The Banana Pi is a single board computer which was developed as a competitor to the Raspberry Pi. There are several types now including the M1, M2, and Pro which all build off the Raspberry Pi. These boards have better specs and are a lot more useful when trying to use a GUI.
Learning Banana Pi is a book about working with the Banana Pi.
Phidgets are small prototying electronics which work well with the Raspberry and Banana Pis. These boards have their own API which can be used along side the GPIO pins to interact with hardware over USB and the GPIO pins. My examles come from my Phidgets Examples repo