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Add to SafariWhen comparing Banana Pi vs Tessel 2, the Slant community recommends Tessel 2 for most people. In the question“What are the best single-board computers?” Tessel 2 is ranked 37th while Banana Pi is ranked 47th. The most important reason people chose Tessel 2 is:
Out of the box it supports Node 4.x LTS and doesn't require any setup to use it.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Official support for multiple Desktop-version Linux distros
Banana Pi officially supports Fedora, Arch, Lubuntu and openSUSE. It also can be used with Raspbian (Debian derivative) or Android.
Pro Additional keys for booting or shutting down
Pro SATA port
Pro Excellent compatibility with Raspberry Pi software
Other than having a port of Raspbian (the official OS for Raspberry Pi) available for use with full capabilities, Banana Pi can also use many applications that were originally written for Raspberry. One of these is WiringPi, a C/C++ library which gives easy access to Raspberry's I/O with a strong Arduino flavor. But that is just one example of the many open source projects being ported to Banana Pi.
Pro Onboard Wi-Fi
Most models have an onboard Wi-Fi.
Pro NodeJS support out of the box
Out of the box it supports Node 4.x LTS and doesn't require any setup to use it.
Pro Co-processor system
Runs Linux and user application code on a 580MHz Mediatek router-on-a-chip, with an asynchronous 48MHz SAMD21 coprocessor for GPIO, ADC, I2C, SPI, PWM and UART programming
Pro Programmable via USB or Wifi
The process for deploying software, whether it's JavaScript, Python or Rust, is exposed the same way for both USB and Wifi connections.
Pro Easy to get started with
The Tessel 2's "Getting Started" experience requires little more than installing Node.js and a single package (the CLI) via npm. Complete walkthroughs for Linux, Mac and Windows are available and up-to-date
Cons
Con Bad software support
Con No off-the-shelf camera modules
The A20 chip that the Banana Pi uses lacks a true Camera Serial Interface implementation, instead it uses a parallel camera interface. The problem with this is that there are no off-the-shelf camera modules that support this and can connect to the Banana Pi, but it should be mentioned that the makers of Banana Pi have promised to create a camera module that is supported by it.
Con Does not fit most Raspberry Pi cases, even though it's where it clearly has gotten the inspiration from
The Banana Pi is pretty noticeable a Rapberry Pi lookalike and the name does not hide this information either. Unfortunately it's a bit larger than the Raspberry Pi, making it very hard to fit into most Raspberry Pi cases.
Con Very little memory
64 megabytes of RAM. This places it more in line with an Arduino style board than a SBC on the level of Raspberry Pi.
