RoadTest: Freescale i.MX6Q Sabre Lite Board
Author: migration.user
Creation date:
Evaluation Type: Independent Products
Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True
What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?:
What were the biggest problems encountered?: Timesys Linux locked down the entire board.
Detailed Review:
The i.MX6Q board is an excellent product, that has been completely locked down by the manufacturer. Not only was the bootloader and actual build process of an application locked down through a website, the documentation for running other linux distros were non existent. Being a student hobbyist, this product is not recomended for those trying to build a small media center by themselves. A Rasberry Pi has a much larger community and documentation (that is available with out paying for it)
Now, I can say all I want about the board's code, etc etc etc. Simply put, it is made for commercial embedded systems, where professional engineers would be working with Timesys to build specific applications. The build quality of the board was great, everything was placed perfectly for development, with the touchscreen and camera connections, the dual sd card ports and the optimal 2 usb and Ethernet "port tower".
Isn't that pretty?
Now, when I recieved the product I immediately opened the box, read the instructions then plugged it into the demo mode. The demos seemed promising with the accellerated graphics and overall speed of the board. I bought a 41 dollar usb to serial cord, booted up #! in a virtual box and got to business. First I used minicom (as per the directions in the documentation) I shelled into the board. Awesome! I setup a complete test environment with a switch and got my host linux distro all set up. I played around and installed their default linux build and ran it. It was an alright distro. So I moved on and tried to flash Arch Linux, with some minor problems such as getting uboot to make the main slot the boot slot and configuring a Sata hdd. I then used an old wifi dongle to get on my network. Mounting the freescale in a box behind my tv with a 500 gb hdd, I now have a media center that kicks butt.
This board is a solid overall dev board that is slightly biased towards companies and not hobbyist, however given some time and hacking this little board sure can power through streamed 1080p video and .flac audio. I look forward to the next Freescale product road test and other roadtests as well!