Talking about Single Board Computers

Due to the current shortage of Raspberry Pi’s around the globe, OKdo (https://www.okdo.com/) has started to invest in another Single Board Computer (SBC) called the Rock Pi.

This SBC contains a very similar layout to the Raspberry Pi 3 but has the speed and power of the Pi 4 with extra abilities (see the table further below for more details).

I am being offered the opportunity to be a tester for the RockPi 4 SE and as such will be getting one of them to test and play with.

As such, this blog will no longer be simple about Raspberry Pi but will expand to cover any SBC I can get hold of to test and evaluate.

My first testing will involve seeing how it operates as a small computer with a full desktop and YouTube experience. I will also be testing what it is like to use it as a drop-in Raspberry Pi replacement tool.

This will cover tools and software like HomeAssistant, GPIO usage, and more. But I won’t stop there. As this is more powerful than the Raspberry Pi, I will look to test that too. I will look at how well Android runs on this device and test things like emulation, and home media streaming.


ROCK 4 SE Board
SOCRockchip RK3399-T
Processor Arm® big.LITTLE™ technology (Dual Cortex®-A72@1.5GHz, Quad Cortex-A53@1.0GHz) 
GPUArm Mali™ – T860MP4 GPU, supporting OpenGL ES 1.1 /2.0 /3.0 /3.1 /3.2, Vulkan 1.0, Open CL 1.1 1.2, DX11 
Memory Dual channel (64bit) 4GB LPDDR4 RAM 
Power ReqUSB Type-C™ PD/QC 9-12V 
HDMI1 x 4k@60fps HDMI 
USB2 x USB 2.0
1 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 3.0 OTG (Switchable)
Audio Ports3.5mm jack, analog stereo output, microphone input
Connectivity WiFi 5/BT 5.0, BLE, Gigabit Ethernet
MIPI1 x 2 lane DSI/1 x 2 lane CSI
Storage Micro SD / M.2 (M key) / eMMC
EMMCB2B connector
UARTS2 x UART
RTCYES (support for external battery)
Software Ubuntu Linux support
Android 7.1/Android 9.0/Android 10/Android 11 support
GPU-enabled AI stack such as CaffeHardware access/control library for Linux/Android
TemperatureOperation Temperature: 0~50 ℃/ Storage Temperature: -20~80 ℃