10 great Banana Pi projects

The global success of the single-board computer Raspberry Pi developed in England by the Raspberry Pi Foun­da­tion has inspired several copycats since it first launched. One serious com­peti­tor is the Banana Pi developed in China. While it has not yet achieved the same notoriety as its pre­de­ces­sor, it has made a name for itself as a versatile mini-computer. The reason for this is quite obvious. Single-board computers (SBC) are small, consume very little power, and are cheap to acquire. Nev­er­the­less, their per­for­mance is perfectly suf­fi­cient for realizing all kinds of projects.

We have compiled some in­ter­est­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for the Banana Pi. Some of these ideas are rel­a­tive­ly easy to realize with little prior knowledge. Others may require a certain amount of training, depending on the person’s current level of knowledge. Once a Banana Pi idea has been suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed, you will be able to enjoy the un­beat­able price-to-per­for­mance ratio of this small computer for a long time to come.

The Banana Pi is a mini-computer with a highly compact design. In a Banana Pi, all the important com­po­nents of a full-fledged computer are found on a single circuit board that is barely bigger than a business card. In addition to the central processor and memory, it has basic in­ter­faces such as a USB port ensuring that this single-board computer can be extended and ad­di­tion­al hardware can be connected (e.g. monitors, hard drives, memory cards and WLAN antennas).

A micro-USB charger, also used for smart­phones, is enough to cover its low power re­quire­ments. In terms of price, this piece of hardware usually does not exceed $100. Many models cost sig­nif­i­cant­ly less (starting at about $20). The boards are delivered in their original state - cases usually cost extra. However, one dis­ad­van­tage of cases is that they can make modular expansion difficult or even im­pos­si­ble.

Those looking to suc­cess­ful­ly implement Banana Pi projects and to make the right choice in terms of practical ap­pli­ca­tions will run into a somewhat confusing hardware selection. The first single-board computers were brought to market under the name “Banana Pi” in 2014 by the ed­u­ca­tion­al ini­tia­tive LeMaker.org. Soon after, the Chinese tech­nol­o­gy company SinoVoip presented its first model “BPI-M1”. Since then, the two man­u­fac­tur­ers have been competing in this market segment and have both declared them­selves to be the “official” man­u­fac­tur­ers.

LeMaker focuses on the two basic models of Banana Pi and the follow-up Banana Pi Pro and offers ex­ten­sions for it. In contrast, SinoVoip offers more dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in its range. In other words, they provide different models for specific ap­pli­ca­tions (e.g. smart homes, network routers, in­dus­tri­al ap­pli­ca­tions). In addition, the SinoVoip models are modularly ex­tend­able.

You can get a good overview of the Banana Pi product line by checking its dedicated page on Wikipedia. The Tanna TechBiz YouTube channel presents some models and their hardware com­po­nents in video format.

When buying a model from the product line, you need to consider more than just the hardware com­po­nents and per­for­mance that would be right for your Banana Pi project. Ex­tend­abil­i­ty can also be important depending on what you plan to do with the Banana Pi. For example, the Banana Pi M2 Berry is com­pat­i­ble with Raspberry Pi pe­riph­er­als and supports its extension boards.

You will also need a suitable operating system for your Banana Pi projects. This is stored on a microSD card which is connected to the computer via a des­ig­nat­ed interface (a slot). In addition to Android, various Linux versions run on this single-board computer, some of which are specif­i­cal­ly designed for Banana Pi hardware (e.g. openSUSE, Arch Linux and Lubuntu for Banana Pi). Among the Banana Pi images available for download are Bananian and Raspbian, both of which are Debian-based operating systems.

The following video demon­strates how to get started with a Banana Pi (in­stal­la­tion of the operating system, etc.):

All the Banana Pi projects presented below rely on the open-source concept of the software. The program’s source code is publicly available. It can be obtained freely at no cost online.

The basic con­fig­u­ra­tion of this mini-computer may be enough to implement a Banana Pi idea. However, you will often need to equip the hardware through an initial upgrade project for planned follow-up projects. By extending this mini-computer, it can make it easier to use and enable you to use the Banana Pi for in­ter­est­ing ap­pli­ca­tions. For example, a LED screen offers more flexible use without having to connect an external monitor. It is even possible to create a digital clock with the upgraded mini-computer.

The video by the Ex­plain­ing­Com­put­ers YouTube channel clearly describes how to extend a LeMaker Banana Pi with a camera and a small LED screen:

By having its own case, this can give the little computer a special touch and make it suitable for the living room. 3D-printing cases yourself offers the advantage of being able to match the case perfectly to your model.

If you’re looking to store files centrally and access the stored data from different devices, you could use the Banana Pi as a cloud server. Having your own cloud is an ideal solution when you want to protect your privacy and remain in­de­pen­dent from major cloud computing service providers such as Apple (iCloud) and Windows (Microsoft OneDrive). To set up a cloud, you will need special server software. The cost-free open-source programs ownCloud and Nextcloud provide good services. There are even apps available for both of these cloud storage solutions.

This detailed step-by-step guide (in German) from Tech­nikA­ma­teur demon­strates how to install Nextcloud on a Banana Pi. Project Banana Pi provides detailed in­struc­tions and a video tutorial on how to install ownCloud on a Banana Pi.

If you have opted for the Bananian operating system, this blog post can provide you with in­struc­tions on how to install Nextcloud and ownCloud. If you are unsure which cloud solution best meets your needs, you can check this com­par­i­son of ownCloud and Nextcloud to help you decide.

These days, there are countless public networks and WLAN hotspots that have not been protected by any special security measures (e.g. en­cryp­tion). Hackers find these networks to be child’s play and can easily intercept important personal data. If you want to avoid security risks and be able to safely access your home data files remotely, you can use the Banana Pi as a VPN server.

Using a VPN tunnel, you establish a point-to-point con­nec­tion from a client (e.g. a smart­phone, laptop) to the Banana Pi VPN server. Af­ter­wards, you can send data packets via the con­nec­tion worry-free. For the transfer, you will need the IP address of the VPN server and the login in­for­ma­tion for the virtual private network. OpenVPN is a popular software program that handles data traffic securely using the TLS protocol. Project Banana Pi demon­strates how to set up a VPN on your own using this program.

Since many of the setup routines for single-board computers are similar, you can also refer to these in­struc­tions: “Setting up a VPN server via Raspberry Pi and OpenVPN”.

Thanks to in­te­grat­ed network tech­nol­o­gy, the Banana Pi can also be used as a router and a firewall. When combined with the free-to-use Linux-based router operating system OpenWrt, ambitious hobbyists have a versatile and powerful al­ter­na­tive to con­ven­tion­al routers at their disposal.

The user Moe Long created a tutorial for in­stalling OpenWrt on the Banana Pi R2. A more powerful al­ter­na­tive to the R2 model is the recently released Banana Pi BPI-R64.

Due to their hardware com­po­nents, both models are well-suited to being used as modern network routers with fast LAN and WLAN con­nec­tions. If you want to use a different Banana Pi board as a router, we recommend taking a look at the OpenWrt Project homepage where you can find a list of the available firmware images for various boards.

A NAS (network-attached storage) is useful if you want to use several devices in your home network to access a central file server with a larger storage capacity or if you want to make regular backups and manage them centrally. If needed, you can also use the file server when you are out and about by accessing it remotely via the internet.

In this detailed guide from LeMaker, you can find in­struc­tions on how to set up the Banana Pro as a file server, define access rights, and share files. You can extend your home server’s func­tion­al­i­ty with a mail and print server.

To implement this Banana Pi idea, you will need a model with high per­for­mance in­ter­faces for the network con­nec­tion and for con­nect­ing storage media. We strongly recommend boards with a SATA con­nec­tion and Gigabit LAN.

Those who travel fre­quent­ly for business or who do not wish to leave their home un­at­tend­ed during a longer vacation trip can use Banana Pi as a webcam server and set up a livestream on their smart­phone sent from sur­veil­lance cameras via the internet. The Banana Pro model is suitable for this project. In this blog post, Tanna TechBiz shows how to set up a webcam server for livestreams. The software used is the open-source product Motion.

A DLNA server provides media files (e.g. music, video and image files) on the network that were pre­vi­ous­ly stored on a central storage device (e.g. an NAS device). You can use a smart­phone, laptop, desktop computer or tablet to access these files. Using a DLNA client installed on the devices, you can browse media libraries, listen to playlists of music files or play slide shows of images.

In this guide, you can read about how to install a media server on the Banana Pi. The open source software used for this project is called Ready­Media.

Smart home controls have made enormous strides in recent years. These days, many house­holds use voice commands. However, many ap­pli­ca­tions just require a basic control center which you can set up with a small computer.

On alexblog­gt.com (a German-language blog), you can find a tutorial on how to switch to wireless sockets for the Banana Pi. The blogger Alex also explains how to use an Android smart­phone as a control device with the help of a widget.

By mon­i­tor­ing your smart home with cameras and sensors (e.g. fire and smoke detectors), you can help to prevent any major disasters and increase your home’s security even when you are away. The website home-au­toma­tions.net has a tutorial on how wireless sensor control and mon­i­tor­ing works with a Banana Pi M1. Using a case with an LED display (links to a German-language blog) in­te­grates the control tech­nol­o­gy into the home en­vi­ron­ment and optimizes its use.

The Jubito blog provides a detailed tutorial on how to install Jubito on a Banana Pi. This open source software is commonly used on single-board computers for home au­toma­tion. You will need to use Lubuntu, an official version of the Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion Ubuntu, as the operating system. You can go to hackster.io to find out what hardware you will need in addition to the Banana Pi for any smart home projects with Jubito.

Banana Pis are also good for gaming sessions, such as during work breaks. Retro games from the early days of computer games are es­pe­cial­ly popular since they require less computing power than modern games with their photo-realistic graphics. Games for the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive can be run through emulators that simulate these old video game consoles. The models Banana Pi M2 Zero and Banana Pi M2+ are suitable for being used as emulators for these classic games:

This Banana Pi project also requires emulation software such as RetrO­r­angePi and ROM files of the in­di­vid­ual games which can be found on the internet. However, the use of ripped games on emulators is not free from copyright issues, so you should make sure you un­der­stand the laws around this before down­load­ing them:

The following tutorials provide more Banana Pi ideas for gamers:

• Tutorial for the game Nudoku
• Tutorial for the game nInvaders
• Tutorial for the game Moon-Buggy

If you are skilled at working with your hands, you can create an in­ex­pen­sive tele­vi­sion receiver with a recording function. These in­struc­tions (in German) from fdm-ware.de produce an end product that offers the usual con­ve­niences: remote control, a front-button control panel, and a headphone con­nec­tion. However, you should have ex­pe­ri­ence in modifying elec­tron­ic com­po­nents before at­tempt­ing this Banana Pi ap­pli­ca­tion since the mini-computer’s board has to be modified. Ad­di­tion­al com­po­nents are required alongside the Banana Pi including a case, a satellite (SAT) tuner for satellite reception and an LED display.

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