The Banana Pi is an evolution of the Raspberry Pi that uses an AllWinner ARM Cortex-A7 dual core processor with MALI400MP2 dual core GPU in place of the Raspberry Pi's single-core Broadcom SoC for a very useful performance boost. This board has 1GB of DDR3 RAM compared to the Raspberry Pi with 512Mb. It also has 2 x USB 2.0 ports plus a micro USB OTG (On The Go) and a micro USB power input only connector (like the other Pi). In terms of video output it supports HDMI, composite video and LVDS including touch. Both Pis share a common 26-pin GPIO layout meaning add-ons for one should work with the other although the B+ add-ons use a 40-pin GPIO connector. It's worth noting that the composite video connector has moved slightly compared to the Raspberry Pi which may cause issues fitting some GPIO boards. Add-ons which use cables should fit.
A rich selection of downloadable operating systems are available from www.lemaker.org and include Lubuntu, Bananian, OpenSuse, Fedora Arch, Android and for the hard core Linux hacker there is Gentoo. There are even specialist distributions that will turn your Banana Pi into a NAS device (Network Attached Storage), a media centre (based on XBMC) or a dedicated router (based on OpenWrt).
A big difference to the Raspberry Pi is the inclusion of a SATA connector allowing you to attach 2.5" SATA hard disk drives or SSD drives. A power connector is provided for the SATA drive and a 2A PSU is recommended for your Banana Pi in this case. Should you want to try a 3.5" drive you'll need an external power supply for it.
The Banana Pi packs in so much that it has grown slightly compared to its single core rival and so you'll need a specific case for it; Raspberry Pi cases won't be big enough. The CSI connector is in fact a parallel camera interface and works with Banana Pi cameras only, not the Raspberry Pi CSI cameras.
The design incorporates a very useful power switch in case you're a bit squeamish about devices that power on when you plug them in.
