Milk-V Meles: New alternative to the Raspberry Pi now available

We reported on the Milk-V Meles last year and the single-board computer is now available. The model can be ordered from Arace Tech at a price of $80. The retailer clearly points out that this is a time-limited introductory price, although it is unclear how long this will last.

Basically, the single-board computer is not dissimilar to a Raspberry Pi, but fundamentally different in terms of the SoC. The Milk-V Meles is based on RISC-V architecture and not ARM architecture. Specifically, a T-Head TH1520 is installed, which supports a clock frequency of 1.85 GHz and has four computing cores. The integrated NPU is said to be able to accelerate corresponding AI applications with up to 4 TOPs, with support for Caffee and TensorFlow, among others. 

The Milk-V Meles is currently only available with 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB eMMC module. A microSD card slot is on board, as is HDMI 2.0 for image output and an MIPI DSI with four lanes. Cameras can be connected via MIPI CSI, for example, in order to implement projects related to image recognition. Four USB 3.0 ports are also on board, while network connections are established via WiFi 5 or Gigabit Ethernet.

A GPIO header with 40 pins is installed, allowing for the connection of sensors and actuators. Lastly, a connection for a fan is also available, and the 85 x 56 mm device is supplied with power via USB-C.