FriendlyElec NanoPi NEO3 Plus - RK3528A Single Board Computer

RK3528A Single Board Computer Overview

The FriendlyElec NanoPi NEO3 Plus is a 48 x 48 mm RK3528A single board computer built for network appliances, lightweight Linux servers and embedded projects. A quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor clocked at up to 1.8 GHz runs alongside an Arm Mali-450 GPU and a video unit that decodes 4K H.265/H.264 at 60 fps.

What separates this board from most credit-card-sized designs is its network path. The gigabit port is driven by a dedicated RTL8211F controller, so the link is native rather than USB-bridged and holds full line rate when the board runs as a router or a small NAS. Storage is equally flexible: boot from a microSD card up to 128 GB, or add an optional eMMC module for onboard flash.

At roughly 5 W peak SoC power and 21.5 g bare weight, the NanoPi NEO3 Plus fits into enclosures barely larger than a matchbox while still exposing a 26-pin GPIO connector, a debug UART, an RTC battery input and a stereo speaker connector.

Key Features

• Quad-Core Cortex-A53 at 1.8 GHz — Rockchip RK3528A SoC with 4x Cortex-A53 cores, Mali-450 GPU and 4K H.265/H.264 decoding.
• Native Gigabit Ethernet — RTL8211F PHY gives this RK3528A single board computer a native gigabit link, not a USB-bridged port.
• USB 3.0 Type-A Host Port — 1.5 A overcurrent-protected USB 3.0, plus a USB 2.0 Type-C port shared with the DC 5V power input.
• eMMC Module or microSD Boot — Boot from microSD up to 128 GB, or fit an optional eMMC module for 64 GB / 256 GB onboard flash.
• 48 x 48 mm, 8-Layer PCB — 21.5 g bare or 87.2 g with the optional case; DC 5V/2A via USB-C or the 2.54 mm header.
• 26-Pin FPC GPIO and Debug UART — I2C5, SPI1, SPI4 and UART on a 26-pin FPC header, plus a 3.3 V debug UART at 1500000 bps.
• Six Official Distributions — FriendlyWrt, Debian 13, Ubuntu 24.04, Alpine, OpenMediaVault, Proxmox VE images, wiki online.

Applications

• Compact soft router and VPN gateway — Run FriendlyWrt 25.12 on the native gigabit port for a pocket-sized router, WireGuard endpoint or DNS filter.
• Lightweight ARM NAS — OpenMediaVault 8.0.6 with a USB 3.0 drive for bulk storage, using an optional eMMC module as the system disk on this RK3528A single board computer.
• IoT and edge gateway — The 26-pin GPIO header exposes I2C5, SPI1, SPI4 and UART so you can bridge sensors, relays and industrial buses onto gigabit Ethernet.
• Home virtualization lab — Proxmox VE 8.2.7 supports containers and LXC guests on a board that fits in the palm of your hand.
• Media and display endpoint — Buildroot with Weston (Wayland) drives a lightweight graphical kiosk using the onboard 4K H.265/H.264 decoder.

What's in the Box

• FriendlyElec NanoPi NEO3 Plus board x 1

Both the 1 GB and the 2 GB RAM variants ship as a bare board. The case, heat sink, microSD card and eMMC modules are configured as separate product options at checkout and are not part of the base configuration.

Compatibility & Support

Official images are published for FriendlyWrt 25.12, Debian 13 Core, Ubuntu 24.04 Core, Alpine Linux 3.23, Buildroot with Weston (Wayland), OpenMediaVault 8.0.6 and Proxmox VE 8.2.7, all running the Linux 6.1 LTS kernel with U-Boot 2017.09. Three installation routes are documented: flashing a microSD card, installing over the board's web page, and flashing an eMMC module over USB with RKDevTool.

Datasheets, schematics, pinout tables and step-by-step flashing guides for this RK3528A single board computer are published on the FriendlyElec Wiki. Serial console access is available on the three-wire debug UART at 3.3 V and 1500000 bps.