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MarS board ?

Former Member

No, not the A10 Cubieboard alike from http://www.marsboard.com/

 

The e14/Embest MarS board here The specified item was not found.

 

Talk about unfortunate choice of name!  This one totally slid under the radar, and nobody should be surprised at that... I'd caught a few passing references using the MarS reference with capital S and had dismissed them as simply being the other board, and I'm sure lots of other people will do so too.

 

So what does this board bring to the table ?  Well I'm struggling to work that out myself.  It's a dual core i.MX6, but I'm not sure if it's a full Dual, or a DualLite, either way the board itself omits SATA while keeping the other usual iMX6 things like gigabit ethernet. The only unusual part I see is the 4GB eMMC.

 

The UK price is 68.41 + VAT, approx $110. the Wandboard Dual is $99 which adds Wifi + Bluetooth. On the other hand, the MarS appears to have 0.1" headers and so is more experimenter friendly than the 0.05" ones on the Wandboard.

So IMHO this will come down to whether it's easier to get your hands on a wandboard-dual, or the MarS from your local e14.  Those looking for some iMX6 that's cheaper than Sabre-Lite might like to try this.

 

At a time when even the 30 euro A10-OLinuXino-LIME comes with SATA, the omission here is all the more strange.

 

One thing's for sure though, 2014 is going to bring more and more of these SBC's.. Choice is good!

  • That board's pretty good on specs, a worthy contender with gigabit and 4GB eMMC, and while the price is not exactly appealing, it's still roughly in the ballpark.  So why isn't E14 advertising this thing strongly?  There is only a small window of opportunity before the scene is overrun with competitors at lower prices.  And another question is, how come that Embest people aren't here among us reporting on new Embest products as they appear, like GregC does for Freescale?  It's very helpful, and entirely correct when done openly.

     

    A bit naughty of them to mention PCIe and SATA in the first paragraph though, when it's not available on the board, only in the SoC.  And yes, pity about the name clash.

     

    I wonder if they're not advertising it because it never actually went into volume production?  After all, it was announced in early October, yet Farnell still has it on 54-day lead time awaiting delivery.  That's not too encouraging.

     

    Morgaine.

  • in reply to morgaine

    Morgaine Dinova wrote:

     

    I wonder if they're not advertising it because it never actually went into volume production?  After all, it was announced in early October, yet Farnell still has it on 54-day lead time awaiting delivery.  That's not too encouraging.

    It's all a bit odd. Looking at List of single-board computers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia & Comparison of single-board computers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia which someone has been trying to keep up to date you'll notice that most of the ones with gigabit network are iMX6 based, but with the exceptions of Wandboard and the Boundary Devices stuff, most of the others, including the Gateworks Ventana GW5X00 which has dual gigabit, seem to be unavailable as yet or have long lead times. Makes you wonder if there's a suppply constraint there, and between them Wand/Boundary have soaked up production - iMX6 has been out for over a year now after all

     

    The other interesting things in the table are that Olimex seems to be aiming for total domination image  and that if your spec requirements include gigabit and sata then your choices are tiny.. then try adding 2GB or more of ram...

  • in reply to morgaine

    Morgaine Dinova wrote:

     

    So why isn't E14 advertising this thing strongly? 

    Am I the only one to have noticed that most everything apart from the Pi has almost completely dropped off the radar here too?  Looking at the homepage you'd think the Pi was the only board in existence...   Interesting stuff like the BB-VIEW is passing by un-noticed..

  • in reply to Former Member

    selsinork wrote:

     

    Makes you wonder if there's a suppply constraint there, and between them Wand/Boundary have soaked up production - iMX6 has been out for over a year now after all

     

    Well if Wandboard and Boundary between them are soaking up all i.MX6 production, then Freescale must be engraving each SoC in silicon by hand with a toothpick while juggling porcupines and hanging upside down blindfold.  The world isn't exactly flooded with these devices.  Whatever the bottleneck is, it's not doing Freescale nor potential customers any favours.

     

    The other interesting things in the table are that Olimex seems to be aiming for total domination

    Woohoo!  Well done Olimex. image

     

    Morgaine.

  • in reply to Former Member

    selsinork wrote:

     

    Am I the only one to have noticed that most everything apart from the Pi has almost completely dropped off the radar here too?  Looking at the homepage you'd think the Pi was the only board in existence... 

    I don't think it's safe to infer anything from the state of the website.  You'll go mad! image

     

    Morgaine.

  • in reply to Former Member

    selsinork wrote:

     

    Interesting stuff like the BB-VIEW is passing by un-noticed..

    Farnell has quite a few displays and I was planning to try out a couple of smaller ones during the holidays with the BBB, since it will help as a general purpose display. But I didn't order a BB-View unfortunately, I had mistakenly thought they were out of stock.

    It would be good for someone to try the BB-views out and provide tips/hints on settings to size the display, suitable enclosure, etc.

  • in reply to morgaine

    Morgaine Dinova wrote:

     

    Well if Wandboard and Boundary between them are soaking up all i.MX6 production, then Freescale must be engraving each SoC in silicon by hand with a toothpick while juggling porcupines and hanging upside down blindfold.  The world isn't exactly flooded with these devices.  Whatever the bottleneck is, it's not doing Freescale nor potential customers any favours.

    I think both are a lot more sucessful than are aparrent, not being easily available here in the UK gives us a somewhat biased view.

     

     

    Whatever the reality is, Freescale do seem to be missing the boat somewhat. I saw a couple of A15 boards on that list, so it won't be long before there's new and better things available..

  • in reply to shabaz

    shabaz wrote:

    But I didn't order a BB-View unfortunately, I had mistakenly thought they were out of stock.

    Seems like they sorted that out quite quickly.

     

    I see they're doing one for the Sabre-Lite/MarS boards too.

  • in reply to Former Member

    selsinork wrote:

     

    I saw a couple of A15 boards on that list

    Come on TI/BeagleBoard.org, we want that OMAP 543x-based BeagleBone Gold. image

     

    Morgaine.

     

     

    PS. Sorry about the broken link, it's broken by E14, not me.  Their hopeless Javascript changes a working link into a broken one, and it's not fixable by editing.