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Tiny $45 Cubic Mini-PC Supports Android and Linux
DeviceGuru writes "SolidRun refreshed its line of tiny 2 x 2 x 2-inch mini-PCs with four new community-backed models based on 1.2GHz multi-core Freescale i.MX6 SoCs. The CuBox-i devices support Android 4.2.2 and Linux, offer HDMI, S/PDIF, IR, eSATA, GbE, USB, WiFi, and Bluetooth interfaces (depending on model). All the models offer 1.2GHz clock speeds, OpenGL/ES 2.0 3D support, and video acceleration for 1080p video, while the two higher-end ones supply more robust GPUs that add OpenCL 1.1 support."
I'll be more impressed when I can actually buy a sub $100 PC... Too many broken promises.
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There are 4 models; 512MB, 1GB, 1GB, and 2GB of RAM.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Will buy it, but will not preorder it. I have a bad experience with such a business strategy. And lets face it, preorder is like giving away a lot of money with the hope that the seller will fulfill his promise, to deliver....i hope you got the picture.
Media server - for this you need good video and audio processor power. RaspPi is not capable of it.
File server - You could use the cheaper variant (RaspPi), but nevertheless, this one could do the job too. Maybe it will be able to run some more advance NAS server!!! To be seen...
Router/Switch/Firewall - you name it. The nice touch is that you could make/build your own server, instead of praying that the nice little toy you bought from Wallmart does not have toooo many backdoors in it.
That's a tough choice between the 1GB and 1GB.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I actually was really liking the prospect of using this as a router. I currently have an old PC doing this, but it is not the perfect solution (power hungry, for one). The ethernet driver looks like it can do BQL which is great for the fq_codel qdisc, and the wireless card seems capable of AP mode (not 100% sure on either of these... just did a cursory glance). The main issue is it only has one ethernet port, would be perfect if they added an optional second or something, as I'd rather not add one via usb.
Those models differ in other ways (CPU/GPU speeds, RAM speed, etc).
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
True. However, does Richard Stallman now seem so stupid for asking that everyone call "Linux" systems "GNU/Linux" systems? We now have Android/Linux as well as GNU/Linux, so the distinction actually turns out to be a rather important one to make. Everyone likes to joke about how RMS is a crackpot with bad hygeine, but it seems he's been right more often than not.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
I'm underwhelmed. The top end quad core device is $130, and they want another $38 for "shipping" (Stated as "$18 to $38). Clearly a 2x2x2 device, even well packed, should cost a lot less to ship. And on top of that, the Android microSd card is "optional". In that price range I can buy a damn nice quad core tablet with HDMI output. Might not have eSATA support, but will have USB support and will have a color touch screen, battery, accelerometers and position sensor (and maybe a Gyro or even GPS) and a lot more utility. Or if you want to go completely low end you can still get low end tablets for close to the base price of this device.
You would be much better off buying a Pi, or hacking a ChromeCast or ever a hackable Linux based router. This looks to me like another "me too" device to profit off the community funding model.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Sorry, we need your cred's back... You confused subject with content.
-no sig today-
At this point, Android/Linux is usually just "Android", and GNU/Linux is just "Linux". The only times that I hear a different use in my life is when someone's trying to sound smart on the internet. So far, it seems like disambiguation has kind of taken care of itself.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
There once was a time on slashdot (and in the rest of the world) where people would tinker and hack and put things together for the *fun* of it. We truly live in dark times. Go on, I'm sure netflix is waiting.
My problem with RaspberryPi for file server is the 10/100 ethernet. Gigabit is cheap and prevalent. I understand the keeping costs down aspect though.
The rPi has enough ethernet issues that Gigabit wouldn't make much difference (there are people who will sell you a 'gigabit' USB 2.0 NIC; but that's because there are bad people, not because it works all that well). The ethernet, and both accessible USB ports, are provided by a combo NIC/USB hub switch dangling from a single USB2 root port on the SoC. Since SD cards top out at fairly low capacities, that typically implies that the USB bus will be dealing with mass-storage chatter between the rPi and your external HDD enclosure and ethernet traffic for whatever file serving protocol you are using. Not Fast.
I want a car-puter that's worth a damn and I'm flexible about what I would find acceptable in that regard.
1. I want it in a car (obviously) but that means it requires some things other computing devices will not but among these are power/heat management and tolerance most might begin to realize is completely hostile to computer devices.
2. I want it to meet current expectations in software and in hardware. (For example, 1280x800 minimum display, not 800x480 and Android 4.x, not Android 2.x! I am looking at YOU Parrot! You insult us all with your specs.)
3. I want it to be flexible and more general purpose even if it is limited by its use in a car. This means having a wide range of peripheral inputs and outputs and the ability to use a variety of displays and display types. It also means keeping it open and not restricted. (Parrot, could you explain to me your parrot store or whatever you call it? I get that things *can* be side-loaded, but I think that was more of a concession than anything else.)
4. I want it to be open as Android was intended. This means we will buy your hardware, but don't try to tell us what we can do with it. We KNOW what's on your mind and we don't approve. It's not so much about "quality control" as much as it is consumer control. Parrot, once again, I'm looking at you. There are competitors coming hard and fast and you don't want to be forgotten simply because you thought being among the first means you can take advantage of the lacking consumer choice. Some consumers have a short memory while others like me do not. I will NEVER buy Sony again, for example. Sony doesn't respect consumers. I won't buy into that ever.
I can't believe there isn't a market for what I want.
Power calculations is exactly why my latest home-built router uses an low-power mother board with an Atom CPU rather than something more power hungry. Not as efficient as some other options like this SOC, but it's still x86 so I had more options on Linux distros. In the end it was personal preference, tho.
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It is interesting and I like to be able to play around with new tech. The codel qdisc is only available in fairly new kernels... was introduced in 3.5 I think. Most custom firmwares use rather old kernels and you have little control over the actual software versions. I also use an ath9k adapter with hostapd, it is hard to find routers with 450Mbs support in linux. Also, I can use it as a samba host, torrent host, plus the fedora builds use hardening techniques and it has selinux enabled by default. Plenty of other stuff I could do too if I wanted, like set it up as a RDP server, and it wouldn't bog the computer down too bad since it has an actual processor.
Its basically just an interesting expiriment I wanted to try, and it works rather well.
yes, only problem is that android on these systems is absolutely horrible for anything but media center work. If you want a PC, then don't go for any of those. I have a mk802 II and its capabilities as a general purpose machine are pathetic
Dang, replying to my own post here... just a little research revealed that you can get console IO through the USB ports: http://www.solid-run.com/mw/index.php?title=CuBox_serial_port
Still haven't found anything about GPU acceleration in a headless setup.
I like the idea, but at the high end with shipping you are almost up into the Celeron price range. This would be for a 14W motherboard/cpu combo which should outperform this and would be a much more flexible system.
I can think of several more if they changed the form factor so it would fit in my pocket. 2"x2"x2" is about the most inconvenient possible form factor for a device of this overall size.
If I get ~9 megabytes per second in the real world from 100Mbps Ethernet on actual file transfers over the on-board Ethernet on my laptop, and ~30 megabytes-per-second on actual file transfers the USB 2.0 Ethernet adapter on that same laptop, then: Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0 should be a boon.
Not because performance is improved by a factor of 10 (as going from 100 to 1000Mbps Ethernet might theoretically be in an ideal situation), but because it's more than three times faster than what I could do before, and I spend 1/3 the time waiting for stuff to move from A to B.
And if I can plug in a cheap widget that gets me 3x the speed, no matter what the platform or the problem: As long as speed is an issue, I'm sold: 3x is always better than 1x, even if 10x is ideal and 3x is less than 10x.
Why do you proclaim that the people who would sell me such an adapter are "bad people"?
(Let me guess: You're an engineer. You probably even have the ring to prove it.)
Kid-proof tablet..
Not a cabinet like a kitchen cabinet, a cabinet like circuit breaker box mounted in the garage. It needs to be ruggedized so that it can deal with high dust, high humidity, occasional bumps, not ruggedized such that I can throw it off the rim of the Grand Canyon to be found in perfect working order by whoever comes next after humans are extinct.
I want people who are building small, moderate power computers to be thinking that I want a cloud in my home. I want to walk over to it periodically and replace some kind of failed storage device. But other than that I'd like the damned thing to be mostly hands off and not something I have to fit into the decor of my house.
You could buy something like this: http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7700#
This SKU: TS-7700-IND-800 TS-7700 with the industrial grade (-40ÂC to 85ÂC) PXA166 at 800MHz has the ruggedness you're looking for.
All these ARM SOCs are nice but they all have weird closed up GPUs that have crap close sourced drivers that barely work.
There are projects to reverse engineer Adreno (Qualcomm) and Mali (ARM) GPUs and implement drivers for them, but these projects are nowhere near production ready. And as far as I know Qualcomm has other issues with openness- they are denying release of hackable Android for their devices because it contains some secret proprietary BLOBs, without which it won't work.
So when it comes to Linux hardware support on ARM, it feels like 90s all over again... I'd rather buy a small x86, it will be larger, more expensive, it will consume much more power, but at least open-source hardware support is going to be nice and I won't need any BLOBs.
--Coder
You've abused an apostrophe. Prepare to die.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Same problem as this model. The Gigabit is limited to 480Mbps (USB 2.0 bus speed). Actually this Cubic isn't all that different from an RPi, they run the same family chips, the same type of RAM, the same type of I/O.
Not true. Ethernet does not go through USB here; it is connected to the SoC directly. See http://boundarydevices.com/i-mx6-ethernet/ . The Raspberry Pi uses a BCM 2835 from Broadcom, while the Cubox-i uses a Freescale i.MX6 , so they are not the same chip family, they aren't even made by the same company. Raspberry Pi also does not have eSata, while the CuBox-i.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
It's a matter of an old-fashioned thing called 'common decency' to call it GNU/Linux. Without the thousands of GNU components the OS wouldn't even have a working compiler suite. Credit to where it's due.
As for Android, it's just Android although it should be Android/Linux. That's because the company that made Android is not very decent.
All you have to do is to look for the i.MX6 specs. That gives you the infos you want. Having worked with Sabre SD devices (which also use the i.MX6 and performed very well), I am pretty excited about this.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
I'm sick of all these mini SoC that only have hardware decoding to do 1080p video but only JUST enough grunt/ram to run XBMC. Gimme something that can actually handle XBMC + Aeon or a skin other than Confluence at a decent clip, then I'll be impressed.
cubieboard 2 is a good product and is essentially a souped up raspberry pi with SATA.
According to the Cubic website:
(*) 1000Mbps link is limited to 470Mbps actual bandwidth due to internal chip busses limitation
Sounds like they have the ethernet chipset off of the USB bus on this unit as well. Although I would expect the ethernet to perform better than a Pi since it has more CPU power to handle the overhead.
I have their older 700MHz unit (single core) 2 GB of memory I bought not too long ago (of course, that is how it always works). So far the unit has actually exceeded my expectations and is a lot of fun to play with. For me I wanted something that I could install Kali Linux on (the successor to Backtrack Linux) to do some simple type attacks on a network (I teach part time at a community college an information security class). First what I don't like: The shipping comes for Isreal. The price of shipping is $30 which raises the cost of the product. That they came out with a new one shortly after I already bought one that includes a lot of features I wanted. What I like: Gigabit ethernet They have this thing called u-boot which is pretty slick. You stick a file on a usb memory stick and stick it into the top USB port. Connect the ethernet and then boot up and it asks you what OS you want to install. You can select Ubuntu, Opensuse, Fedora, XBMC and a bunch more and it just installs them to the SD card. Very slick. It has the ability to serial into the unit so you don't have to set up a mouse, keyboard and monitor to install OSes. Works in Linux and Windows (with putty fine). I can then do SSH X forwarding really easy from the network if you want a GUI. I have been able to run a slew of python things on it and the performance is reasonable. I really have been having fun with it.