Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux

linuxgizmos.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 100 posts

Re: Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux

#71

Post by plopper »

voltagex_ wrote: post #65
angusgr wrote: post #26

Freescale i.MX6 is a really nice platform. Shame it hasn't gotten broader traction, I think because it is moderately more expensive than its competition. Since May I've been using an imx6 based gk802 ($70 quad core "Android TV" stick) as a personal server (email, RSS, VPN, etc.) Has worked really nicely considering. (Blog post about installing debian on it: http://projectgus.com/2013/05/debian-installer-for-zealz-gk8…

Don't Freescale have a bad reputation for not being particularly open?

They are far more open than BCM or Qualcomm.

Re: Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux

#72

Post by jgillich »

ollybee wrote: post #13
dlhavema wrote: post #10

a new one of these little computer in a box things seem to be popping up every couple weeks, are they selling that well to warrant so many companies making so many varieties?

Is there a good website for keeping track of these ARM SoC PC's ? I'd like to see at a glance what is currently available and detailed spec of the chipsets.

There is a wikipedia page listing most of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_single-board_computers

Re: Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux

#73

Post by Ecio78 »

x0054 wrote: post #22
friism wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No SATA though...

That's true, the IO performance is nothing to write home about. But the CPU / GPU is really good. The only Linux I got working on it is Kali Linux. But Ubuntu is also available. I think a SOC with dual SATA for raid would be really cool for a small server.

Many "low-cost" (80-150$) 1 or 2-bay NAS (seagate, netgear, dlink, zyxel etc..) can be "hacked" and the OS can be substituted with Linux. The difference is that they don't have a video output, and I think the CPUs should be more limited (many have Marvell Kirkwood 800mhz-1.5ghz), but they are designed for NAS usage so multiple SATA ports, eventually gigabit ethernet etc..

Having said that, probably the best home NAS could be built out of an HP Microserver N54L: 250$ for an Amd Turion "small" server that supports up to 8GB of RAM (16GB sometimes), it has 4 (non-hot-swappable) disk slots (but there are guys who have installed more using 2.5 disks and the dvdrom slot).

there are plenty of forums and sites showing how to do it, the only downside is that it is bigger (but 4 slots) and it consumes more power

EDIT: I'm still deciding which way to go in order to substitute my old Seagate Dockstar running Debian (and with a single old 2.5 disk attached to one of the USB ports)

Re: Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux

#74

Post by Uberphallus »

Well, as a not completely satisfied owner of:

eSata Sheevaplug: currently NAS, no video, soft floating point.

Raspberry Pi B/512: was a music server but the built-in audio is extremely crappy, unbalanced GPU/CPU power (damn you, DTS tracks), now sitting in a corner.

Cubieboard: (current music server, stable, faster than RPi but no video hardware acceleration in linux).

I just bought this in without much thinking. I hope now I can run XMBC and have hardware acceleration for video directly in Linux.

As some other said, Freescale is much more open than the ones I listed above.

Re: Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux

#75

Post by [deleted] »

DHowett wrote: post #55
X-Istence wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going off the bottom of the page ( http://cubox-i.com ), where it says it is limited to 470 Mb/sec due to internal busses. 470 Mb/sec sounds too similar to USB 2 to not be USB 2. -- Actually did the right thing and looked at the datasheets involved: http://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/data_sheet/IMX6DQ... and http://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/errata/IMX6DQCE.p... This seems to be an internal limi…

That's actually rather unfortunate—the original Cubox (/pro) based on the Armada 510/Dove has a GigE PHY which is completely capable of ~1000 megabits.

[deleted]

Re: Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux

#76

Post by Ecio78 »

Uberphallus wrote: post #74

Well, as a not completely satisfied owner of: eSata Sheevaplug: currently NAS, no video, soft floating point. Raspberry Pi B/512: was a music server but the built-in audio is extremely crappy, unbalanced GPU/CPU power (damn you, DTS tracks), now sitting in a corner. Cubieboard: (current music server, stable, faster than RPi but no video hardware acceleration in linux). I just bought this in without much thinking. I h…

Isn't Raspberry PI's gpu acceleration supported on XBMC (with the right driver and/or dedicated distro?)

Re: Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux

#77

Post by Ecio78 »

ytjohn wrote: post #16
ollybee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good website for keeping track of these ARM SoC PC's ? I'd like to see at a glance what is currently available and detailed spec of the chipsets.

I haven't seen such a site, but the two sites I follow for these type of devices are: http://www.cnx-software.com/ http://liliputing.com/tag/mini-pc They do reviews on most of these devices. I have two mk802s that I'm trying to setup as a sort of custom monitoring devices. This probably sounds like a form of pen testing (and it is similar) but I'm working on having one of these power up, search out open wifi networks…

+1 for CNX Software, you can find a mix of news, deals and reviews about embedded devices and I think it has been around for some years

Re: Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux

#78

Post by inoop »

IgorPartola wrote: post #62

Just learned about these today. The nice thing about the Is that they have crypto instructions on the chip and outperform the Raspberry Pi 40 to 1 when using OpenSSL (at least according to benchmarks). With the price point cheaper than the RPi (comes with a case, flash, etc.) these may have just won me over. See http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=38411&p=39...

DX also sells loads of 'stick' form factor Android devices for around the same price, including shipping. MK802, MK808 run Ubuntu as well.

http://dx.com/s/android%2bmini?Sort=PriceL2H&category=191

Re: Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux

#79

Post by weirdcat »

voltagex_ wrote: post #66
DannyBee wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They run something like openelec (IE XBMC based). Geexbox is usually what supports these things. I use a mini-pc (a little asus eeepc box with a "who cares" intel cpu in it and a nvidia gt620m running openelec). The reason is actually simple: A lot of the embedded processors are much more finicky in terms of hardware decode. I used to run geexbox on a TI OMAP4460, and it worked wonderfully, right until you hit a trac…

I've gone with the WDTV series for my media needs - the earlier gens were very hackable but they've turned on codesigning in the latest WDTV Live Media hub range. They're not bad and play everything I throw at them (Sigmatek decoders, afaicr)

I'm using an older WDTV LIVE and indeed, I never had issues with decoding stuff. The downside is that it's somewhat limited, e.g. I cannot adjust audio sync which sometimes gets quite annoying. Being able to jump 30s (and such) back and forth instead of "analog" rewinding and fast-forwarding would be nice as well.

I'm still waiting for a device that handles XBMC well, is responsive, has an optical audio output and offers DTS pass-through -- apparently there's no such thing. Lack of support for DTS/DD 5.1 pass-through is the main problem; last time I checked Minix seemed to be close, but not there yet.

Re: Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux

#80

Post by casperc »

Uberphallus wrote: post #74

Well, as a not completely satisfied owner of: eSata Sheevaplug: currently NAS, no video, soft floating point. Raspberry Pi B/512: was a music server but the built-in audio is extremely crappy, unbalanced GPU/CPU power (damn you, DTS tracks), now sitting in a corner. Cubieboard: (current music server, stable, faster than RPi but no video hardware acceleration in linux). I just bought this in without much thinking. I h…

Can anyone comment on how this will do as a media server? I.e. will it be able to decode 720p and 1080p h264?
Post reply on HN