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  • Author Author: mconners
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ODroid - Oh Boy!

mconners

I recently picked up one of these little ODROID C1 development boards and i have to say I couldn't be happier!

 

It's a Quad Core ARM dev board based on the Amlogic S805 Cortex A5 processor with a Dual Core Mali 450 GPU. It comes with 1 GB of RAM and can can boot from 2 sources eMMC and Micro SD. $36.95 US.

 

It's layout looks very similar to the Raspberry Pi+, and it is almost the same size. Here is a picture of the 2 side by side:

 

image

 

Some of the features:

4 USB Host Ports

Micro Usb OTG Port

Micro HDMI Port

Gigabit ethernet over RJ45

IR Receiver (I guess that would be handy for a remote control if using as a streaming device)

40 Pin Expansion Port containing

2 - I2C Ports

Serial Port

19 GPIO Pins

2 ADC inputs

1.8V Analog reference

3.3 V Out

2 5V outputs

1 SPI Output

RTC with available battery backup.

 

A quick look at the pinout for both  the ODROID C1 and the Raspberry Pi shows they seem to match up with the exception of pins 37,38, and 40 on the ODroid are used for ADC.

 

It's also missing a few things the B+ has built in, like the camera interface, composite video out, discrete audio outputs, and the Display header.

 

This board will run Android or Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, both available from the Hardkernel site.

Installation of the Ubuntu image was a breeze, simply download it, dd the image to a Micro SD card, and boot. Detailed instructions are available on the Hardkernel site.

 

There is a root user and an odroid user, both seem to use the password odroid.

 

The Hardkernel site (as well as their US distributor) have a wide selection of inexpensive accessories for the odroid.

I was foolish and didn't purchase the power supply, which turned out to require a very small connector which was difficult to find. I was able to cobble together a plug using a Radio Shack Adaptaplug socket, a type A (2.5 mm) Adaptaplug tip, and an old phone charger I had lying around. But it would have been cheaper and easier to have purchased it initially from Ameridroid.

 

I did purchase the tinkerers kit which included a breadboard, a breakout board for the GPIO port, a ribbon cable, a bunch of resistors (like 100 or so, I didn't count), 6 tactile buttons, about a dozen LED's in rd green and yellow,  a Photocell sensor, and a bunch of connection wires.

 

The fact that it runs a modern version of Ubuntu makes me happy, the 14.04 LTS version is from April 2014 and since it is an LTS release it will be supported for several years. I run Ubuntu on my main computer and all my laptops, plus my RIoT Board so this thing will fit right in.

 

In conclusion I just have to say this is a great board, and for $35 US, it's tough to beat. My only words of caution are

1) Buy the power supply, it's worth it, or at least the pigtail connector they sell

2) Look on their site to see the limitations on Micro SD cards, they have some that perform better than others, I had one of the poor performers, it works but it is slow on boot

3) If you need a console, buy their USB uart module, they have a goofy molex connector for serial

 

Other than that, I can't complain.

  • Im in the mood for getting one, you guys cant have all the fun, I don't see it on Newark so where are you getting them from, or am I just not finding them ?

  • in reply to mconners

    Michael Conners wrote:

     

    I think they are omitting a step. It seems like in boot.ini you would have to tell it that root is now on sda1 or sda2, but maybe I'm mistaken.

    This is very strange.  When I started up ODROID-C1 with my v1.1 SD card this morning it automatically mounted my hard drive as its root file system (which I created from v1.2).  I like it, but I'm a wee bit puzzled and I wonder which will get mounted next time.  I'm also hoping the v1.2 file system doesn't have trouble with v1.1 Linux.

     

    So the ODROID-C1 is running quite well and performs well, except display is still a little blurry because v1.1 doesn't support 1440x900 native resolution and I need to mess with the HDMI cable to get it to come up the first time.  I don't know if that's an iffy HDMI cable or it's my HDMI Switcher box that's the culprit.  Isn't this fun?

  • in reply to mconners

    Michael Conners wrote:

     

    I think they are omitting a step. It seems like in boot.ini you would have to tell it that root is now on sda1 or sda2, but maybe I'm mistaken.

    I think the SD card Linux image takes care of it automatically.  Normally it would look for a partition 2 on the SD card.  However, if there isn't a partition 2 on the SD card (because I deleted it) it looks for partition 2 on any available disk drive.  At least I think that's how it works.

     

    It doesn't look like the Ubuntu Minimal Image will help me -- I don't think it has a GUI and therefore no HDMI.  So I'll try dding the SD card and HDD again, this time being more careful to sync.

     

    Edit: if that doesn't work, I'll probably have to get another 8GB card and try downloading to it.  I can pick up cables at the same time.

     

    The HDD seems to be working fine.  I just downloaded ODROID magazine's February issue to the hard drive and it looks fine.  Performance is pretty darn good even with the SD card (class 10 / UHS-1 but UHS not enabled yet).

     

    Edit: I'm actually getting pretty used to this baby.  It's amazing performance for the price.  You're even more spoiled with eMMC, but I suspect the hard drive will be great once it's working properly.

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    I think they are omitting a step. It seems like in boot.ini you would have to tell it that root is now on sda1 or sda2, but maybe I'm mistaken.

     

    Mike

  • in reply to mconners

    Michael Conners wrote:

     

    If I had read more carefully, I would have realized you are trying the boot off sd, run from HD. Sorry, I misunderstood. I haven't tried that yet, I'm sure it's not insurmountable. Maybe post on the forum over there, they seem to have pretty good support.

    They have pretty good instructions for root file system on hard drive here:  http://odroid.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=en:c1_ubuntu_to_usb_hdd

     

    I probably did something wrong or they left out some steps.  Elsewhere they say you should include dd's "conv=fsync" option, and also say you should sync multiple times.  So I guess I need to retry that.

     

    However, I think I'll first try the Ubuntu Minimal Image: http://odroid.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=en:c1_ubuntu_minimal

     

    That easily fits on a spare 4GB card and I can see if it resolves my HDMI 1440x900 and ssh problems.  Then I can get the hard drive running in stages.  Plus I can do all this using my v1.1 SD card and a USB card reader and not fire up the x86 box at all!