Raspberry Pi Alternative Blueberry Pi: A DIY Raspberry Pi Competitor

Richard Elliot

By Richard Elliot / News / 21st August 2018

There are loads of Raspberry Pi alternatives. Some, like the Raspberry Pi, adopt fruity monikers such as the Orange Pi and Banana Pi. While the most popular single-board computer (SBC) is easily the Raspberry Pi, competing maker boards nevertheless offer excellent hardware. Enter the Blueberry Pi, a do-it-yourself Raspberry Pi competitor. It's not the most powerful board, but it's easy to put together, versatile, and affordable.

Raspberry Pi Alternative Blueberry Pi

Maker Marcel Thürmer concocted the idea for the Blueberry Pi, an open-source Raspberry Pi competitor. It's essentially an SBC with an Allwiner V3s system on chip (SoC) at its core. The main difference in the Blueberry Pi and alternatives like the Raspberry Pi is that with this open-source single-board computer, you can build one yourself. According to Thürmer, it's inexpensive to make a Blueberry Pi. 

Unfortunately, the Allwinner V3s comes with a measly 64MB of RAM. That's well below what you'll find on the Raspberry Pi Zero which is 512MB. However, its system on chip is ideal for use with devices like cameras since it's simple to solder and use with a PCB. 

Onboard, you'll find a USB port, camera serial interface, and 100mbps Ethernet port, as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It's capable of booting from a microSD card or SPI flash. There's not a video output yet, but plans are set to add either an HDMI port or VGA cable.

DIY Blueberry Pi SBC: Final Thoughts

While the Blueberry Pi isn't the most powerful single-board computer option available, it proves that open-source DIY SBCs are totally feasible. Moreover, they can be pretty affordable. Largely, with DIY open-source maker boards, it's not worth making your own unless you plan to build in bulk. Yet the Blueberry Pi offers a cheap SBC option. The main drawback is its notable lack of power. Clocking in weaker than a Raspberry Pi Zero, real-world uses are limited to maker projects which require little computing power. Still, this could be an awesome DIY adventure and provide the foundation for a low-powered DIY Internet of Things (IoT) device. 


What SBCs are you using? 

Photo of Richard Elliot

Residing on the south coast of England, Rich has spent the last few years building Electomaker.io from the ground up. He is usually found behind a laptop coordinating the rest of the EM team and occasionally finding time to contribute articles to the blog. When not tapping away at a laptop, he can be found either paddleboarding, at the beach, playing golf (badly), or camping with his family.

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