CNXSoft – Embedded Software Development

DealExtreme has started a promotion that is taking place on May, 15-20 offering 50% discount on selected products. I’ve gone through the list, and found several RK3066 Android mini PCs all priced between $23 and $27, as well as some other items that may be of interest to readers of this blog.

[Update: Sorry, in just a couple of hours, all items listed below are already sold out]

Android Mini PCs:

• MK808 – $25.00 – One of the most used Android mini PC. Powered by Rockchip RK3066 with 1GB RAM, 8GB Flash. The version in DX runs Android 4.1.1, but a beta Android 4.2.2 firmware is also available.
• MK808B -  $23.50 – Same as MK808, but with Bluetooth, and somehow it’s cheaper…
• Rikomagic MK802 IIIS – $27.10 – Rockchip RK3066 powered mini PC with 1GB RAM and 8GB Flash. Contrary to the previous 2 that feature a HDMI female connector, this one comes with an HDMI male plug.
• COZYSWAN MK809 II – $24.50 – Basically the same specs: RK3066, 1GB RAM, 8GB Flash.

Remote and Controllers:

• Mele F10 Fly Mouse – $12.60 – I have just reviewed the Mele F10 earlier this week. If you don’ have an RF remote already, and use Android STB and/or mini PCs, it’s probably a good idea to buy this 3-in-1 (mouse, keyboard and remote) 2.4GHz “Fly Mouse”.
• GOIGAME Rechargeable Bluetooth Wireless DoubleShock III Controller for PS3 – $8.30 – If you already have a mini PC, and don’t feel spending more to get an OUYA or Gamestick, this Bluetooth game controller can be connected to your Android device to play several games. I have one already, I could finally set-it up, kill some zombies, and I’ll post instructions later today or tomorrow. It also works with Linux, albeit I could only manage to make it work in USB mode.

Misc:

• Sandisk Micro SD / TF Memory Card w/ SD Adapter – 32GB (Class 10) – $15.75 – If you like to mess around with Linux, and your hardware can boot from an SD card, you’ve got to use a Class 10 SD card, or Linux performance will be terrible.
• Ethernet Shield with Wiznet W5100 Ethernet Chip / TF Slot – $7.00 – For Arduino users.
• TP-Link TL-WR703N – $11.95 – This is a cheap hackable router, even more so at $12, that can run OpenWRT, be converted into a PirateBox, and more.

There are also a few Android tablets for about $35, and I’ve also decided to buy ThL W8 Android smartphone powered by MTK6589 Quad Core processor for $115.60.

Ian MORRISON (linuxium) has tested Linux with several mini PCs powered by different processors. The main point of his tests was to evaluate the performance difference between running Ubuntu 12.04 natively, or in a chroot in Android using tools such as Complete Linux Installer. I previously tried Linux on Android in ODROID-X, and found the applications start time when running from an low-end SD card pretty dismal, and the graphics performance poor.  Ian had a different approach, and decided to use a subset of Phoronix Suite benchmarks to compare different hardware / software combination and posted the results in “mini PCs” G+ community. There’s a lot of data, and analyzing the results is not really straightforward without spending some time looking at the data. In this post, I’ll explain how the tests have been conducted, explain the results and try to draw a conclusion.

Mini PCs and other Hardware Under Test

Ian used four mini PC hardware running Ubuntu 12.04 natively or in a chroot installed with Complete Linux Installer, except for RK3066 mini PC where Ubuntu 12.10 (PicUntu) was run natively. Each time, LXDE desktop environment was setup, and Ubuntu was installed in Sandisk Extreme Pro 8GB (micro) SD cards.

The 3 most common SoC used in mini PCs are represented with AllWinner A10, Rockchip RK3066 and Freescale i.MX6, but he also tested some extra hardware running either Ubuntu in Android, or natively:

• MK803 mini PC (AMLogic AML8726-M3 Cortex A9) running Ubuntu 12.04 in Android (Complete Linux Installer)
• Asus Eed Pad Transformer TF101 tablet (Tegra 2 – 2x Cortex A9) running Ubuntu 12.04 in Android (Complete Linux Installer)
• Hardkernel ODROID-U2 (Exynos 4412 Prime – 4x Cortex A9) running Ubuntu 12.04 natively in its eMMC module
• Google New Chromebook (Exynos 5250 – 2x Cortex A15) running ChrUbuntu 12.04
• Intel Core i7-950 PC running Wubi’s Ubuntu 12.04

Selected Benchmarks from Phoronix Test Suite

Phoronix Test Suite is a testing and benchmarking platform written in PHP5 language that can run in Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris and BSD operating systems on any target which supports php. Since Ubuntu in Android would definitely have poor performance, Ian only considered tests that may be used in a server configuration, to evaluate CPU, RAM and I/O performance:

• CacheBench – Memory and cache bandwidth performance benchmark.
• CLOMP – C version of the Livermore OpenMP benchmark developed to measure OpenMP overheads and other performance impacts due to threading.
• 7-Zip compression – Uses p7zip integrated benchmark feature.
• dcraw – This test measures the time it takes to convert several high-resolution RAW NEF image files to PPM image format using dcraw.
• LAME MP3 encoding – This test measures the time required to encode a WAV file to MP3 format.
• FFmpeg – Audio/video encoding performance benchmark.
• OpenSSL – Measures RSA 4096-bit performance of OpenSSL.
• PHPBench – Benchmark suite for PHP.
• PyBench – Python benchmark suite.
• SQLite – This test measures the time to perform a pre-defined number of insertions on an indexed database
• Stream – This benchmark tests the system memory (RAM) performance.
• TSCP – Performance benchmark built-in Tom Kerrigan’s Simple Chess Program.
• Unpacking the Linux kernel – This test measures the time it takes to extract the .tar.bz2 Linux kernel package.
• GMPbench – Test of the GMP 5.0.3 math library

Results and Conclusion

The full results are available on openbenchmarking.org, but the way they are presented might be a little confusing because for some tests, higher is better, whereas for others, lower is better. So I’ve added an up arrow icon on the left of the table if higher is better, and a down arrow if it’s the opposite. I’ve also added Android and Ubuntu logos, depending on whether Ubuntu is respectively run in a chroot or natively.

Linux Benchmark Results for Mini PCs, and some reference hardware (Click to Enlarge)

Let’s take care of the anomalies first. You’ll notice GMPbench results are not available for all devices. That’s because it refused to run in some cases. SQLite test results are up to 10x faster in Ubuntu in a chroot (in Android) than in Ubuntu running natively. MK802 is even reported to be about as fast as Intel PC used as reference. Clearly something is wrong when running this test in a chroot, and SQLite results should be discarded.

For a given hardware, there’s usually about a 5 to 20% performance hit when running Ubuntu in Android. The exception is GK802 where running Ubuntu in Android is consistently faster than running it natively. However, Ian used Geekbuying Ubuntu beta image which is not optimized, and it’s possible the CPU in Ubuntu was clocked at a lower frequency than in Android.

MK802+ (AllWinner A10) and MK803 (AMLogic AML8726) share the lowest score, except for SQLite which runs the slowest on the Chromebook, and CLOMP on ODROID-U2. UG802 (Rockchip RK3066) and GK802 (Freescale i.MX6) has similar performance with an edge for Rockchip RK3066 devices, except for test where all 4-core of i.MX6 can be used such as 7-Zip. Also note that the extra 2GB RAM in iStick A200 does not provide significant performance improvement for most test against the 1GB RAM used in UG802. The extra RAM should only be useful when multitasking.

To conclude, if you want to run Linux on your mini PC, you should always install Ubuntu natively to get the most performance, but if you have no choice (i.e. Linux not currently supported) or want to run both Android and Linux simultaneously, you can always run server applications in a chroot with limited performance degradation. On the hardware side, although Rockchip RK3066 and Freescale i.MX6 mini PC have about the same performance in Linux for (server applications), Rockchip devices clearly have a higher performance / cost ratio at the moment.

This is the last day of the year, so it’s probably a good time to look back and see what interested people on this blog. This has been a banner year for low cost ARM devices and boards starting with the Raspberry Pi, then MK802 and the new mini PCs / HDMI TV dongles / PCs-on-a-stick (whatever you want to call them) that came after, always cheaper and faster. Those low cost devices have in turn made people really interested in ARM Linux, and lots of development on those little devices and boards started.

The top 10 posts of 2012, according to page views, reflect just those trends:

1. 74 USD AllWinner A10 Android 4.0 Mini PC (May 2012) – MK802 started the whole “low cost mini PCs” craze, and drove the most traffic to this blog this year. People got excited about the price, form factor, and the possibility to run both Android and other Linux based operating systems.
2. MK802 II Mini PC Now Costs as Much as Raspberry Pi Model B. Let’s Compare Them! (December 2012) – This post features the 2 stars of 2012: the Raspberry Pi and MK802 II HDMI TV donglwe (MK802 with 1GB RAM). As both device can now be bought for $35, and allow you to do very similar things, it’s was time for a head-to-head comparison. I’ve just written about it last week, and it got Slashdotted.
3. WM8850-MID Android 4.0 Tablet Unboxing and Review (June 2012) – At the time, this Eken W70 clone featuring Wondermedia WM8850 Cortex A9 processor was a real bargain for $72 (including shipping). The firmware has a few issues however, and that’s what drove people to this post: looking for solutions.
4. AllWinner A10/A1X Processor Resources, Development Board and SDK (December 2011) – This post was written just about one year ago, but traffic was steady all year, as people want to find out how to hack their AllWinner A10 tablets, media players and mini PCs.
5. Mele A1000: AllWinner A10 (Cortex A8) Based Hackable Android STB (March 2012) – The Mele A1000 was my first Android device, and it got popular thanks to its relatively low cost, available ports (3x USB, SATA, VGA, HDMI…), and serial port which made it ideal for development of U-boot and the kernel. I still think it’s a good platform, but since then low cost development boards such as the Cubieboard has made it a little less attractive, and interest has somewhat faded in the last few months.
6. Valueplus Tizzbird Stick N1: Android 4.0 HDMI/USB Media Player Dongle (March 2012) -  The Tizzbird Stick N1 was one the first mini PCs, and was showcased at CeBit 2012 several months before MK802. Unfortunately, it took many more months to finalize the design, and the product never took off, as other cheaper Telechips TCC892x based mini PCs appeared on the market. The only reason it got traffic is because I mentioned it in the $74 MK802 post at the top of this list.
7. Mele A1000 Android 2.3 STB Unboxing and Review (April 2012) – In March, I was still waiting for the Raspberry Pi launch, but I noticed Barry Kauler (Puppy Linux) bought the Mele A1000 to keep him busy while he was also waiting for his Pi, and seeing the development around AllWinner A10, I decided to buy one as well. Apparently, I was not the only one interested as many people came here to read my review of this nice hackable media player.
8. Mele A2000 Android 2.3 Media Player Powered by AllWinner A10 (April 2012) – The Mele A2000 is the little sister of the Mele A1000, which the same hardware, just a difference casing.
9. Linaro Android Puts Stock Android To Shame on TI Pandaboard (OMAP4430) (June 2012) – Linaro showcased a demo showing an optimized version of Android could deliver twice the performance of stock Android on a particular benchmark running in Pandaboard. Bero commented on my post with details, and the post quickly became viral as developers wanted to give it a try. It turned out the improvement is actually more like 15 to 20%, but this is enough to double the framerate of this benchmark due to Vsync synchronization. It may also work in real games.
10. Raspberry Pi Emulator in Ubuntu with Qemu (October 2011) – In 2011 and early 2012, the Raspberry Pi foundation promised much in terms of schedule, but initially failed to deliver, and many people get desperate enough to check the instructions to emulate an ARMv6 device and run Debian in QEMU to get started with development, before the Raspberry Pi hardware is available.

That will be the last post of 2012, so the “hardware team” (pictured below) and I would like to wish you a very happy and prosperous new year 2013, which I’m sure will be as exciting as 2012 for Linux/Android gadgets and boards, and we should see the first big.LITTLE processors and corresponding devices, ever cheaper tablets, smartphones and mini PCs, an interesting Intel vs. ARM fight for mobile devices, a proper XBMC ARM set-top box close to $50, new mobile OSes based on Linux (Tizen, Sailfish OS, Firefox OS…), and more…

Kimdecent announced it started to sell MK809 II mini PC with Rockchip RK3066, 1GB RAM, 8GB Flash and built-in Bluetooth. This HDMI TV dongle is very similar to Rikomagic MK802 IIIs in terms of specs, and I’ve been told the user interface is also nearly identical.

MK809 II

Here are the specs of the device:

• SoC – Rockchip RK3066 Dual ARM Cortex-A9 processor clocked @ up to 1.6 GHz with Mali-400MP4 Quad-core GPU,
• System Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM
• Storage – 8GB NAND Flash + micro SD card slot (Up to 32 GB)
• Connectivity:
  • Wifi – 802.11 b/g/n
  • Bluetooth 2.1
  • 3G support via external 3G USB dongle
• USB – 1x USB 2.0 Host,  2x micro USB Host
• Video Output – HDMI
• Video Codecs – MPEG1/2/4, H.264, VC-1, Divx, Xvid, RM8/9/10, VP6
• Video Containers – MKV, TS, TP, M2TS, RM/RMVB, BD-ISO, AVI, MPG, VOB, DAT, ASF, TRP, FLV etc full formats
• Audio Codecs – DTS, AC3, LPCM, FLAC, HE-AAC
• Power – 90-230V, 50/60Hz input, Output: 5V/2A
• Dimensions – 11 x 3.2 x 1 cm
• Weight – 32g

The package includes the power supply, a USB cable, and a user manual in English. This is basically the same specifications as UG007, except MK809 II has one extra micro USB port. The device also features a software power button missing in many devices.

Even though some developers are working to port Ubuntu to Rockchip RK3066 devices, don’t expect to be able to do too much with Linux, as GPU and hardware video acceleration won’t be ported to Linux due to a complete lack of open source (and even binary) drivers. It would still possible to use it as a small Linux server however.

MK809 II can be purchased on Aliexpress for $56 on Kimdecent store, but other Aliexpress sellers also offer it at various prices. You can also get it for $5 less with “mainagame5″ coupon.

MK802 mini PC quickly went viral as it launched in May 2012 for $74 US, and since then many Chinese manufacturers have jumped into the market bringing both new faster devices, and the price down. AllWinner A10s, a low cost version of AllWinner A10 used in MK802, was also launched specifically for this market to bring costs even lower. Today, I’ve been informed an HDMI TV dongle based on AllWinner A10s that sells for $36.55 on Tinydeal.com which is a very good price, but decided to check on Aliexpress to look for comparable deals, and found one shop selling MK802 II for $34.91 including shipping via China Post, which makes it cheaper than the Raspberry Pi model B selling for $35 excluding shipping.

Raspberry Pi vs MK802 II
NB: Devices are not shown at the same scale.

Both products target 2 different markets, as MK802 is oriented to the consumer market, and Raspberry Pi targets the educational market, but in practice, it appears people may use the device for similar purpose, for example as a media player or a platform for tinkering with Linux.

Since both products have the same price, and software support & availability have improved since their launch, I’ve just created a side-by-side comparison below.

If you just look at the hardware specs, there’s no comparison, and MK802 II provides much better value than the Raspberry Pi with a much faster CPU, more RAM, internal storage and more. Only the GPU processing power may be subject to debate, but I don’t really have data to make a proper comparison. So if you just want to run the device as a media player for example, I’d just go with MK802 II since you’ll get a smoother experience and more video codecs are supported. The only caveat is that you’ll have to use Android (and see the status bar during video playback), as although Linux video support is available, it’s not ready for prime time, and never will.

However, the Raspberry Pi is still a better solution for several use cases:

• Hardware “hacking” – You need to make use of the “GPIO” headers to control external devices.
• Connection to old TV – The Raspberry Pi has a composite video output which allows it to be connected to older TV lacking HDMI
• Beginners – If you’re not familiar with Linux, using AllWinner A10 devices may prove challenging, and it’s much easier with the Raspberry Pi thanks to official Linux distributions, and the Raspberry Pi community.

Earlier this month, Xibo developers announced the beta version Xibo for Android was available for testing. Contrary to the Linux & Windows clients and servers which are open source, Xibo for Android is developed by Spring Signage and will available commercially. This sponsorship will help finance the development of Xibo open source software: the 2 clients (.net in Windows, Python in Linux), the server and API.

The current beta version supports the most important features of the Windows client, but lacks support for Adobe Flash, Microsoft PowerPoint, Datasets, Microblog, Stats, Counter Media, Socket Listener, Lift/Serial Interface Support, Offline Update via USB Drive,
Full Compositing (overlapping regions) and Video Transparency.

If you want to test the Xibo client for android, you can register for the private BETA and download an APK (Xibo_Android_Clientv1.0.12.apk) to install on your Android devices. Being part of the BETA program will also guarantee you a price of £10 GBP per client for Xibo 1.4.x releases, should you choose to purchase the final version. After installation, you’ll see Xibo Settings.

You’ll need to fill the “Server Address” (e.g. http://192.168.0.103/xibo), the server key defined in Xibo dashboard, an hardware key (e.g. mele_xibo), and provide the email address you used to register to the beta program. Once you run the program, you can click anywhere on the screen to pop-up a window with debug information.

I mainly used Mele A1000 media player (AllWinner A10) for testing, but also did a quick test on WM8850-MID tablet. I tried several layouts, and most of them worked, but one was shown as invalid. The layouts include scrolling text (Twitter RSS feed),  jpeg pictures, an mpg video and the mobile version of a famous tech blog . Everything appears to very smooth and usable, contrary to my try to run Xibo on ARM Linux. Beside the invalid layout issue, I found out that the Status bar is always there, but just dimmed, and this appears to be problematic to solve on most Android devices according to Spring Signage developers.

You can watch Xibo for Android running on Mele A1000 below, and see for yourself that it runs pretty smoothly. The main problem is that the scrolling text is cut because of the Status Bar.

On WM885-MID tablet, Xibo did not work as well. The status bar was obviously still there, but the full layout was shown (possibly due to the different resolution), and although the text was not cut out, the font size was incorrect (too small). But the biggest problem was the failure to play the MPG video I used.

Xibo Android Client in WM8850-MID Tablet

Based on my first evaluation, even though Xibo for Android will cost at least 10 GBP ($16 US), it should still be worth it considering you can now buy mini PCs / HDMI sticks for $30 to $50 (e.g. MK802) that can run Xibo smoothly with most features. I would also expect Xibo for Android to run nicely on the $35 Raspberry Pi (512 MB RAM version) once a proper Android port for the platform is released. Of course, if you need Powerpoint and/or Adobe Flash, you’ll still need to spend over $100 to get a Windows client.

Pandawill has added a new device called “OEM MK802 mini Android TV Box” to its catalog. It looks like the “original” MK802 mini PC as you can see from the picture below, but this PC-on-a-stick is based on Telechips TCC8920 (Cortex A5) processor instead.

OEM MK802 Android mini PC

The specifications on Pandawill read as follows:

• CPU – Telechips Tcc8920; Cortex A5, 1GHz; GPU: Mali 400
• RAM – 1GB DDR3
• Storage – 4GB Nand Flash + microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
• Video output- HDMI 1080P (60Hz)
• WIFI – 802.11 b/g/n
• USB – 1 OTG port + 1 USB Host
• Dimensions – 88.5 x 35 x 12mm
• Weight – 25g

The package includes a USB Cable, a DC? Cable, an English User Manual and an HDMI Cable, and this sells for $49.99. This is not a bad price actually, but they should really have given another name to this device. This shows you always have to be careful when you buy from Chinese websites, as you can just not return the product so easily. They often make mistakes in the specifications, or “tweak” the specifications to make their product look better, probably with reasoning such as:

• 800 MHz = 0.8 GHz which can be rounded to 1 GHz.
• 533 MHz Dual core processor: 533 MHz * 2 = 1066 MHz ~ 1.1 GHz, but there’s no 1.1 processors, so let’s round it to 1.2 GHz => 1.2 GHz dual core processor. Or maybe they add the GPU clock in there.

Many sellers also use keyboard stuffing (e.g. MK802, AllWinner, Cheapest…) to sell other mini-PCs that use some other processors, which may increase traffic to their online store, but leads to buyers confusion and does nothing to improve the reputation of Chinese e-stores.