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$35 Quad-core Hacker SBC Offers Raspberry Pi-like Size and I/O
DeviceGuru writes: Hardkernel has again set its sights on the Raspberry Pi with a new $35 Odroid-C1 hacker board that matches the RPI's board size and offers a mostly similar 40-pin expansion connector. Unlike the previous $30 Odroid-W that used the same Broadcom BCM2835 SoC as the Pi and was soon cancelled due to lack of BCM2835 SoC availability, the Odroid-C1 is based on a quad-core 1.5GHz Cortex-A5 based Amlogic S805 SoC, which integrates the Mali-400 GPU found on Allwinner's popular SoCs. Touted advantages over the similarly priced Raspberry Pi Model B+ include a substantially more powerful processor, double the RAM, an extra USB2.0 port that adds Device/OTG, and GbE rather than 10/100 Ethernet.
Arggh ...
set its sights FFS
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
Can this device run Flash in the browser? If it can, I'd be very likely to get one for each of my kids for doing their homework and general computing on. I'm not a big fan of flash, but it's necessary for some of the homework/game sites the school uses. Combine it with a monitor, keyboard and mouse, and something like this seems to be good enough to be a fully functional computer.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Those ODroid all offer big bang for the bucks, but the Pi is one of the rare single board computers which still offers composite video output, so you can hook it up to your old fat CRT TV, which is great for old-school emulation (eg with the awesome RetroPie distro).
The Raspberry Pi is kind of in a weird situation, and I can't understand why it really caught on. On one hand, it's overkill for little electronics projects where something like an Arduino would be much better suited. On the other hand, it's not quite powerful enough to act as a respectable desktop or media center. The disk I/O is very lacking because it doesn't support an interace with DMA. Various disk intensive applications like torrents will bring the thing to its knees. If the video doesn't happen to be in a codec that is supported in hardware, then there's no chance of it having the horsepower to decode it.
As far as media centers go, It makes way more sense to get a low power Intel board that you know will have enough power to do everything, and will be able to run just about any application and run Windows or Linux as you prefer.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Don't forget to add in the cost a 5V 2A power supply if you don't have one laying around. Unlike the Pi, this can't be powered through the micro USB port.
XBMC was the killer app for this device. I've got two of them in my house for less than I paid for a single x86 XBMC system I was using. Other than that, they're effectively throwaway systems you can use in place of using virtual machines. Want to test out SAMBA as a domain controller? Slap it on, fire it up, and take it for a spin. Don't like it? Your other systems haven't been touched and you can just wipe the Pi and start over.
What is the url for this compo site, and what is so good about the video signals from it?
you can just wipe the Pi and start over.
That's what I said, but she was having none of it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Note that you have to buy a codec license to activate the Raspberry Pi's MPEG-2 support. Once you've added the license key to your config.txt, XBMC will handle MPEG-2 just fine; I can stream shows from my MythTV backend without any problem. But, the sluggish interface is a bit of a problem, especially when using an IR remote.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
It still has it, they just moved from two seperate connectors for analog video and audio to one 4-pole connector.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
When I heard about the RPI I was very enthusiastic. The premise of cheap computers, give kids a possibility to tinker, maybe spark a whole industry of these kind of things. Maybe even ending in cheaper and more faster RPI'like systems kicking the boundaries away.
... board they take a very aggressive stance and everyone that comes up with an ARM board is trying to steal their customers away. It is as ridiculous of complaining about holes and a 40 pin connector, you can bet this board will be branded as a rippoff.
But every f*cking time somebody comes up with a cheaper, faster,
I thought the whole idea was of giving children a cheap way to tinker with hardware, so what is the problem with cheaper / faster boards that come on the market ? The whole premise seems to be a lie and I have the feeling the whole RPI thing has more to do with personal ego's than al the fluffy spin... .
How so? ARM processors are quite plentiful and support several operating systems already. Perhaps you're just not very familiar with them. Not to worry. There's plenty of material available.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Sorry, it's worthless unless it has "Intel Inside" on the box. At least that is what the TV keeps telling me.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Update: now i've managed to get on odriod's site and get some answers to the question. It seems they now offer a $9 shipping option for low value orders and they are using the postal service which tends to have marginally lower brokerage charges than couriurs. That makes the updated estimate.
$35 (board) + $9 (shipping) + ~£10 (brokerage) + ~£5.60 VAT = ~£43.6.
They also link to a store in germany that sells their products but said store doesn't have the C1 listed yet.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The Raspberry Pi is not open source hardware, it never has been. You can't even get the gerbers nor full documentation on the Broadcom BCM2835 SoC, let alone the full design files.
In contrast, competing boards like Beaglebone Black and Olimex's OLinuXino range like the A10-OLinuXino-LIME, A20-OLinuXino-LIME and A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 are fully open source hardware with all the information being provided. In the best tradition of open source, everyone is welcome to make their own derivatives using these open materials. All four boards are also substantially more powerful and flexible than the RasPi, very well made and fully supported.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has declined to make the RasPi open source hardware despite years of requests from the community.
How so? ARM processors are quite plentiful and support several operating systems already. Perhaps you're just not very familiar with them. Not to worry. There's plenty of material available.
I've designed embedded computers and written boot rom code and ported kernels to arm and other processors. While arm has a more intelligent design to it than an x86 its still far behind other processors with its 16 registers (MIPS,PowerPC,etc have 32 plus a few dedicated ones). It also lacks in the fact that it must have its address space split in half to support I/O. The only thing arm does well is conserve power.
I don't want to do a sig now
Quit with the facts. I want to hear him rant more.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?