RoadTest: RIoTBoard
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?:
Detailed Review:
I received my RIoTBoard for roadtesting at the end if June.
Unfortunately there were a couple of unpleasant surprises when I started to use it. Somehow I had thought that it is powered via micro USB as for example Raspberry Pi, but it turned out that RIoTBoard uses a standard barrel jack for power. Luckily I had such a 5V adapter available.
At the moment my full HD TV is the only display with HDMI input at my home, but when I tried to use that for RIoTBoard, it said “Unsupported video format”. So I took my RIotBoard to the office and connected it with a full HD monitor there. It booted up nicely and I played around with the Android OS a bit.
I couldn’t spend too much time at the office for a full review and couldn’t get any other displays with HDMI input at home. So I decided that I should still try to get it working with my TV. From the RIoTBoard manual I see that it is possible to tweak some uboot parameters to change the output resolution for example. However, for changing those I need a USB to serial converter, which I of course didn’t have 
By now, I have received the converter from eBay and I’m waiting a chance to try that out. Actually, if I think about it, with a little work I could probably have used my Raspberry Pi or Arduino as a USB to serial converter, right?
Anyway, as a everyday user of XBMC on Raspberry Pi I think I could at least perform a decent comparison on XBMC on Raspberry Pi vs RIoTBoard (once I get it working with my TV). I guess on RIoTBoard it makes sense to use XBMC on Android rather than on Linux as XBMC is optimized for Android and not for Linux on ARM (except for Raspberry Pi).
So stay tuned for updates...
