Cubietruck Allwinner A20 dev board coming in October

[Oakham]

http://liliputing.com/2013/09/cubietruc ... tober.html

[jamesh]

I think their pricing estimate (the journo's that is) might be a little optimistic, looking at all the bits on the board.

[redhawk]

I'm also sceptical about the pricing too infact the older Cubieboard sold on eBay are nearly double that estimate.
Furthermore someone on eBay appears to be abusing the Raspberry Pi trademark ( "Raspberry PI Mini PC Cubieboard" ) needs reporting.

I had a look at the spec and the CPU + GPU are pretty decent but power consumption cannot be great when you need a 5v @ 2A power supply (and just like the BeagleBone Black no sodding composite video output port).
The Pi may not be ultra fast but it's low power consumption still makes it the ideal portable computer for battery powered DIY projects.

Richard S.

[Oakham]

Cubietruck is put into trial production

http://cubieboard.org/2013/09/14/cubiet ... production


Considering an Android A20 TV Stick is around $50.00 can not see this much below $90:

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Cheapest ... 30287.html

[redhawk]

That as maybe but the Android dongle has no SATA controller, VGA port, USB hub, GP-I/O?? or Bluetooth capability so the cut back in hardware has obviously kept cost down.

Richard S.

[Oakham]

That as maybe but the Android dongle has no SATA controller, VGA port, USB hub, GP-I/O?? or Bluetooth capability so the cut back in hardware has obviously kept cost down.

Richard S.

No comprehendez to reply as I wrote:

Considering an Android A20 TV Stick is around $50.00 can not see this much below $90:

[nicknml]

ahha lee said:

"The retail price will be 89$ for the high-end version."

Too bad it doesn't have dual Gb interfaces.
Oh well, if the release causes the second version Cubieboard price to drop, I might get one of those.

[W. H. Heydt]

I'm also sceptical about the pricing too infact the older Cubieboard sold on eBay are nearly double that estimate.

Miniand sells the Cubie and the Cubie2 for $50 and $60, respectively. The article doesn't actually *say* how much the Truck will be. He only gave the other two as a comparison. Last I checked the Cubie site, they were hoping to keep the Truck below $100. Given what it's got on it, that will take a bit of work. (Don't ask *me* why they added VGA...)

I had a look at the spec and the CPU + GPU are pretty decent but power consumption cannot be great when you need a 5v @ 2A power supply (and just like the BeagleBone Black no sodding composite video output port).
The Pi may not be ultra fast but it's low power consumption still makes it the ideal portable computer for battery powered DIY projects.

The reason for the 2A supply is that the boards will provide 5V at 1A to a power connector to go with the SATA port. That's enough to power a 2.5" HDD. I'm actually powering Cubies with a 1.5A supply with an attached SSD and they run perfectly stable. When I can afford/get around to ordering, I'll be getting some 2.5A 5V supplies to use instead, and those will be good all the way to the Truck (should I get one). Without an attached SSD/HDD, a 1A supply should be plenty.

I have mixed feelings about the CubieTruck. You can match the processor (1GHz A20) with the Cubie2. The 2GB memory would be nice (since I'd be running MySQL, CUPS, the desktop, 3 to 5 terminal windows, and as many as half a dozen programs all at the same time. I think the biggest boost to handle all that is just the shift to dual core. The second GB of memory may not have much effect, if any. Boosting the clock speed (if I knew how to do that when running Raspbian on a Cubie) would probably be the second biggest performance boost. Since I'm using an SSD on the SATA port, paging memory out is not necessarily an issue.

[OtherCrashOverride]

http://cubox-i.com/cubox-i-a-mini-compu ... ing-at-45/

[Oakham]

http://cubox-i.com/cubox-i-a-mini-compu ... ing-at-45/

The cheapest model is single core, $70 for Dual-Core http://cubox-i.com/table not really comparable to Cubietruck

[Lob0426]

Below the cubietruck article was an advert for the "CoolShip". An ARM board in a keyboard. That looks like a good setup to me.

The Cubieboards and Cubietruck all look interesting. Their prices are good and the features too.

The Cubietruck will hopefully come in below $100.

More and more choices coming along all the time, and decisions .

[NewIT.co.uk]

We have seen the price of $89 for the Cubietruck banded about on the forum, but the first batch have only just come of the production run, so should see a firm price anounced very soon. First batch for sale will have a shipment time in October.

In the meantime we have just received the CubieBoard 2's into stock

[W. H. Heydt]

We have seen the price of $89 for the Cubietruck banded about on the forum, but the first batch have only just come of the production run, so should see a firm price anounced very soon. First batch for sale will have a shipment time in October.

In the meantime we have just received the CubieBoard 2's into stock

Do you ship to the US?

[W. H. Heydt]

http://cubox-i.com/cubox-i-a-mini-compu ... ing-at-45/

in order to get a SATA port, it'll cost at least $95. To get 2GB, $120 (but you do get a 4-core chip as well).

Also...they aren't shipping pre-orders until November, so this isn't really available....yet.

It's kind of interesting to see all these very small systems (nanocoputers?) crawling out of the woodwork. I can only surmise that the raging success of the Pi has, at least in part, triggered a kind of "land rush" into this space. People are trying to beat the Pi on specs, probably because they can't actually turn a profit at the Pi's price point. Going to worth looking back in five years or so to see how many of these machine building companies survive. I'd bet it won't be very many.

[NewIT.co.uk]

Do you ship to the US?

Hi

Yes we do ship to the US

[W. H. Heydt]

Do you ship to the US?

Hi

Yes we do ship to the US

Very good. I'll keep you in mind when I am in a position to get one...probably in a couple of months.

[brisalta]

We have seen the price of $89 for the Cubietruck banded about on the forum, but the first batch have only just come of the production run, so should see a firm price anounced very soon. First batch for sale will have a shipment time in October.

In the meantime we have just received the CubieBoard 2's into stock

Do you ship to the US?

IO Technologies https://store.iotllc.com/home.php stocks cubieboards. They are in the Sacramento, CA area.

[alxxxG]

The cubie2's are great if you need a bit more processing power and a lot more gpio (96) without using expanders.
Power use is a bit higher than the pi.
Also makes a better desktop replacement though can still lag a little on some desktop stuff.

The iotechnologies baseboard for cubie2 is better than the stock cubie one.
https://store.iotllc.com/product.php?pr ... featured=Y

cubie truck is out and ranges from $89 - 120
Less gpio , down to 54 from cubie2's 96.
I'd like one but have to many spare pi's and a couple of spare cubie2's.


There are a lot of similiar boards but the problem is support and software support with docs in English.
Cubie is one of the few with this.

I'd still like to see a board like any of these but with a lot more protection on the gpio.
Level shifters or opto's built into the board.

Have to give massive credit to the raspberrypi guys as they've brought the cost of boards down from thousands to under $100
and its great to see all the extra people doing embedded development.

A lot of uni lecturers are in for a shock with a lot of students going to be coming in with a lot more skills and knowledge than the lecturers have of embedded systems and programming (not all lecturers but a fairly high number)

[W. H. Heydt]

The cubie2's are great if you need a bit more processing power and a lot more gpio (96) without using expanders.
Power use is a bit higher than the pi.

The power issue has come up before and it's a bit of misdirection. The reason for the 2A spec for the Cubies is that 1A of that is for use of an attached SATA drive. If you don't use a SATA drive (or aren't powering one through the cubieboard), then you really only need 1A...which is what most people actually recommend for the Pi. If you attach a SATA SSD, 1.5A is plenty.

If the Pi had a SATA port and 5v power connector to go with, it would be spec'd for 2A supply, too.

Have to give massive credit to the raspberrypi guys as they've brought the cost of boards down from thousands to under $100
and its great to see all the extra people doing embedded development

The RPF has certainly attracted a lot of attention and having sold 2 million Pis, I agree that they have caused a "land rush" into the small, cheap, SBC market. Another factor may be Kick Starter and related "knock offs" to fund small start ups.

It's going to be extremely interesting to see where all of this leads in five or ten years. Will major companies go into this space with branded cheap SBCs? Will big companies buy up some of these small start ups? Will there be a shake out that kills the shoestring operations and narrows the field to a few strong or popular designs? Will some silicon foundry company decide to develop one or more chips specifically for this space?

[Lob0426]

I hope foundry will develop at least a couple of "chips" for this space. A powerful multipurpose chip and a more server specific design.

The multipurpose board for overall use. A server board for robotics, NAS, streaming, website etc..

With 2 million RasPi and tens of thousands of other boards out in the world, a market segment around ARM, is looking more likely all the time.

Will ARM bring about the "Turing" option?

[jamesh]

Problem is that making a chip costs multimillions of dollars. And you don't make much on each one, so you need to sell a hell of a lot of make the money back.

[MoosePi]

With 2 million RasPi and tens of thousands of other boards out in the world, a market segment around ARM, is looking more likely all the time.

I thought the ARM market segments were already alive and well in everything from SatNavs to Servers and everything in-between and has been for over 20 years ?

Even Intel & AMD will be manufacturing ARM Chips !

It is just that with the explosion in availability of cost-effective Smart Phones and Tablets etal, it is has bought it to the "common-mans" attention ?

[glnds]

I just benchmarked the Cubietruck (with and without SSD): Cubietruck VS Raspberry Pi VS Banana Pi VS BeagleBone Black. The results are available here: http://gleenders.blogspot.be/2014/07/cu ... thout.html