The Cubieboard, a familiar size, packed with more features. (via cubieboard)
The hackers and makers of the world present in many online design communities have a steadily increasing pool of boards to choose from for their build projects. Here, we introduce another ARM powered board that comes fully assembled from China in the form of the Cubieboard. This board, designed by Tom Cubie and friends who almost doubled up on their crowd-funding goal last year, offers DIYers a completely hackable board capable of running Android, Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions.
To begin the list of specs, the Cubieboard contains a Cortex-A8 ARM processor operating at 1 GHz speed with a Mali400 OpenGL ES GPU. The board is based on the Allwinner A10 SoC design with 1GB of pre-installed RAM running at 480 MHz. Power is supplied via 5V, 2A 4.00mm/1.7mm barrel plug - a DC to USB cable is provided for powering the device through external USB ports, though the team suggests getting your hands on a Sony PSP power supply to meet the required specs.
The Cubieboard comes with 1080P HDMI output support, 10/100M Ethernet capability, 2 USB hosts, 1 microSD slot (with SDHC support), 1 SATA connection, an IR interface, and a 2x48 extend pin for external headers. An on-board NAND flash comes pre-installed with Android 4.0 (ICS); first boot on Android is recommended to ensure the device is working.
From then on, developers are free to flash the NAND or install images on their microSD cards using BerryBoot to run a host of Linux-based OS, including: Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Arch, and any other ARM capable distributions. Some of the team’s Cubieboard project suggestions include: an Android TV multimedia powerhouse, a home network file server, a lightweight Linux desktop, and a network accessible home automation device.
The Cubieboard’s “Standard Package” is available on Shopify for $49 USD and includes: The Cubieboard, an SATA data cable and SATA power cable, the USB to DC power cable, and the carton box. Those interested can pay extra for a simple case, black&white or transparent case, power supply, and Wi-Fi USB adapter. Quite a bargain for the price.
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