features.The prt and connectors are placed in a same alike manner to the RPi.
The board comes with an Ethernet LAN socket, HDMI, 4 USB ports, 3.5 mm Jack, camera connectors, and 40 pin GPIO connectors.
What actually differentiates Asus Tinker Board from the RPi, is the purple color whereas the latter has a green ‘old-school’ color on its circuit board
Specs
It’s got a 2GB RAM, Quad Core 1.8 Ghz processor, and a 4K hardware decoding functionality.
Here’s a little bit more info about these specifications of the Tinker board :
⦁ The Asus Tinker Board quad core processor runs on ARM Cortex A17 CPU and
⦁ An ARM Mali GPU that runs at 600 MHz.
⦁ The HDMI supports an output of upto 4K resolution of data at 30fps (this is done via the hardware decoders onboard the microcomputer.)
⦁ The 2 GB DDR3 RAM are positioned on the back (or rather bottom – whichever position you’re holding the board); same as the microSD card slot.
⦁ Other features available include the WiFi and the Bluetooth module. What’s special about this is the little antenna in black and chrome fronts that’s detachable. Ths means you can upgrade it with another external antenna. Averagely you should get a high speed on wireless performance from this device.
⦁ Finally you have the micro USB power connector for booting the Tinker board.
The audio output is actually of good quality. The Tinker Board manual quotes a 192KHz/24bit HD audio for the device. Additionally it can be used as a mic input.
One of the favorite things that you notice on the Asus Tinker Board is the color-coded GPIO connectors – this helps clear the confusion of plugging into the right connectors, on your next DIY project.
There are specuative reviews from quite a number of users that the Asus Tinker Board is twice powerful as a Raspberry Pi 3 micro-computer.
Tinker Board is priced at around $90 but it offers more for extra investment.
Check out the next article on the Debian Tinker OS
