Key Features
- The low-cost variant of Hardkernel's most popular and powerful ARM SBC ODROID-N2+.
- Smaller and neater form factor: 69 x 56mm allows for mounting inside a variety of small devices
- Suitable for various standalone embedded system which don’t require Ethernet connectivity
- Suitable for building robots, drones, arcade consoles, human-machine-interface devices, and many other applications
- Faster and lower power consumption LPDDR4 RAM
This project was actually initiated at the request of several B2B customers. They were satisfied with the performance and convenience of the highly versatile N2+. However, they wanted to embed a relatively compact, cost-effective, simple, and still high-performance SBC into their system.
While the letter ‘L’ does not refer to any specific word, it has various meanings such as Little, Leaf, Lynx, Lovely, Lumen, LPDDR and Light. We removed some features which were available on the N2+ to reduce the material cost and to minimize the PCB form factor. Ethernet, RTC, SPI-Flash, OTG port, Analog audio output, IR receiver, three USB 3.0 ports and the large heatsink frame were removed.
Hardkernel replaced the DDR4 RAM chips with a single LPDDR4 chip to minimize the PCB form factor and reduce power consumption. As a bonus, around 20% higher DRAM interface clock frequency is an obvious and important improvement. We could find 10% to 20% of increased system performance compared to the original N2+ in various benchmark test results.
The GPU benchmark glmark2-es2 also showed about 10% of increased performance which is very similar to the improvement of the memory bandwidth (MBW) test.
Because the DRAM chip was changed from DDR4 to LPDDR4, the existing OS image for N2/N2+ will NOT boot on N2L. It is necessary to modify the boot loader files at a minimum. Currently, the following OS images for N2L have been prepared: Android 9.0 64bit and 32bit images, Ubuntu 22.04 Mate / Minimal with Kernel 4.9, Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop with Kernel 5.15 and upstream, EmuELEC (TBD)
Item Specifics
Dimensions including Fan heatsink: 69mm x 56mm x 22mm
Dimensions including Tall heatsink: 69mm x 56mm x 32mm
Weight: 50g including Fan heatsink, 66g including Tall heatsink
Processor: Amlogic S922X Processor (12nm), Quad-core Cortex-A73(2.2Ghz) and Dual-core Cortex-A53(2Ghz), ARMv8-A architecture with Neon and Crypto extensions Mali-G52 GPU with 6 x Execution Engines (800Mhz)
Memory: LPDDR4 2GiB with 32-bit bus width
Networking: Optional WiFi or Ethernet USB adapters
Power: 1 x DC jack: outer (negative) diameter 5.5mm, inner(positive) diameter 2.1mm
Power Input (DC): 7.5V ~ 16V *DC 12V/2A power adapter is recommended (included)
1 x eMMC slot
1 x Micro SD slot (DS/HS mode up to UHS-I SDR104)
1 x HDMI digital output
1 x USB 3.0 Host port
1 x USB 2.0 Host port
1 x Debug serial console (UART)
1 x MIPI DSI 4Lane (TBD)
Note: If you need wireless connectivity, consider using a USB adapter like our WiFi Module 5BK.