Banana Pi M5

  • Learned of its existence from Explaining Computers
  • Has onboard eMMC storage.
  • SOC: Amlogic S905X3 with 4 x A55 cores (up to 2GHz), Mali-G31 MP2 GPU.
  • Can boot from 16 GB eMMC or SD Card slot.
  • Uses USB-C for power (5V @ 2A) and eMMC setup.
  • Has 4 switch (The wiki says 3 : Reset, Power and U-Boot 😕).
  • 4 GB LPDDR4 RAM.
  • 10/100/1000 Mbit/s Ethernet. Wi-Fi/Bluetooth requires an optional USB dongle.
  • One HDMI 2.0 (up to 4K@60Hz with HDR, CEC, EDID)
  • Audio via 3.5 mm jack and HDMI.
  • 4 x USB 3.0 ports.
  • 3-pin UART connector and 40-pin GPIO connectors. Similar layout to Raspberry Pi.
  • IR receiver.
  • No Camera (CSI) or display (DSI) connector.
  • Need to use an Amlogic burning tool to write to the built-in eMMC storage.
  • Pre-built android, Ubuntu Mate, Ubuntu Server, Debian Buster, and CoreELEC images are available.

The Quick Way to Display System and Shell Information in Powershell on Windows 10

  • I have added the following to my $Profile:

    Write-Host @"
______________________________________________________________
  __          ___           _                     __  ___  
  \ \        / (_)         | |                   /_ |/ _ \ 
   \ \  /\  / / _ _ __   __| | _____      _____   | | | | |
    \ \/  \/ / | | '_ \ / _` |/ _ \ \ /\ / / __|  | | | | |
     \  /\  /  | | | | | (_| | (_) \ V  V /\__ \  | | |_| |
      \/  \/   |_|_| |_|\__,_|\___/ \_/\_/ |___/  |_|\___/ 

  ____    ___       ______ _ _     _   _                      
 / ___|  /   |      | ___ (_) |   | | | |                     
/ /___  / /| |______| |_/ /_| |_  | |_| | ___  _ __ ___   ___ 
| ___ \/ /_| |______| ___ \ | __| |  _  |/ _ \| '_ ` _ \ / _ \
| \_/ |\___  |      | |_/ / | |_  | | | | (_) | | | | | |  __/
\_____/    |_/      \____/|_|\__| \_| |_/\___/|_| |_| |_|\___|


"@ -ForegroundColor Green

$operatingsystem = Get-CimInstance -ClassName CIM_OperatingSystem

Write-Host "Version: $($operatingsystem.Version)`n" -ForegroundColor Green
Write-Host "Last Boot-up time for $($operatingsystem.CSName): $($operatingsystem.LastBootUpTime)" -ForegroundColor Green
Write-Host "______________________________________________________________`n -ForegroundColor Green"
Write-Host "PowerShell version: $($PSVersionTable.PSVersion)" -ForegroundColor Red
Write-Host "______________________________________________________________`n -ForegroundColor Green"

    Now when I start my PowerShell I am greeted by the following: New Terminal

  • There are other options like Get-ComputerInfo and Get-WinEvent(depreceated from PowerShell 6 onwards). This one worked best for me. YMMV.

  • I genenerated the ASCII art from this tool

  • Learned a fair bit of PowerShell scripting today. I think can understand a PowerShell script now.