HackBerry AllWinner A10 Board is Now Available for $60

The Hackberry “development board” is now available for sale on Miniand. This board powered by AllWinner A10 processor comes in 2 versions: 512 MB RAM version – Available now for $60 1GB RAM version – Available by the end of the month for $65. Both boards features a 4GB Flash, a SDHC slot, 2x USB 2.0 port, 10/100 Ethernet, Wi-Fi, HDMI & composite outputs,  headphone & microphone ports and a IR sensor. The good thing is that serial interface and FEL connectors will be soldered on the board for easy debugging and recovery. The FEL recovery port allows to reflash the board using Livesuit. As a side note, Henrik, a developer involved in Allwinner A10 software development, has done some work to reverse engineer FEL USB protocol, wrote a small program to enter into Livesuit mode with an SD card (Go to the bottom of the page section “Forcing FEL […]

VIA Releases Kernel 2.6.32 and U-Boot Source Code for $49 APC Board

VIA Technology unveiled the low cost APC (Android PC) board based on WonderMedia WM8750 processor (ARM11) back in May, and started to ship the Android board this month (I think since that was their plan). The company has just released Kernel 2.6.32.9 and U-Boot source on github. Here’s how to retrieve the code provided git is already installed on your machine:

You can then build U-Boot (provided you’ve already installed an ARM toolchain in your path):

and the Linux kernel:

The availability of the source means we should see Linux distribution like Debian, Fedora or Arch Linux ARM (separate from Arch Linux) running on the board very soon. In theory, it’s also possible to run a Linux distribution with the binary Linux kernel compiled for Android, but it causes some issues and also makes customization more difficult. I think they should also have release the code they modified […]

16 Euros Arduino Leonardo Board is Now Available

Arduino Leonardo is a new Arduino board with a 16 MHz Atmega32U4, 2.5KB RAM, 32 KB of Flash memory, 20 digital I/O, 12 analog inputs and 7 PWM outputs. In this version the MCU takes care of USB communication with the host, whereas for Arduino Uno, a separate chip is required to take care of this, which makes Arduino Leonardo cheaper than Uno. Here’s a summary of Arduino Leonardo specifications: Microcontroller – Atmel ATmega32u4 @ 16 MHz SRAM – 2.5 KB onchip (ATmega32u4) Flash Memory – 32 KB onchip (ATmega32u4) of which 4 KB used by bootloader EEPROM – 1 KB onchip (ATmega32u4) Operating Voltage – 5V Input Voltage – (recommended) 7-12V | (limits) 6-20V Digital I/O – 20 pins PWM – 7 channels Analog Input – 12 channels DC Current per I/O Pin – 40 mA DC Current for 3.3V Pin – 50 mA Watch the video to get […]

HackBerry: AllWinner A10 Development Board with 1GB RAM

After the Raspberry Pi, the Gooseberry, here comes the HackBerry. This is another AllWinner board similar to the Gooseberry, but which Ethernet, a full sized USB ports, an IR sensor and 1GB RAM. Here are the board specifications : SoC – AllWinner A10 System Memory – 1 GB RAM Storage – 4GB Flash + SDHC slot USB – 2x USB 2.0 ports Connectivity: 10/100Mbit Ethernet Wifi – 802.11 b/g/n Video Output – 1 x HDMI + 1x Composite Audio I/O – Headphone + microphone IR sensor The board runs Android 4.0, but since it’s an AllWinner device, you can run what you want. In a way it’s similar to the Mele A1000, except it has more memory, but lacks SATA, VGA output and has one less USB port. I can’t see the serial port pins on the PCB picture either. There is pricing information or availability yet, as Jasbir only […]

HardKernel ODroid-X: Low Cost Exynos 4412 Quad Core Cortex A9 Development Board

HardKernel unveiled the ODROID-X development board based on Samsung Exynos 4412 quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 with quad core Mali-400 GPU, 1 GB Low Power DDR2 and storage is done via SD card and/or eMMC flash. Here are ODROID-X development board specifications: Processor Samsung Exynos4412 Cortex-A9 Quad Core 1.4Ghz with 1MB L2 cache Memory 1024MB(1GB) LP-DDR2 800MB/s data rate GPU Quad Core Mali-400 Video supports 1080p via HDMI cable (H.264+AAC based MP4 container format) Video Out micro HDMI connector / RGB-24bit LCD interface port Audio Standard 3.5mm headphone jack and microphone jack HDMI SPDIF LAN 10/100Mbps Ethernet with RJ-45 Jack (Auto-MDIX support) USB2.0 Host High speed standard A type connector x 6 ports USB2.0 Device ADB/Mass storage(Micro USB) UART System console monitoring for development (1.8volt interface) IO PORTs 50pin IO expansion port for LCD/I2C/UART/SPI/ADC/GPIO interfaces Display (Option) HDMI monitor / LCD panel with RGB or LVDS interface Storage (Option) Full size SDHC […]

Olimex Offers Up to 50% Discount on OLinuXino Boards to Open Source Developers

Olimex has been providing low cost MCU devkits for many years, and this year they started offering more powerful embedded Linux development boards called OLinuXino. The first family (iMX233-OLinuXino) is based on Freescale i.MX233 ARM9 processor @ 454 Mhz and comes in three form factor: iMX233-OLINUXINO-MAXI – 2x USB host, Ethernet, TV-out, GPIOs, SD-CARD, Audio-In, Audio-Out, UEXT – 44.95 Euros. iMX233-OLINUXINO-MINI – 3x USB host, TV-out, GPIOs, SD-CARD, Audio-In, Audio-Out, UEXT – 34.95 Euros iMX233-OLINUXINO-MICRO – USB host, TV-out, GPIOs, SD-CARD, ready for breadboaring – 23.95 Euros They are also working on A13-OLinuXino board featuring AllWinner A13 Cortex A8 processor. To promote their new boards (and reward open source developers – cf comment below), the company company has decided to offer discount to open source developers. The way I understand it: you need to buy a board first, publish the source code somewhere and write about it on your own […]

List of 39 Low Cost Linux Friendly Boards and Products

Dmitry (omgfire), one of my awesome readers, compiled a great tabular list of Linux friendly boards and products that sells for less than $300 US (usually less than $200). This list includes technical details such as the processor, GPU, memory, NAND flash, connectivity, ports, supported Linux distributions… as well as availability and pricing information. There are currently 39 Linux devices in total. The vast majority are ARM based boards, but he also included 2 x86 products by VIA, but those are relatively pricey ($265 and up). Here’s a summary list with SoCs used, links to blog posts and product pages (if available), as well as price information. Raspberry Pi Model B – Broadcom BCM2835 (ARM11) – Blog post (That’s my first post about the R-Pi last year, and the board is much different now) –  Product page – Price: $35 + shipping Rikomagic MK802 – Allwiner A10 (Cortex A8) –  […]

Freescale Announces Availability of Kinetis L Series Cortex M0+ MCU and Freedom Devkit

ARM unveiled its ultra-low power Cortex-M0+ core back in March, and Freescale and NXP also announced their plans to use this new core in some of their micro-controllers destined to power the internet of things. Yesterday at Freescale Technology Forum (FTF), Freescale announced the availability of alpha samples of its Kinetis L series. This new low power MCU family will allow existing 8-bit and 16-bit architecture to be replaced by 32-bit architecture without increasing power consumption, cost or size, and the company expects them to be used in devices such as small appliances, gaming accessories, portable medical systems, audio systems, smart meters, lighting and power control. The ARM Cortex-M0+ processor is said to consume about a third of the energy of any 8- or 16-bit processor, while delivering between two to 40 times more performance. Kinetis L series MCU  can consume as low as 50 uA/MHz in very-low-power run (VLPR) […]

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