BeagleBone Black Gets 4GB Flash, a Price Increase, and Better Availability

The BeagleBone Black has been launched about a year ago, and this low cost ARM Linux board has become pretty popular with hobbyists, robotics courses at universities, and even people making products. The downside is that it has been difficult for CircuitCo, the manufacturer, to keep producing enough boards to match the demand while keeping the price at a low $45 with very little margin, and there are currently about 150,000 boards on distributor back-orders. To improve availability, Beagleboard.org has announced Revision C of the BeagleBone Black with a 4 GB eMMC, which may be easier to source over time than the original 2 GB eMMC, and that will sell for about $5 to $15 more than the previous version, or between $50 and $60. The rest of the hardware specifications remain identical. There’s also a change on the software side, as the board will be pre-loaded with Debian, instead […]

Raspberry Pi Compute Module is a $30 Raspberry Pi Compatible System-on-Module

Albeit the initial goal of the Raspberry Pi board was to address computer science education, it has become extremely popular with hobbyists, has made its way in many different kinds of hardware, and is now clearly the number 1 low cost ARM Linux development board. The Raspberry Pi foundation has then decided to design and sell a system-on-module called Raspberry Pi Compute that people can use in actual products. Since the module will be mostly software compatible with the original Raspberry Pi board, the specs are similar: SoC – Broadcom BCM2835 ARM 11 processor @ 700 MHz with Videocore IV GPU System Memory – 512MB RAM Storage – 4GB eMMC Flash SoM Connector – DDR2 200-pins SODIMM Dimensions – 67.6x30mm board which fits into a standard DDR2 SODIMM connector The main difference is they’ve replaced the SD card slot found in the board, by an eMMC module which is more […]

Novena Open Source Hardware ARM Laptop Gets Crowdfunded for $1995

In 2012, Andrew Huang (“Bunnie”) decided to build an open source hardware and software laptop codenamed Novena powered by Freescale i.MX6 as a side project. The goal of the project was to be fully open source, both in terms of hardware and software, and the components have been selected so that the datasheets can be downloaded without NDA. Design has now been completed, and a crowdfunding campaign has now been launched on Crowd Supply, but since finding low cost part was not priority, you’ll have to fork $1,995 to get the complete laptop, $1,195 will get you the desktop version, and $500 the motherboard only. There’s also a version of the laptop called “Heirloom Laptop” with a hand-crafted wood and aluminum case that goes for $5,000. Let’s go through the board specs first: SoC – Freescale iMX6 Quad-core Cortex A9 CPU with NEON FPU @ 1.2 GHz. – NDA-free datasheet […]

$99 MinnowBoard MAX Development Board Powered by Intel Bay Trail-I SoC

When Intel released the original MinnowBoard which was a step in the right direction, but there were some complains, as the company had chosen to use an older Intel processor, and the price was much higher than most high performance low cost ARM development boards. MinnowBoard MAX (aka Minnow2 Board) fixes all that, as it features the latest Intel Bay Trail-I (E3800 series) processor, and costs as low as $99 for the single core version, and $129 for the dual core version. Let’s jump directly to the specifications: SoC – 64-bit Intel Atom E3815 (single-core, 1.46 GHz) or Atom E3825 (dual-core, 1.33 GHz) both with integrated Intel HD Graphics coming with Open Source hardware-accelerated drivers for Linux OS System Memory – 1GB ($99 model) or 2GB ($129 model) DDR3 RAM Storage – 1x Micro SD card slot, 1x SATA2 3Gb/sec, 8 MB SPI Flash for firmware (UEFI) Video Output – micro […]

$30 CoreWind Tech WiFiG25 SoM Features Atmel SAM9G25 ARM9 Processor and a Wi-Fi Module

After their Aria G25 clone, called CORE9G25, CoreWind Tech has now launched a new SoM, WiFiG25, also powered by Atmel SAM9G25 ARM9 processor, but this time with a WiFi Module based on Realtek RTL8188, and up to 256 MB RAM, 256 MB Flash. Here are the specs of this system-on-module: CPU – Atmel AT91SAM9G25 ARM9 @ 400Mhz System Memory – 128 or 256 MB DDR2 Storage – 256MB NAND Flash, micro SD card slot Connectivity – WiFi Module with internal antenna 2x20Pin 2.54mm expand interface (through holes) with access to 2x USB host ports, 3x UART, 1x I2C, 1x SPI, 6x PWM, 27x GPIOs, and 4x 10-bit ADC Line level – TTL 3.3V Misc – User LED Power supply – 5V Dimensions – Size: 50.80 x 30 mm Weight – 5g Temperature range –  Commercial: 0 to 70 °C, or industrial: -20 to 85 °C The company provide Linux 3.6.9 for the […]

ITEAD Studio IBOX AllWinner A20 mini PC Review

ITEAD Studio IBOX is an AllWinner A20 based mini PC currently running Android or Linux distributions currently featured on Indiegogo. I’ve already written about IBOX in a separate post, where you can get all the specifications, but the company has also sent me a unit (engineering sample) for review. Since the system is still in development, and it’s mostly a development platform, I won’t do a review with video testing, system performance, etc… as usual, but rather show the progress and current issues in terms of hardware and software, and I’ll also mention documentation, and shortly try Android 4.2 (pre-installed) and the Debian 7.0 image released by the company. IBOX Unboxing Pictures I’ve received the device in a cartoon box containing the device itself and a 9V/2A power supply. If you are or become a backer on Indiegogo you’ll also receive an add-on board providing access to a SATA connector,  […]

Dedicated Hosting Services on ARM Development Boards (Cubieboard2, Raspberry Pi, ODROID…)

At least two companies have recently launched hosting services using dedicated ARM servers based on low cost development boards: NanoXion with its NX-BOX service powered by PiBox (Raspberry Pi) and CubieBox (Cubieboard 2) microservers, and miniNodes with servers based on Cubieboard2 first, then ODROID development boards, and possibly AllWinner OptimusBoard once/if it becomes available. The PiBox will feature a Raspberry Pi Model B with 512 MB RAM, and 16GB Class 10 UHS-1 microSD card by Samsung, and the dual core Cubiebox comes with 1GB RAM and a Crucial M500 SATA III 120GB SSD. Both NX-BOXes run Linux Debian Server NX distribution, support instant remote reboot, with guaranteed 10 Mbps connectivity for IPv4 & IPv6, and unlimited bandwidth. The boards are all hosted in France. The company expects their ARM servers to be used as private cloud servers, backup servers, private chat servers, web servers, mail servers, DNS Servers, monitoring servers, and […]

ITEAD Studio IBOX Powered by AllWinner A20 Features a 32-Pin Hacker-Friendly Connector (Crowdfunding)

ITEAD Studio IBOX is a mini computer powered by AllWinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 processor with 1GB RAM and 4GB Flash, a few USB connectors, Ethernet and video/audio connector. This mini pc can run both Android & Linux, and features a 32-pin connector that allows to connect expansion boards. Let’s have a look at the specifications: SoC- AllWinner A20 dual core ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1 GHz + ARM Mali 400 MP2 System Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM Storage – 4GB NAND Flash + microsd slot Video Output – HDMI Audio Output – HDMI, optical S/PDIF Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet USB – 3x USB 2.0 host port, 1x USB OTG port (full size) Expansion – 32-pin proprietary connector with TV OUT, USB, LCD, UART, IR, CSI, SPI, SATA, GPIOS and power signals. Misc – LED , IR sensor, and U-boot button (FEL mode?) Power – 5V/2A 9V/2A Dimensions – 145 x […]