The Raspberry Pi Mini PC family is simply great and the community built around it is nothing short of amazing - simply put, they changed the way computing is done.

But once in a while you might find yourself in need of something that packs a bigger punch.

The credit card footprint is a winner as it allows the mini PC to be integrated in all sorts of gadgets, from drones to home automation devices, so it makes sense for manufacturers to launch more and more dev boards with this size.

One of them is Up, that just finished their KickStarter campaign, raising a little over 100.000 Euros for a dev board based with the Intel x5-Z8300 Cherry Trail CPU (up to 1.86 Ghz).

"Up" will come with 2GB or RAM and 32 GB of eMMc storage and packs a 40 Pin GPIO expansion, USB 3.0 OTG, Gigabit Ethernet, 4 USB 2.0 ports and HDMI 1.4.

A few words about the people working on this project - they work for Aaeon, which is a subdivision of Asus, and for this project they partnered up with Emutex and Intel.
Emutex promised to offer a free version of their ubiworx™ software framework which will allow Up to be used to develop sensor monitoring solutions connected to the cloud, so add IoT to the mix.

Being able to run any of the three OS platforms is definitely a plus - you can work with Windows 10, Linux (Ubuntu, Ubilinux) or Android.
They are promising an online community through www.up-board.org that will supply "tutorials and pro-active support".

"Up" has a bunch of accessories already, including two aluminum casings, one plastic case and one Bluetooth speaker (although I haven't seen Bluetooth mentioned in the specs - or Wi-fi for that matter).

Up will be ready early next year for just below 90 Euros.