A year after releasing the Station P1 mini computer, the folks at Firefly are introducing a follow-up called, you guessed it, the Firefly Station P2.
The new model supports twice as much RAM, more storage expansion options, faster WiFi, and a newer (but not necessarily faster) processor.
It’s up for pre-order through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for about $122 and up. and should begin shipping to backers in May, 2021.
The Station P2 features a 5.6″ x 3.5″ x 1.2″ fanless chassis that houses a computer powered by a Rockchip RK3568 processor. That’s a quad-core 1.8 GHz ARM Cortex-A55 processor with Mali-G52 graphics. On paper, it’s actually a step down from the RK3399 processor used in the first-generation model, but the RK3568 is a much newer chip and it’s also a more energy efficient option.
The Station P2 is available with 2GB to 8GB of LPDDR4-1600 RAM and features 32GB to 128GB of eMMC storage onboard. But it also has M.2 and SATA III connectors for solid state drives or hard drives.
Other features include support for WiFi 6, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, and two antenna connectors. It also has a range of ports including:
- HDMI 2.0
- 3.5mm audio
- 2 x RJ45 (1000 Mbps)
- 1 x USB Type-C
- 1 x USB 3.0 Type-A
- 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A
- microSD card reader
- 1 x RJ45 control port for RS485 or RS232 connectors
Firefly says Station P2 will be compatible with Android 11 and Ubuntu 18.04 software.
Here’s a run-down of pricing options during the crowdfunding campaign:
- Station P2 with 2GB RAM/32GB storage for $122
- Station P2 with 4GB DRAM/64GB storage for $148
- Station P2 with 8GB RAM/128GB storage for $212
You can also core discounts if you order 10 or more units at once.
Note that pricing is in Hong Kong dollars, to the exact price may fluctuate depending on exchange rates.
You can also still pick up last year’s Station P1 with an RK3399 processor. It’s currently available from Firefly for $129 (for a model with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of eMMC storage.
via @fkardame
This article was originally published March 26, 2021 and last updated March 29, 2021
Copy/paste:
Good luck! Pro tip: Vesa mount standard sizes:
75 mm x 75 mm (75 mm = 2.95 inches)
100 mm x 100 mm (100mm = 3.94 inches)
200 mm x 200 mm (200 mm = 7.87 inches)
USB Type-C is universal. DC jack is not (sizes/polarity/specs).
Wish luck, it needs devices to get Linux up and running, there is Apple M1 to catch up. Unfortunately probably Huawei were most advanced before the USA crackdown on it.
Glad to see they upgraded to 802.11ac (Wifi 6), and the presence of 2 wifi antennas possibly suggests a 2×2 Mimo antenna? The single-antenna 802.11n on the original model was a major objection for me.
It looks like they finally got the sense to make this thing more upgradable. It’s a little disappointing to see the huge downgrade in SOC. Sure the new SOC has some extra features, but none of them benefit me.
I was initially excited when I read “The Station P2 will support up to 8GB of RAM”, as I took that as meaning that the RAM might be user-swappable/upgradable. But if you look at the 0:51 mark of their video, it appears the RAM modules are integrated to the motherboard. So I suppose this probably just means that Firefly might release different models with varying amounts of RAM?
The only gripe I have with this design is that it places essential IO ports on opposite sides of the chassis. HDMI, DC power, and Ethernet are on one side, and all of the USB ports are on the opposite side. This is really annoying.
I don’t mind this so much if they at least place all of the essential ports on the back-side, and then a few other ports on the front for added convenience. But this layout means that I will always have essential cables coming out of both sides. This will make it really inconvenient to mount it on the back of a monitor (if that’s even possible), and it will take up lots of desk space to sit it on a desk.
The RK3568 has 4 A55’s at 1.8-2.0GHz vs the RK3399 with 2 A72’s at 1.8-2.0GHz and 4 A53’s at 1.4-1.5GHz.
When both SOCs are at their max clock rates the RK3568 is about 35% slower than the RK3399 for both single and multi-threaded workloads and the GPU is similarly slower. It uses about 30% less power, yielding a slight performance per watt advantage to the RK3399, which is surprising given that the RK3399 is older. That may shift to favour the RK3568 later as more optimisations land for it.
Advantages of the RK3568 include the 800TOPS NPU, 1080p60 HEVC encoding, twice the max memory with ECC support, a single NUMA node which may help with some workloads, some additional fixed IO hardware, and (debatable) lower power usage.
So it’s more of a step sideways than a downgrade, unless you were specifically looking for CPU/GPU performance.
Thanks for doing the legwork on that comparison.
Personally I don’t find the added features of the RK3568 to be of any benefit to me. The added support of ECC ram is neat, but irrelevant to this Mini PC, as the RAM is not user-swappable, so we’re stuck with whatever cheap RAM modules they’ve picked.