Group Actions
Engagement
  • Author Author: mconners
  • Date Created: Date Created
  • Views 11286 views
  • Likes 10 likes
  • Comments 118 comments
Related
Recommended

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.

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    johnbeetem wrote:

     

    Another subtopic: when I move windows around the desktop with v1.1 or v1.2, it's very slow with lots of inertia: that is, the window slowly follows the mouse and catches up after I stop moving.  I couldn't find any preference option to change this behavior.

     

    Are others having the same behavior?  Otherwise the graphics are pretty quick.

    I found a work-around to this problem at the ODROID Forum.  You change the window manager from the default openbox to metacity.  Each window manager has it pluses and minuses, but that's the Linux way, right?

     

    Anyway, click the menu button at the lower left corner of the screen and select Preferences followed by Default applications for LXSession.  When the LXSession configuration dialog comes up, select Core Applications.  On the Window Manager line, change openbox to metacity.  You'll need to log out and log back in to see the change.  Windows now move around more quickly.

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    Good, glad you got that straightened out.

     

    Mike

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    Yes you are (H)alting the Odroid rather than also calling the power off so the power remains on to complete your USB transaction no doubt!!

     

    good solution ...nice and easy

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    johnbeetem wrote:

     

    To work around this, I'm doing "sudo shutdown -H now" instead of my usual "sudo shutdown -h now" or selecting "shutdown" from the GUI.  "-H" halts the CPU but doesn't turn off power.  Then I can power cycle it manually.  I'm going to see how this goes for a while.

    Using "sudo shutdown -H now" (capital H) seems to be doing the trick!  Everybody goes to sleep peacefully and then I just turn off the power strip.  I might try rigging up the J4 power switch, just for fun.

     

    I'm now occasionally seeing "Raspberry Pi behavior", i.e., losing keystrokes or erroneous repeated keystrokes (the latter only once).  I've read that this is caused by losing USB split transactions.  On RasPi you used to this with lots of Ethernet activity.  You won't see that cause on ODROID-C1 since Ethernet doesn't go over USB.  However, I have USB HDD so that's what's probably causing it.

     

    There is discussion of this at the ODROID Forum, so it will probably get understood and fixed one of these days.  Have any of you seen this?  You probably won't if keyboard/mouse are the only USB devices.

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    johnbeetem wrote:

     

    One thing that bothers me is that when I shutdown the ODROID-C1 turns off USB HDD power as its activity LED is blinking.  I'm wondering if ODROID-C1 is turning off USB power a bit too soon.  I'd try unmounting it before shutdown, but that's hard if the file system is on that HDD.

    Yep, this is a real problem.  When I tried to reboot my v1.2 2G SDcard + USB HDD this evening it wouldn't boot.  The debug trace (now on HDMI!) showed it trying to fsck my hard drive.  When this was finished, C1 rebooted, powering off the HDD.

     

    Here's what I think is going on: when the system shuts down it writes some final information to HDD but then kills the USB power before the HDD has a chance to finish the writes.  So it leaves the HDD in a corrupted state.

     

    To work around this, I'm doing "sudo shutdown -H now" instead of my usual "sudo shutdown -h now" or selecting "shutdown" from the GUI.  "-H" halts the CPU but doesn't turn off power.  Then I can power cycle it manually.  I'm going to see how this goes for a while.

     

    [The way I recovered the hard drive was to boot with my V1.1 8G SDcard-only backup.  Then I did "sudo e2fsck /dev/sda2" to fix the HDD errors.]