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This is cool shit for what it is.

What else has the ability to encode 4k h.265 in realtime /w comparable GPU at a price anywhere near what this thing costs?

Having said that I do a lot of h.265 encoding and wouldn't touch the NVidia GPU encoders with a 39 and a half foot pole. They suck ass.

Still at $100 the deal breaker will be what kernel and hardware support look like for this thing.

Personally also looking forward to the N2.
https://www.hardkernel.com/blo...

Mild thread-jack here - I understand exactly what you're saying, but I'm going to throw something else out there.

I've been using Free File Sync as a backup/migration tool for quite a while and there's a lot of automating that can be done with it. In fact I mostly used it while sitting at an iMac at my last job and I used it to migrate and backup accounts on both Mac and Windows machines. Believe it or not the file structure was so much the same you could migrate between Mac and Windows using it rather painlessly.

I've also been using Syncthing to keep document directories in sync between my various computers, along with some cron jobs that sync my desktop music/ebook/audiobook/and photo directories up to my server nightly incase I add something on my desktop it's backed up.

It just seems to me like all of the open-source software out there, along with software that can emulate a Time Capsule on the network, that the ODROID-HC2 is just begging to replace Time Capsules from Apple.

One of the advantages of the Pi is that you have a HUGE ecosystem around it. If you have a question, the odds are that somebody else has had the same one. The distros are updated fairly often, and you can get custom distros to do one specific thing (like retro emulation or media center, for example).

The problem with any non-Pi single-board computer is the lack of support.

The C-2 looks cool, but Ubuntu 16.04 (almost two years old) is the latest Linux supported. Want android? Android 5.1 (over three years old). The Ubuntu is one of the LTS versions, but we are due for a new LTS next month. Will that be ported? Who knows?

The two other Odroid boards (XU4, more powerful, C1+, less powerful) look even worse! Ubuntu 15.04 (almost three years old, and NOT an LTS version). Android 4.4 (over four years old).

If having a more recent version of your OS of choice is important, then it is hard to beat the Pi.

http://www.hardkernel.com/main...

ODROID XU4 It's a little pricey compared to a $35 board, but it has what you wanted.

If you're planning on putting together a NAS you might consider the HC2-- I have one myself and it was a snap to set up.

ODROID XU4 It's a little pricey compared to a $35 board, but it has what you wanted.

If you're planning on putting together a NAS you might consider the HC2-- I have one myself and it was a snap to set up.

Odroid do make Raspberry Pi sided boards with much faster ARM SOCs (but still a few generations older than what's in the Xperia XZ).

The main limitation the the ARM mobile CPUs is the lack of a high speed bus like PCIe. No SATA drive and no PCIe based storage (e.g. M.2). eMMC is faster than SDXC, and probably fast enough for spreadsheets, but it's going to be a bottleneck with anything that's disk intensive.

ODROID XU4 === $60

This guy built one for about $200 and claims he got over 80MB/s through SMB.
But it looks like that enclosure he bought ate up a huge chunk of that price. If you're willing to put all the parts into a leftover beigebox or a shoebox or something then you could probably get it all for less than $100 including the price of the ODROID XU4.

This guy did something similar but doesn't say how much he spent.

Considering that the RPi shares Ethernet with USB 2.0 and thus results in pathetic IO rates even for a cheapo SBC you could probably get better data rates on a wax tablet than with even an SSD on an RPi.

If you care about IO speed on an inexpensive SBC then I think you'll need to look at the ODROID offerings:
ODROID C2 is limited to USB 2.0 but has real Gbit ethernet.
ODROID XU4 has USB 3.0 and Gbit ethernet.

Considering that the RPi shares Ethernet with USB 2.0 and thus results in pathetic IO rates even for a cheapo SBC you could probably get better data rates on a wax tablet than with even an SSD on an RPi.

If you care about IO speed on an inexpensive SBC then I think you'll need to look at the ODROID offerings:
ODROID C2 is limited to USB 2.0 but has real Gbit ethernet.
ODROID XU4 has USB 3.0 and Gbit ethernet.

ODROID-C2 is real 64-bit rather than having 64-bit capable CPU but only 32-bit kernel and userland with the raspi team announcing that in several months they'll "consider" whether making 64-bit drivers is worth it.

Yet, from the ODROID C2 page:

*ARM 64bit is a very new platform and some system specific Linux softwares are not working stably at this moment. So there might be the compatibility issues frequently and we may need longer time to fix the issues.
* Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is also on the alpha stage and it causes the instability and incompatibility problems.

...so it sounds to me like the raspi team are dead right in not pushing a potentially unstable system on their user base just yet. I'm sure there will be unofficial ARM64 linux builds for RasPi 3 real soon now, for 733t H4X0Rs who like to bleed on the living edge.

Agreed

No WiFi and only 10/100 ethernet... It's like they TRIED to make the device suck. If they're not going to provide either WiFi or 1Gb ethernet then this is just speaks volumes of the competence of the team behind Jaguar

USB 2.0... It's 2016 and this is an x86 device. USB 3.0 really should be standard especially if you're not going to provide SATA or 1Gb ethernet or WiFi. Come on, put something nice on the board.

4 IO ports... Holy moley! They completely missed the point of the IoT movement and SBCs in general.

No SATA... sure, these are hard to find on SBCs, but wouldn't it make sense on an x86 machine?

HDMI port... great job, Jaguar team, you managed to hit one of the the bare minimum requirements.

$65 -- You gotta be kidding me. There's cheaper boards out there with more support, more features, and more performance.

Here, for only ten dollars more you can have a machine that curb-stomps the Jaguar: It's called an ODROID XU4. You're welcome.

I've had good luck with the Odroid product line. The closest match to (what I asssume are) your needs is the Odroid C1+, which has PI-like extensibility, a much faster processor (faster than the Model PI 2B) which probably doesn't matter much, and built-in analog input. Note that the analog input is 0-1.8v.

http://www.hardkernel.com/main...

If you're in the U.S., the easiest supplier is Ameridroid:

http://ameridroid.com/products...

I have and used the Odroid-U2, Odroid-U3, and an Odroid C1 (before the C1+) They all worked just fine out of the box.

No problem. The ODROID XU4 has plenty of horsepower in the sub-hundred dollar range.

It would be better - a lot better - if there was actual, reliable ethernet hardware on there, and I'd be more than happy to pay a few bucks for it.

Odroid C1+ does it a lot better for a few more bucks. OK, quite a lot more bucks, but it's much better all round. Actually the new RPi could cram WiFi on the board in less space than an Ethernet connector, which would be good enough for most of its networking needs but I suspect add too much to the cost.

The ethernet on the other PI's is not particularly reliable, and that, in my case, is the downfall of the whole enterprise. I have four pis. They all drop their ethernet connections from time to time. It's beyond annoying.

I must be very lucky as I have one which is on 24/7 as a home mail/backup/DNS server. Though it's slow for USB sharing reasons described above, it's run for over 2 years without problems. (touch wood...)

Why do RPi when you could do ODROID C1+ or ODROID XU4?

ODROID C1+ Advantages:
Gbit ethernet, faster CPU

ODROID XU4 Advantages:
Gbit ethernet, much faster CPU, 2GB of RAM, USB 3.0, eMMC support

Why do RPi when you could do ODROID C1+ or ODROID XU4?

ODROID C1+ Advantages:
Gbit ethernet, faster CPU

ODROID XU4 Advantages:
Gbit ethernet, much faster CPU, 2GB of RAM, USB 3.0, eMMC support

It looks like the 2017 "revamp" got "bumped" to 2015.

The ODROID C1 looks interesting ... Quad Core 1.5 GHz ARM A5; even includes a RTC. Benchmarks looks like it is about 8x .. not bad. I see a PSP emulator is available too.

* http://www.hardkernel.com/main...
* http://hardkernel.com/main/pro...

It looks like the 2017 "revamp" got "bumped" to 2015.

The ODROID C1 looks interesting ... Quad Core 1.5 GHz ARM A5; even includes a RTC. Benchmarks looks like it is about 8x .. not bad. I see a PSP emulator is available too.

* http://www.hardkernel.com/main...
* http://hardkernel.com/main/pro...

If you insist that 4 USB ports and an array of GPIO pins are the main selling features, then let me present to you the Odroid C1: http://www.hardkernel.com/main...

It's everything the Pi and Pi 2 is, and everything the Pi and Pi 2 never will be, for the same $35.

"1.7GHz Exynos4412 Prime Cortex-A9 Quad-core processor with PoP (Package on Package) 2Gbyte LPDDR2 880Mega Data Rate"

$65.00
- http://www.hardkernel.com/main...

I don't use my Odroid U2 as the primary desktop only because it can't do multi-head.

Perfectly silent, has enough oomph to run a modern browser, can ssh/ssh -X/vnc/etc to machines used for work just the same as the big noisy clunker I got under my desk. Only difference, big compiles will be done when sshed.

Odroid U3 http://www.hardkernel.com/main...

Intel seems to be stuck making these Atom range of CPU's for the last 4+ years.
They were a "fad" back then, and even now, they just dont cut it.

I suppose noone could of predicted ARM cpus would improve this quickly, but its time to move on Intel. Atom is a dead end in the current market.

The "pro" model is a bit expensive ($220 or so, plus shipping), but it has 2xGbE, wifi, bt, quad ARM.

Or you could just add a USB network interface to something like Odroid U3: http://hardkernel.com/main/pro....

(I have both of above.)

There have been lots of ideas for software, but none for hardware.

Last year I bought an Odroid U2, which is roughly a smartphone board with ethernet and USB. The power consumption is minimal -- 0.2W idle, 2W under load. Mine is running Debian, but Ubuntu and Android are also officially supported. I have a 1TB external drive connected. This has been running my website, and a family photo gallery, without any problems.

Last month I bought an Odroid U3, which will be in my house. As well as the server stuff, I have a touchscreen (HDMI + USB) and will make some little apps to use it.

This guy has Hadoop running on an Odroid, which is probably more complicated than is worthwhile. (Hadoop has a distributed file system.)

We have 130GB of photos, which until very recently was far too expensive to store on a cloud service. SkyDrive apparently costs $100/year for 200GB, so that could save a lot of effort if it provides what you need.

These are really, really nice.

Cheap. Small. Good community. About the only bad thing I have to say about it is that I had to go to Radio Shack to get a converter for the power.

Meh, what really counts is the relative size of the fan+radiator compared to the computer. It's hard to beat mine (+ its fan). Now go find the computer in the first image... (specs).

ODROID-XU has usb 3.0 support.

I'll be more impressed when I can actually buy a sub $100 PC

Here, for $89. Helluva better CPU than these: 4*2.0 instead of 1*1.0 ($45) or 4*1.0 ($120).

Sadly, it has no eSATA (just some extra-fast eMMC), and 100Mb ethernet instead of 470Mb you get in the $95 and $120 CuBox models.

Other competition seems to be several times as expensive and have terrible specs.

Damage or a winner? I feel so bad about having a cheap, efficient, and above all, quiet box.

I bought this 4*2GHz baby, and the only reason it's not my main desktop yet is a weird and asinine requirement for monitor resolution to be exactly 720 or 1080 (WTF?!?). I think I'll replace my old but perfectly working pair of 1280x1024 monitors (I hate 16x9!), and put the big loud clunker to the cellar. I just hate the noise so much. x86 machines with no moving parts are extremely hard to get, and have terrible performance/price. Anything that requires lots of processing power: compilation, running Windows VMs, etc, can be done remotely from the cellar just as well, while a 2GHz arm is fast enough to do client stuff, running a browser being the most demanding part.

And what else do you need to reside directly on the machine you plop your butt at?

The specs sheet says 1.7GHz that can be overclocked to 2.0, but one I got was already at 2.0 the first time I plugged it in.

There's only one big shameful downside: the graphics card supports only vertical resolutions of 720 and 1080, thus requiring a monitor of utterly useless proportions. My rasPi has seen around half an hour of monitor time total, so I guess this is not a big loss.

Note that the processor in the Pi was designed in 2002 (!), so it's probably not a fair reflection of current ARM chips: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM11

I've bought a Hardkernel Odroid-U2 http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php and plan to replace my webserver. The Pi was almost powerful enough -- it was fine for everything except resizing photographs on demand. The Odroid-U2 has 2GB RAM, and a processor that was released last April ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exynos_(system_on_chip) "4 Quad", if I follow the description correctly).

I will still use the Pi, but more for toy/hobby stuff. At the moment it's monitoring my household electricity use (519W), and drawing a nice graph. Not too taxing:
20:31:08 up 14 days, 23:09, 1 user, load average: 0.18, 0.08, 0.06

Instead of putting up with the buggy and underpowered Raspberry Pi you could just spend $15 and use GPIO with your existing computer: http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G135390529643

You'd want this one instead: more than 10x the performance, 2GB memory, $89 w/o disk.

There are many boards coming out beating this one in both price and performance. The wandboard is another one. Cubieboard probably too.

RasPi has very close specs, this one adds just a tiny 4GB flash card, which is obviously not worth the $44 price difference.

You'd want this one instead: more than 10x the performance, 2GB memory, $89 w/o disk.

You can do a lot better with a wide open case (it's a 6cm cube if you wonder about size) for a sweet ARM 4-core 1.7-2.0GHz machine. This kind of gear used to cost over $800 early last year, this one is $89, or after including 64GB disk and other "optional" components, shipping, etc, $226. And instead of RasPi's ~$100 toy, you get a fully capable, perfectly quiet computer.

Crap, the above paragraph makes me sound like a shill :p

...for building a tablet that nobody will buy.

Who cares whether or not it'll sell if you just build one for yourself? It's out of reach of the average person, but probably not a more talented geek. You can buy current gen ARM CPUs for fairly reasonably prices, as well as tablet screens thanks to economies of scale. Add a battery, bluetooth/wifi/gps chip and anything else you feel like and you're done. Not necessarily the easiest way to go about things, but it's the only way to get every feature you desire when you don't fall into the main demographic.

By your logic then everybody who wants to do embedded programing should buy a freaking arduino.
If you know the basics of programing and electronics and the product developer has the necessary documentations available(datasheets and sample programs) it really doesn't matter what you use. Linux is the same linux. Electronics are the same electronics(Analog, SPI, UART, HDMI, etc). The Raspberry is decent but it has problems and limitations. I actually very recently got an ODROID-X2 board and most my knowledge from previously using a Tegra2 Toradex board was completely transferable. And if I have a problem I can't solve by myself, just looking at the info from other boards, including the Raspberry, is enough.

$89 Exynos4412 1.7Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 Quad Core, 10/100Mbps Ethernet, 2 x High speed USB2.0 Host,HDMI, SD Slot, Headphone jack
http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php

The Exynos 4 is actually pretty recent tech. Once again I am tempted to design my own phone from scratch....

$49 Cubieboard Allwinner A10 + 512M/1GB DDR3 , 4Gb Nand Flash, 10/100M Ethernet, HDMI, 2 USB Host, 1 micro SD slot, 1 SATA, 1 ir, 96 GPIO pins ncluding I2C, SPI, RGB/LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, R-TP
http://cubieboard.org/

£40 Allwinner A10 + 1GB RAM, 4Gb NAND, Wifi: 802.11 b/g/n, 3.5mm Earphone Jack, 1x Mini Usb, 1x Hdmi Out, Micro Sd slot,
http://gooseberry.atspace.co.uk/

$65.00 Allwinner A10 1GB RAM, 4GB NAND, 3.5mm microphone jack, 3.3v TTL 4-pin header, 2 x USB A 2.0, 10/100 Ethernet, Realtek 802.11n WiFi, HDMI up to 1080p, 3.5mm composite AV, 3.5mm component Y/Pb/Pr, SDHC card slot
https://www.miniand.com/products/Hackberry%20A10%20Developer%20Board

$89 Freescale i.MX6 Duallite, 1 GB DDR3, Audio, Optical S/PDI, HDMI, Camera interface, SD Slot, Serial, Expanison header GPIO, USB, USB OTG, GB-LAN, WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth
http://wandboard.org/

$89 Exynos4412 1.7Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 Quad Core, 10/100Mbps Ethernet, 2 x High speed USB2.0 Host,HDMI, SD Slot, Headphone jack
http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php

So try this one. More than order of magnitude faster than RasPi (4*1.7Ghz overclockable to 2.0 A9 instead of 1*0.7Ghz OCable to 1.0, ancient ARM11). Obviously, $69 for the 1GB 4*1.4Ghz model or $89 for 2GB 4*1.7Ghz is more than RasPi's $35+accessories.