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Dual-Core

Cortex-A7

Single-Core

Cortex-A8

GPU SGX544MP2 Mali-400MP2 Mali-400

Screen Size 13.3”, 10.1”, 9.7” 10.1”, 9.7” 10.1”, 9.7”

Resolution2048 × 1536

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1024 × 768

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1024 × 768

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1GB

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1GB

DDR3

Wireless WIFI+BT+GPS+3G WIFI+BT+3G WIFI+BT+3G

OS Android 4.2 or up Android 4.2 or upAndroid 4.2 or up

13.3" Tablet

FEATURESA31

CPUQuad-Core

Cortex-A7

GPU SGX544MP2

Screen Size 13”

Resolution2048×1536

1920×1200

Video 4K×2KMemory 2GB DDR3L/LPDDR2

Wireless WIFI+BT+FM+GPS+3GOS Android 4.2 or up

3G/4G Tablet

FEATURESA31 A20 A10

CPUQuad-Core

Cortex-A7

Dual-Core

Cortex-A7

Single-Core

Cortex-A8

GPU SGX544MP2 Mali-400MP2 Mali-400

Screen Size 13”, 10.1”, 9.7”, 8” 10.1”, 9.7”, 8”10.1”, 9.7”, 8”

Resolution1024×7681920×12001024×768

1024×7681024×600

1024×6001024×768

Video 4K×2K 2160P 2160P

Memory2GB DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2

1GB DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2

1GB DDR3

Wireless WIFI+BT+GPS+3G/4G WIFI+BT+3G WIFI+BT+3G

OS Android 4.2 or up Android 4.2 or upAndroid 4.2 or up

2G Tablet

FEATURESA31 A20 A10 A13

CPUQuad-Core

Cortex-A7

Dual-Core

Cortex-A7

Single-Core

Cortex-A8

Single-Core

Cortex-A8

GPU SGX544MP2 Mali-400MP2 Mali-400 Mali-400Screen Size

9.7”, 8” 9.7”, 8” 9.7”, 8” 8”, 7”

Resolution1024×768800×600

1024×768800×600

1024×768800×600

800×600800×480

Video 4K×2K 2160P 2160P 1080P

Memory 1GB DDR3 1GB DDR3 1GB DDR3512MB DDR3

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OS Android 4.2 or upAndroid 4.2 or up

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Copyright © 2013 Allwinner Technology Co., Ltd.

Just got my Gooseberry BoardToday I was surprised to wake up to a parcel from gooseberry. It was all secured in a brown envelope with a thin rope tied around and then sealed with candle wax. I loved how the guys at gooseberry taken the time to pack all of the parcels so no one in between messes with the parcel. Looking back, i did get the board quite fast, i guess it was the excitement and doubt that made it seem longer.

Here is a picture of the packaging:

Here is a picture of the board, which is almost the same as the one provided on the website.

The holes for screws and mountings are well placed at the front, (3 In the front near the ports) but only 1 at the back. This maybe a bit difficult to customize a case for this, but I like the screws placements for the front end, since the front has to be sturdy if you have to keep disconnecting and reconnecting the cables.

Once i took out the board it looked smaller and more fragile than I had imagined. I at once wanted to attach it to my 24" LCD, since i was already using Mini-HDMI with my

PC. Once i connected, I pressed the button that says "power" but nothing happened. I then Noticed that there was a "UBOOT" button which was labeled as the "RESET" button in the gooseberry Images at the site.

In the picture you may have noticed the "ENTER" "HOME" and "ESC" button, i tried

The display did take a while to load in my case, and it showed an error "Hertz out of Range" a couple of times on my LCD. It was kind of Confusing. And I couldn't tell whether the system is on or off since the LED isn't blinking on the board. Here is a picture of the only LED i could find which is labeled Near the MIC input and "CHG LED" (Maybe battery charge LED).

Once the Display loads, it shows an Android Loading Screen on first boot,(wasn't ready for a pic) And then the lockscreen of the ANDROID OS loads. However i couldn't unlock the screen as i didnt have the mini USB converter. Another disappointment was that the OS was in CHINESE Also no pic of that, will provide it in a while. Also if you turn off the device and restart it, the clock goes back to 8:00. I think that's because it doesn't have a battery to store the time and date. :S Or maybe because i haven't set up my device properly.

Later on I did a quick run to the market and purchased an Micro SD Card and a Mini USB MALE to USB FEMALE Converter. I expected the keyboard to show some sign of life once i connected it and didn't expect the mouse to work, since it would be needing some Cursor drivers or something.

The SD Card loaded and i could see the Icon on the homescreen. I tried playing around with the buttons by using the POWER button, i think it acts like a KeyLock Button, because through that i activate/deactivate the LCD from a Power saving state. And once i press it for long, it gives me a screen with two options, Im assuming it asks whether i want to shutdown or not (but i don't know chinese).

Here is The Allwinner A10 CPU. Better than the Raspberry Pi And on the left, you can see the small white ribbon connector. That is for attaching a camera.And the other Bigger white ribbon connector on the right is for the touchscreen/lcd

Here is the Realtek Wifi Chip on the board. As you can see, it looks much like an Addon.

Here is the Motherboard model: A721 along with the revision: v 4.2.0 and the BUILD date: 26.03.2012

Here are The Hynix Ram Chips. I think they are 4 128MB DDR3 Chips.

This is the 4GB Micron Flash Memory Chip:

I Don't know what the "MOTO" is for, but there is an outlet for a speaker, along with the Battery Supply and LED pinout

----EDIT: It's for the motor / vibrator

Here are the rest of the pin outs That could be used to attach other hardware and stuff, more on the developer and modification side i guess.

I Still can't believe this board is so tiny, and i Can't wait to get a proper system running completely fine on this board. Looking forward to Ubuntu on this board.

Here is a picture of it from a tablet:

You guys may find the following links helpful:

http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/http://elinux.org/Hack_A10_deviceshttp://www.shainde.org/tabletteshttp://www.lyxfsz.com/en/products_view.htm?id=25http://www.lyxfsz.com/en/index.htm

Have any of you guys any tips to get the Keyboard/Mouse Working??

I hope we can start helping each other build our systems

-----

EDIT: I have got the Mouse working, it worked really well on the first shot once i modified my USB cable to be a proper OTG cable Managed to change the language to English

Here are some pictures

Last edited by ryandigweed on Tue Jul 31, 2012 8:37 pm, edited 3 times in tot

Rhombus-Tech/ allwinner a10

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Discussion

Allwinner A10 - ARM Cortex A8 SoCThe Allwinner A10 CPU has been developed in, and is sold in, the People's Republic of China. Its mass-volume price is around $7, yet it is a 400-pin highly feature-rich 1.2ghz ARM Cortex A8 with a MALI400 GPU. It has the distinction of having the highest bang-per-buck ratio of any SoC available at the time of writing, by quite a margin. Its price and features is causing massive disruption of the tablet market in China (a minor recession was caused by widespread cancellation of prior committments to other SoCs!), as every factory in Shenzen scrambles to compete with hundreds of other factories for the same end-user market: tablets and PVRs.

For comparison: TI has brought out a new $5 ARM Cortex A8, but it is limited to 500mhz and it is extra cost for the version with a PowerVR 3D GPU. Ingenic's jz4770 is about $7 in mass-volume but it is a 1ghz MIPS with a Vivante GC600 3D GPU. Details are harder to get hold of regarding the jz4770, but its interfaces are known not as feature-rich as the Allwinner (no HDMI output for example). AMLogic's Cortex A9 is $13 in mass-volume, but is limited to 800mhz and a maximum of 512mb of RAM.

Preorders

If you would like to register your interest in an EOMA-68 CPU card with an Allwinner A10 CPU, please follow the instructions at the orders page. Developers can find out more details of the Open Hardware Project progress on the pcb page.

News

Updates are available at the news page. Latest is that the owner of the Factory in China has reviewed the draft component layout for the EOMA-68 CPU module, to double-check that everything will fit in the available space.

FeaturesFeatures of the Allwinner A10 include:

1.2ghz Cortex A8 ARM Core MALI400MP OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU DDR3 Controller 800MHz 1GB max 2160p Hardware-accelerated Video playback (4x the resolution of 1080p) 2D Accelerated Graphics (G2D) Engine a NAND Flash Controller that is capable of 8-way concurrent DMA (8 NAND

ICs) 4 SDIO interfaces (SD 3.0, UHI class) USB 2.0 Host as well as a 2nd USB-OTG Interface (USB-OTG can be

reconfigured as USB 2.0 Host, automatically) 24-pin RGB/TTL as well as simultaneous HDMI out SATA-II 3gb/sec

10/100 Ethernet (MII compatible) a 2nd 24-pin RGB/TTL interface that is multiplexed (shared) on the same pins

for a standard IDE (PATA) interface. GPIO, I2C, PWM, Keyboard Matrix (8x8), built-in Resistive Touchscreen

Controller, and much more.

Unsurprisingly, this CPU has been chosen as the first CPU for an EOMA-68 CPU module. The critical decisive factor however was the immediate support of Allwinner's Board of Directors for releasing full GPL Source Code, to help the RHT Initiative to foster better relations and closer ties with Free Software Developers.

Getting InvolvedEOMA-68 CPU card is an open source software and hardware project that relies on the community participation. You can get involved in several ways:

Joining arm-netbooks@lists.phcomp.co.uk mailing list for discussions or questions (registration required at http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook)

Contributing to the source code (kernel, bootloader, ...) Downloading and trying Linux images available at Allwinner A10 images. You

can also download the nightly build images, If you want to test the latest U-boot and/or Kernel images.

Reporting bugs / features requests in github issue tracker, see source code page for links to corresponding repositories.

Adding information to the Wiki (these pages) mainly for how-tos, news and general description of the project

Digging out register programming information from the u-boot and kernel sources and add to A10 register guide

Preliminary Device Installation InstructionsThis is still TBD. In the meantime, information is available on elinux.org on Hacking A10 Devices. Also there is a tool for reversing the "fex" format of the boot-up stage: https://github.com/amery/sunxi-tools. Also there is a page describing the A10 Boot Process and A10 MMC Boot, including a link to the tool for packing a bootloader application. There is also a page containing Allwinner A10 images of prebuilt filesystems, a page on Building Debian From Source Code for Mele and a page about Scripts to build source code and generate a bootable SD card

Pin Connections for the Module

This section is in note-form

SPI2 and JTAG0

pads, multiplex2, multiplex3 function, required to have one SD/MMC become a JTAG port:

PB13 SPI2_CS1 NC PB14 SPI2_CS0 JTAG_MS0 PB15 SPI2_CLK JTAG_CK0 PB16 SPI2_MOSI JTAG_DO0 PB17 SPI2_MISO JTAG_DI0

Power Consumption (Mele A1000 A10) u-boot idle, 0.23A@5V = 1.15W Android idle. 0.34A@5V = 1.7W Android busy navigating some web page: 0.55A@5V = 2.75W Android 2.3.3 + youtube + video 720p = ~4.6W Android 2.3.3 + SATA HDD + video 1280p = ~7.3W Ubuntu 12.04 (headless) + SATA HDD + deluge (torrent client) + minidlna (dlna server) = ~5.0W-6.5W (sometimes max 7.8W)

Forums and links to products with the Allwinner A10

http://tabletrepublic.com/forum/cortex-a8-allwinner-a10/

http://www.wits-tech.com/pages/board.jsp wits-tech developer kit (page is in chinese)

http://www.cnx-software.com/category/processors/allwinner-a1x- a10-a13/

https://www.miniand.com/forums/forums/2 http://forum.doozan.com/list.php?6 http://liliputing.com/2012/07/linux-distributions-that-can-run-

on-an-mk802-mini-pc.html http://www.bitsandchips.it/13-mobile/1639-sistem-on-a-chip-

analisi-della-piattaforma-ultra-low-cost-allwinner-a10

hacking the mele a1000 http://git.rhombus-tech.net/?p=eoma.git;a=blob;f=pcb/

allwinner_a10/library/allwinner.lib KiCAD library for the Allwinner A10 processor

Tags: cpus Links: evaluated cpus Last edited Thu Nov 8 14:58:58 2012

List of tablets powered by Allwinner A10 processor This new processor is becoming very popular among tablet manufacturers, as its low price, high performance and, low power consumption.

I would like to list all tablets powered by Allwinner A10 processor, anyone is welcome to help.

Allwinner A10 Tablets

AllDro SpeedAinol Novo 7 AdvancedAinol Novo 7 Advanced IIAinol Novo ElfAinol Novo AuroraAirPad 7pAllview AllDro SpeedAudemars Piguet PC741Aura LY-F1Ampe A90Benss B7BRONCHO A710Bmorn V9 plusBmorn V11Bmorn V11 ExtremeCherryPad Edwin C807Cougar Box Chip A10RCougar Box Chip A10CDropad A8HDEken MB1001Eken T01AEken t10aEken A90Eneoze 7 inch or 10 inchGemei G9Gemei G2GOCLEVER TAB A73Gpad GA10Hyundai A7ICOO D90WIcoo D70WIview 760TPCLY-F1 (Netpad A10, TPGA-7AWN, A710)Leoxsys Leopad i7-1500Mobiitab 7 Momo11 BirdMoonpad2newman P81OEM Novo 7 AdvancedOnda VX610WOnda Vi20WOnda Vi10 deluxe editionOnda Vi20W deluxeOnda Vi30W deluxeOnda Vx610w

Onda VX580W Deluxe EditionOnda Vi40Onda Vi10 elitePloyer Momo8Ployer Momo9Ployer Momo15Primux BORA 7”Qware Pro3Rexing V7Sanei N70 N71 N72 N73 N80 N81Saycool A710Scroll ExcelSigotech V700Skypad Alpha 2Sumvision Cyclon AstroTeclast P76 ResistiveTeclast P76tiTeclast P85Teclast A10tTracer OVOVisual Land ConnectVisual Land Prestige 7VitalASC Center-ST0716***** A7

List of Allwinner A1X devices

this entry has 17 Comments in ARM, Hardware by admin May 29, 2012

Considering all Allwinner A1x devices can boot from a special prepared sd-card and the upcomming development of Linux and XBMC on these devices, I thought it would be nice to create a list with potentional devices. Most of them don’t have easy access to UART consoles and such, so are not really suitable for development purposes, but as soon as more and more sd-card images are getting released, you might not have to use any development tools. Just enjoying all the goods.

I will divide the list into four sections. The first one are the tablets, which is the biggest list. The second would be any settop box like device like the Mele A1000 and A2000, but also the MK802 HDMI dongle type. The third one are the handheld devices as nicely pointed out by “onthebridge: and the fourth one are the devices which are planned or announched, but not yet available. This are devices like the EOMA68 card from Rhombus-tech.

Here comes the list, I will try to keep it up to date.

Allwinner A10 Tablets

AllDro SpeedAinol Novo 7 AdvancedAinol Novo 7 Advanced IIAinol Novo ElfAinol Novo AuroraAirPad 7pAllview AllDro SpeedAudemars Piguet PC741Aura LY-F1Ampe A90Benss B7BRONCHO A710Bmorn V9 plusBmorn V11Bmorn V11 ExtremeCherryPad Edwin C807Cougar Box Chip A10RCougar Box Chip A10CDropad A8HDEken MB1001Eken T01AEken t10aEken A90Eneoze 7 inch or 10 inchGemei G9Gemei G2GOCLEVER TAB A73Gpad GA10Hyundai A7

Momo11 BirdMoonpad2newman P81OEM Novo 7 AdvancedOnda VX610WOnda Vi20WOnda Vi10 deluxe editionOnda Vi20W deluxeOnda Vi30W deluxeOnda Vx610wOnda VX580W Deluxe EditionOnda Vi40Onda Vi10 elitePloyer Momo8Ployer Momo9Ployer Momo15Primux BORA 7”Qware Pro3Rexing V7Sanei N70 N71 N72 N73 N80 N81Saycool A710Scroll ExcelSigotech V700Skypad Alpha 2Sumvision Cyclon AstroTeclast P76 ResistiveTeclast P76tiTeclast P85Teclast A10t

ICOO D90WIcoo D70WIview 760TPCLY-F1 (Netpad A10, TPGA-7AWN, A710)Leoxsys Leopad i7-1500Mobiitab 7

Tracer OVOVisual Land ConnectVisual Land Prestige 7VitalASC Center-ST0716WoPad A7

Settop boxes

Mele A1000Mele A2000MINI-X

MK802PineRiver H24

Handhelds

iGameYinlips YDPG16

Yinlips YDPG18A

Planned or Announched

A13-OLinuXinoHyston Google TV box

Rhombus-Tech EOMO68 A10Sunlike UMPC-1021

 

If you guys know of more out there, please post them into the comments and I will update the list.

Want to know what you can do with the Allwinner devices; What about Ubuntu? or What about OpenELEC / XBMC

(sources; Slatedroid, XBMC Forum, Gathering of Tweakers)

Open ARM GPU Drivers FOSDEM 2013 Video and Call to ARM ManagementFebruary 14th, 2013 cnxsoft 2 comments

As I previously wrote, FOSDEM organizers are slowly uploading FOSDEM 2013 videos. One of the most interesting talk “Open ARM GPU Drivers” is now available. I’ve also uploaded it to YouTube (embedded below) to give it more exposure. Luc Verhaegen has also written a recent blog post entitled “Hey ARM!” where he announces the release of the modified source for Quake 3 Arena demo, and asks ARM to join them in making an open source driver.

Open ARM GPU Drivers @ FOSDEM2013

This session covers the following key points:

Problem – Binary drivers are mainly designed to run in Android, and it’s very difficult to have proper GPU drivers for Linux, and companies are not interested to release open source drivers or even just documentation, as they are not convinced it will benefit them in any way.

Legal – This is actually the main issue, as open sourcing existing driver is a legal nightmare, and may cost a lot of money.

ARM Mali Overview – Mali-200/400, 450 & T6xx Lima Project Status – No big secrets left in command-stream, compiler is tough

due to Mali architecture, and actual driver work will start after FOSDEM. Full GNU/linux systems available.

Qualcomm Adreno Overview – Adreno 2xx/3xx Freedreno Project Status – WIP driver. Command-stream and Shader

architecture is mostly known. WIP xf86 (exa), mesa (gallium) drivers available. No proper GNU/linux available (The developer is currently using Android)

Nvidia Geforce ULP (Tegra) Overview Tegra-re Project Status – Early research, early shader disassembler and early

command stream capture. Limited availability of GNU/linux systems (AC-100, Trimslice).

Vivante GCxxxx Overview Etnaviv project Status – Early research: Slowly prying apart command stream,

full command stream capture and replay, and shader disassembler and assembler.

Broadcom Videocore Overview The Raspberry Pi is a closed platform – “Open source” driver release by the

Raspberry Pi foundation is just a shim (message-passing interface between ARM and the GPU), and the GPU itself runs a RTOS that handles the real processing.

Videocore Project Status – Research stage: documentation, assembler/disassembler., compiler work started,scalar processor fully reverse engineered, and some some “Hello World” code is available for booting the Raspberry Pi. 9 people are currently working on this project.

Imagination PowerVR SGX Overview – PowerVR SGX (5xx), and Rogue (6xx) in the future

Open Source Project Status (from the slides): Lima driver demos on Mele A1000 – Cube demos and Quake 3 Arena

timedemo.

You can also download the presentation slides for his sessions

Quake 3 Arena Time Demo Source Code for Lima and Limare Driver

As I just mentioned, part of the session was a demo of Quake 3 Arena running on top of Lima drivers in Mele A1000 set-top box running Linux. Luc has now made the source code available on github, and you can get it as follows:

git clone git://github.com/libv/ioquake3-mali_fb.git

You can them compile it natively in any AllWinner A10 device:

make ARCH=arm

You’ll also need to get a full Quake 3 Arena version first as the binary data files (paks files) must be copied to   ~/ioquake3/baseq3 (NB: Those files can not be redistributed, as they belong to ID Software), and edit demofour.cfg as follows:

cg_drawfps 1 timedemo 1 set demodone "quit" set demoloop1 "demo four; set nextdemo vstr demodone" vstr demoloop1

You can now run the game demo with (I haven’t tried, so I’m not sure of the quake binary name):

ioquake3.arm +exec demofour.cfg

The full games is not playable yet, and Luc welcomes fixes for input support, sound, or even for the missing GLES2 shaders.

Call to ARM Management to Work with Open Source Developers

Luc Verhaegen claims “Absolutely nothing stops us now from delivering an open source driver that broadly matches the binary driver in performance! And this is exactly what we will be doing next!”, and calls upon ARM to join them:

We are not going away, we are here to stay. We cannot be silenced or stopped anymore, and we are becoming harder and harder to ignore.

It is only a matter of time before we produce an open source graphics driver stack which rivals your binary in performance. And that time is measured in weeks and months now. The requests from your own customers, for support for this open source stack, will only grow louder and louder.

So please, stop fighting us. Embrace us. Work with us. Your customers and shareholders will love you for it.

Open source developers are not the only ones to ask for this, if you’ve ever wanted to use Linux with proper 2D/3D GPU drivers on ARM, you are in the same boat, and even Linaro engineers complain about this (Linaro is an organization working on open source software for ARM SoCs, and ARM is obviously a core member), because those need to be updated for each kernel version, and it’s a nightmare as they have to go through the GPU company’s FAE which talks to the engineer and back. This wastes a lot of time (and money), as a task that could be done within a few hours/days with open source drivers, may instead take days or weeks because of binary blobs. An example is Linux Mali-400 support on Hardkernel ODROID-X/U2, they announced their intention to provide hardware GPU acceleration months ago, last month they released an Ubuntu image which can support GPU drivers (but not the driver), and they could only release the drivers yesterday (I’ll have to try that). The point is that it could have taken a much shorter time with open source drivers.

I understand there must be complicated legal issues, but there must certainly be a way to provide open source drivers, as it would just benefit everyone (from end users to engineers to SoC companies). Since Lima developers have now proven they can match the performance binary drivers for their “research” driver, and seem to be committed to deliver a proper open source driver for Mali-400, that should be a sufficient reason for ARM to cooperate with open source developers, even if it is only by releasing the GPU documentation.

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Android, Freescale i.MX, Graphics, Ingenic JZ74xx, Linux, Marvell Armada, NVidia Tegra 3, NVidia Tegra 4, Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, Rockchip RK30xx, Samsung Exynos, Testing, Texas Instruments OMAP 4, Texas Instruments OMAP 5, Video Tags: arm, fosdem 2013, gpu, imagination, lima, mali, nvidia, open source, qualcomm, raspberry pi, videocore, vivante

Headless Connected Oscilloscope based on Cubieboard or BeagleboneFebruary 8th, 2013 cnxsoft 3 comments

Warsaw ELHEP (Electronics for High Eenergy Physics Experiments) Group is currently working on MMS (Mobile Measurement System) Project. This project features what I would call a “headless connected oscilloscope”, which can be detected on the network via SSDP, send the data via Websocket, and display it on iOS, Android,

or Windows Phone devices. This oscilloscope does not feature any screen, and receives/transmits data via Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.

ARM SCOPE Board Connected to Cubieboard

The original hardware is based on three main boards:

CTI-VMAX – ARM9 with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet connectivity. ARM SCOPE v1.0.1 with  8 channel ADC. ARM SCOPE v1.0.2 with 4 high speed ADC (100MSPS).

The ELHEP researchers have been looking at replacing CTI-VMAX with low cost boards, and after considering several options, they chose to design two versions of their oscilloscope: one based on Cubieboard, and the other on the Beaglebone.

Beaglebone with Oscilloscope CAPE and ARM SCOPE Boards

So they designed expansions boards for the Cubieboard and Beaglebone in order to connect the ARM SCOPEs.

This project involved hardware development, software development (Linux firmware in Beaglebone/Cubieboard, MMS protocol, and app development), and once everything is setup you can see the waveform on a mobile device as shown below.

MMS Project on the iPhone

Their mobile app first discovers the measurement equipment on the network (left), remotely configures the device (middle), and displays the waveform (right).

The researchers/students are still working on perfecting the project. You can find out more on MMS Project page (in Polish).

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Android, Hardware, Linux, Testing, Texas Instruments Sitara Tags: Android, Linux, beaglebone, cubieboard, elhep, ios, oscilloscope, windows phone

Quake 3 Arena Demo Using Lima Driver is (Slightly) Faster than Mali-400 Binary DriverFebruary 7th, 2013 cnxsoft 4 comments

As mentioned previously, Luc Verhaegen was to give a talk about the status of Lima driver (reverse-engineered Mali-200/400 GPU driver), as well as other GPU open source implementation, at FOSDEM 2013. This is now done, and part of the talk included a demo of Quake 3 Arena (q3a timedemo) running on tablet featuring AllWinner A10 SoC (Cortex A8 @ 1Ghz, Mali-400MP1 GPU @ 320 Mhz, and DDR3 memory @ 360MHz), and a 1024×600 LCD. The fact it works is already a great achievement in itself, but this demo runs at 47.2fps with Lima driver (limare), whereas it can be rendered at 46.2fps using the binary driver. In his blog, Luc also explains that apart from being 2% faster, it also uses 3% less cpu than the binary driver! Take that binary blobs!

There’s still more work to do however, as this Quake 3 Arena port is not playable yet for 2 reasons:

1. There’s no input support via the touchscreen driver yet.2. Luc only included the shaders needed to run the timedemo, but the full game

requires more shaders.

He goes on to explain that Lima is not fully open source just yet, as they are still using the binary shader compiler, but he will push Q3A demo source code soon. If you want to learn more of the steps he and others went through to reverse-engineer Mali-400 driver, and optimize it for Q3A timedemo, read “Quake 3 Arena timedemo on top of the lima driver!“

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Graphics, Linux Tags: driver, fosdem 2013, gpu, lima, open source

Smallart U-Host AllWinner A10 mini PC is Available for $20January 3rd, 2013 cnxsoft 37 comments

Last July, I reviewed Smallart U-Host (U1A), an Android TV stick based on AllWinner A10 with 1GB RAM and 4GB RAM. At the time, I had a positive opinion of the device

as the Android firmware was stable, and mostly did it was supposed, and it was feasible to run Linux distributions on the device. At that time, it was sold for $70, but this morning, Clint, one of my reader, informed me he spotted an AllWinner A10 device selling for $20.50 on Dealextreme.

This device and the user interface resembles very much to Smallart U-Host, but the model name reported on Dealextreme is U2. According to Smallart U2 page, this device is based on Rockchip RK3066, so it’s just another naming mistake on DealExtreme. The rest of the specs are identical to Smallart U-Host:

SoC – Allwinner A10 (Cortex A8) @ 1.5GHZ System Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM Storage – 4GB NAND flash + microSD slot (upt to 32GB) Video Output – HDMI + mini USB OTG Video Format – AVI, RM/RMVB, MKV, WMV and MOV USB – USB 2.0 host port WiFi – 802.11 b/g/n Dimensions – 9.7 cm x 4.1 cm x 1.2 cm Weight – 38g

The device is sold with a power adapter, a 8cm HDMI cable (8cm), a USB cable (80cm) and an English user manual, exactly the same accessories I received with Smallart U-Host (aka Oval Elephant).

The $20 price tag is either a mistake, or the device does not sell that well and they want to get rid of existing stock.

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Android, Hardware, Linux Tags: Android, Linux, ics, mini-pc, smallart

Top 10 Posts of 2012 on CNXSoft BlogDecember 31st, 2012 cnxsoft 5 comments

This is the last day of the year, so it’s probably a good time to look back and see what interested people on this blog. This has been a banner year for low cost ARM devices and boards starting with the Raspberry Pi, then MK802 and the new mini PCs / HDMI TV dongles / PCs-on-a-stick (whatever you want to call them) that came after, always cheaper and faster. Those low cost devices have in turn made people really interested in ARM Linux, and lots of development on those little devices and boards started.

The top 10 posts of 2012, according to page views, reflect just those trends:

1. 74 USD AllWinner A10 Android 4.0 Mini PC (May 2012) – MK802 started the whole “low cost mini PCs” craze, and drove the most traffic to this blog this year. People got excited about the price, form factor, and the possibility to run both Android and other Linux based operating systems.

2. MK802 II Mini PC Now Costs as Much as Raspberry Pi Model B. Let’s Compare Them! (December 2012) – This post features the 2 stars of 2012: the Raspberry Pi and MK802 II HDMI TV donglwe (MK802 with 1GB RAM). As both device can now be bought for $35, and allow you to do very similar things, it’s was time for a head-to-head comparison. I’ve just written about it last week, and it got Slashdotted.

3. WM8850-MID Android 4.0 Tablet Unboxing and Review (June 2012) – At the time, this Eken W70 clone featuring Wondermedia WM8850 Cortex A9 processor was a real bargain for $72 (including shipping). The firmware has a few issues however, and that’s what drove people to this post: looking for solutions.

4. AllWinner A10/A1X Processor Resources, Development Board and SDK (December 2011) – This post was written just about one year ago, but traffic was steady all year, as people want to find out how to hack their AllWinner A10 tablets, media players and mini PCs.

5. Mele A1000: AllWinner A10 (Cortex A8) Based Hackable Android STB (March 2012) – The Mele A1000 was my first Android device, and it got popular thanks to its relatively low cost, available ports (3x USB, SATA, VGA, HDMI…), and serial port which made it ideal for development of U-boot and the kernel. I still think it’s a good platform, but since then low cost development boards such as the Cubieboard has made it a little less attractive, and interest has somewhat faded in the last few months.

6. Valueplus Tizzbird Stick N1: Android 4.0 HDMI/USB Media Player Dongle (March 2012) -  The Tizzbird Stick N1 was one the first mini PCs, and was showcased at CeBit 2012 several months before MK802. Unfortunately, it took many more months to finalize the design, and the product never took off, as other cheaper Telechips TCC892x based mini PCs appeared on the market. The only reason it got traffic is because I mentioned it in the $74 MK802 post at the top of this list.

7. Mele A1000 Android 2.3 STB Unboxing and Review (April 2012) – In March, I was still waiting for the Raspberry Pi launch, but I noticed Barry Kauler (Puppy Linux) bought the Mele A1000 to keep him busy while he was also waiting for his Pi, and seeing the development around AllWinner A10, I decided to buy one as well. Apparently, I was not the only one interested as many people came here to read my review of this nice hackable media player.

8. Mele A2000 Android 2.3 Media Player Powered by AllWinner A10 (April 2012) – The Mele A2000 is the little sister of the Mele A1000, which the same hardware, just a difference casing.

9. Linaro Android Puts Stock Android To Shame on TI Pandaboard (OMAP4430) (June 2012) – Linaro showcased a demo showing an optimized version of Android could deliver twice the performance of stock Android on a particular benchmark running in Pandaboard. Bero commented on my post with details, and the post quickly became viral as developers wanted to give it a try. It turned out the improvement is actually more like 15 to 20%, but this is enough to double the framerate of this benchmark due to Vsync synchronization. It may also work in real games.

10. Raspberry Pi Emulator in Ubuntu with Qemu (October 2011) – In 2011 and early 2012, the Raspberry Pi foundation promised much in terms of schedule, but initially failed to deliver, and many people get desperate enough to check the instructions to emulate an ARMv6 device and run Debian in QEMU to get started with development, before the Raspberry Pi hardware is available.

That will be the last post of 2012, so the “hardware team” (pictured below) and I would like to wish you a very happy and prosperous new year 2013, which I’m sure will be as exciting as 2012 for Linux/Android gadgets and boards, and we should see the first big.LITTLE processors and corresponding devices, ever cheaper tablets, smartphones and mini PCs, an interesting Intel vs. ARM fight for mobile devices, a proper XBMC ARM set-top box close to $50, new mobile OSes based on Linux (Tizen, Sailfish OS, Firefox OS…), and more…

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Android, Graphics, Hardware, Linux, Telechips TCC89XX, Texas Instruments OMAP 4, WonderMedia WM8XXX Tags: Android, Linux, debian, development board, linaro, mele, mini-pc, mk802, pandaboard, qemu, raspberry pi, sdk, tablet, ubuntu, valueplus

MK802 II Mini PC Now Costs as Much as Raspberry Pi Model B. Let’s Compare Them!December 26th, 2012 cnxsoft 32 comments

MK802 mini PC quickly went viral as it launched in May 2012 for $74 US, and since then many Chinese manufacturers have jumped into the market bringing both new faster devices, and the price down. AllWinner A10s, a low cost version of AllWinner A10 used in MK802, was also launched specifically for this market to bring costs even lower. Today, I’ve been informed an HDMI TV dongle based on AllWinner A10s that sells for $36.55 on Tinydeal.com which is a very good price, but decided to check on Aliexpress to look for comparable deals, and found one shop selling MK802 II for $34.91 including shipping via China Post, which makes it cheaper than the Raspberry Pi model B selling for $35 excluding shipping.

Raspberry Pi vs MK802 IINB: Devices are not shown at the same scale.

Both products target 2 different markets, as MK802 is oriented to the consumer market, and Raspberry Pi targets the educational market, but in practice, it appears people may use the device for similar purpose, for example as a media player or a platform for tinkering with Linux.

Since both products have the same price, and software support & availability have improved since their launch, I’ve just created a side-by-side comparison below.

MK802 II Raspberry Pi Model B

SoCAllWinner A10CPU: Cortex A8 @ 1.5GHzGPU: Mali-400

Broadcom BCM2835CPU: ARM11 @ 700MHz (OC: 1 GHz)GPU: Videocore IV

RAM 1 GB 512 MBStorage 4GB NAND Flash + microSD slot SD card slot

USB1x USB 2.0 Host + 2x USB OTG(One USB OTG is reserved for power)

2x USB 2.0 Host ports

Ethernet N/A (via USB dongle only) 10/100 Mbit

Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n N/A (via USB dongle only)Video Output HDMI HDMI and CompositeAudio Output HDMI HDMI and 3.5mm stereo out jack

Expansion Headers N/A

Yes. Provide access to GPIO, I2C, SPI, etc…DSI (for LCD display) and CSI-2 (for camera) interfaces are also available

Size 9.7 x 2.8 x 1.2cm 8.56 x 5.6 x 2.1cm (Board only)Casing Yes No (Cases can be ordered separately)

Included Accessories

HDMI CableUSB CableOTG CableUser Manual

N/A

Video Codecs (HW)

H.264, MPEG 1/2/4, VC-1, VP8, and AVS

H.264 only.MPEG-2 and VC1 can be added by purchasing corresponding licenses

Linux Support

Good.Stable bootloader and kernel, with SD images provided by the community, but no official distro support

Very good.Several distributions are available for the platform,  and Debian is officially supported (Raspbian)

Android SupportVery good.Android 4.0 ICS

Poor (for now)Android 2.3 without GPU accelerationAndroid 4.0 in progress

Community Support

No official community support, but several (seller) sites provides forums for MK802 such as miniand, and sunxi-linux.org community works on AllWinner Linux development in the open.

Very large community via Raspberry Pi Forums.

If you just look at the hardware specs, there’s no comparison, and MK802 II provides much better value than the Raspberry Pi with a much faster CPU, more RAM, internal storage and more. Only the GPU processing power may be subject to debate, but I don’t really have data to make a proper comparison. So if you just want to run the device as a media player for example, I’d just go with MK802 II since you’ll get a smoother experience and more video codecs are supported. The only caveat is that you’ll have to use Android (and see the status bar during video playback), as although Linux video support is available, it’s not ready for prime time, and never will.

However, the Raspberry Pi is still a better solution for several use cases:

Hardware “hacking” – You need to make use of the “GPIO” headers to control external devices.

Connection to old TV – The Raspberry Pi has a composite video output which allows it to be connected to older TV lacking HDMI

Beginners – If you’re not familiar with Linux, using AllWinner A10 devices may prove challenging, and it’s much easier with the Raspberry Pi thanks to official Linux distributions, and the Raspberry Pi community.

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Android, Hardware, Linux Tags: Android, Linux, mini-pc, mk802, raspberry pi

Olimex A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Development Board Unboxing And ReviewDecember 21st, 2012 cnxsoft 2 comments

Every Friday, Olimex organizes an online competition where they give away one of their board. They’ll ask a (usually simple) technical question on their twitter account at 22h00 (GMT+7), and all you have to do is to reply to their tweet with the correct answer within one hour. The winner is then selected randomly with random.org. There are usually 50 to 100 respondents so the odds are pretty good.

I played a few times, and finally, I was lucky enough to win an A13-OLinuXino-MICRO development board at the beginning of December. I received it yesterday, after UPS took a whooping 15 days to deliver the board (Way to go UPS!). The board can be purchased on Olimex for 35 Euros plus shipping and taxes, or even lower if you order larger quantities.

A13-OLinuXino-MICRO is a stripped down version of A13-OLinuXino-WIFI with the following specs:

SoC – AllWinner A13 Cortex A8 processor at 1GHz with Mali400 GPU System Memory – 256 MB RAM (128Mbit x 16) Storage – microSD card slot for booting the Linux image Video Output – VGA video output. LCD signals are available on connector. Audio I/O – 3.5mm headphone jack + Microphone input pads (no connector) USB – 1x USB host +1x USB OTG which can power the board UEXT connector – To connect UEXT modules like Zigbee, Bluetooth, Relays,

etc 3 “GPIO” connectors (2x 40-pin and 1x 10-pin) – Those give access to NAND

flash, GPIOs, I2C, UARTs and SDIO2 signals, as well as 5 system pins: +5V, +3.3V, GND, RESET, NMI.

LCD Connector – You can connect an optional 7″ LCD provided by Olimex, or connect your own.

Misc – 1 reset key, 1 U-boot/FEL key, 2 LEDs, 4 mounting holes, UART1 header and pads for JTAG and UART0.

Power – 5V DC input power supply Dimensions – 100 x 85 mm

As usual, I will first post some unboxing pictures, then try Linux on the board, and give some kind of review.

A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Unboxing

The board comes in a small Olimex branded package, and as is the case for the Raspberry Pi, the only item in the package is the board.

Let’s have a look at the top of the board first, where all the components and connectors are placed.

Top of A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Board (Click to Enlarge)

The back of the board shows markings for the GPIO connectors, VGA, UARTs, JTAG and some test points for the different voltages on the board.

Bottom of A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Board (Click to Enlarge)

I’ve also taken a picture of the Olimex board with two other well-known low cost boards…

Raspberry Pi vs Cubieboard vs A13-OLinuxino-MICRO

A13-OLinuXino is larger than the Cubieboard and almost twice as big as the Raspberry Pi.

Getting Started with Olimex A13-OLinuXino-MICRO

First you’ll need to get some external accessories such as:

A power supply – A 5V/2A power supply to connect to the 5+ jack or the miniUSB port. A microUSB port might have been preferably since most mobile phones used this type of USB connector.

A USB hub – This is optional but since there’s only a USB Host port, it is required unless you only plan to connect one USB device (e.g. USB keyboard).

USB to Serial Board – Again, this is optional but it is really useful for debugging purpose in case there’s an issue with the bootloader and/or kernel, or you simply don’t want/need to plug the board to a VGA monitor.

Display – VGA monitor or LCD Keyboard and mouse Wi-Fi / Ethernet USB Dongle – Optional a microSD for Linux and storage

One good thing with Olimex is that they have free user’s manuals for their boards. That may seem trivial, but the Cubieboard simply do not have one, and the Raspberry Pi does have one, but you need to pay for it. Of course, all boards have some free resources online, but it’s still nice to have most of what you need in one document.

So let’s download A13-OLinuXino-MICRO user’s manual first. It a 30-page PDF document that gives you an overview of the board,  explains how to get started with the board, and gives a detailed hardware description of the board (pin and connectors

descriptions), some information about AllWinner A13 SoC, and some links to the design files (schematics & PCB layout in PDF and Eagle format).

Since the board does not have flash, you need to load a Linux image to a microSD card first. Olimex currently just has a preliminary Debian image for the board (A13_Micro_Debian_first_preliminary_release-06122012.rar  – 737 MB). This is a compressed SD card image, so simply uncompress it, and dump it to a microSD card with dd (Linux) or Win32DiskImager (Windows).

Time to connect the board. I’ve inserted by Debian SD card, and connected a USB keyboard, the serial to USB adapter I use with the Mele A1000 to UART1, a VGA cable to my monitor and a power supply to the microUSB port.

Everything looks fine, I can see U-Boot and the kernel output in putty and the VGA monitors light, but the boots take over 2 minutes, as it’s stuck in udev, as it apparently tries to find another USB host that does not exists, and times out after 120 seconds.

Waiting for /dev to be fully populated...udevadm settle - timeout of 120 seconds reached, the event queue contains: /sys/devices/platform/sw-ohci.1/usb3 (581) /sys/devices/platform/sw-ohci.1/usb3/3-0:1.0 (582) /sys/devices/platform/sw-ohci.1/usb3/usb_device/usbdev3.1 (583)

Finally, I can login (Username: root | Password: password), and check a few things about the board in the serial terminal:

Debian GNU/Linux wheezy/sid A13Micro ttyS0

A13Micro login: rootPassword:Last login: Thu Jan 1 00:17:25 UTC 1970 on ttyS0Linux A13Micro 3.0.52+ #10 PREEMPT Wed Dec 5 16:01:52 EET 2012 armv7l

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;the exact distribution terms for each program are described in theindividual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extentpermitted by applicable law.root@A13Micro:~# uname -aLinux A13Micro 3.0.52+ #10 PREEMPT Wed Dec 5 16:01:52 EET 2012 armv7l GNU/Linuxroot@A13Micro:~# free -mh total used free shared buffers cachedMem: 165M 32M 133M 0B 4.0M 12M-/+ buffers/cache: 16M 149MSwap: 0B 0B 0Broot@A13Micro:~# df -hFilesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted onrootfs 1.8G 729M 992M 43% //dev/root 1.8G 729M 992M 43% /devtmpfs 83M 0 83M 0% /devtmpfs 17M 120K 17M 1% /run

tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/locktmpfs 34M 0 34M 0% /tmptmpfs 34M 0 34M 0% /run/shmroot@A13Micro:~#

So there’s 165 MB available for Linux, as the rest of the 256MB RAM is mainly reversed for A13 GPU, and the rootfs is 1.8GB with 729 MB used. Since I’ve got a 4GB microSD card, let’s increase the rootfs size to make full use of the available space on the microSD:

1. Run fdisk to delete and re-create the rootfs partition (p2)

fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

2. Reboot the board, and resize the partition:

resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2

3. Enjoy the extra space: 4. df -h5. Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

rootfs          3.6G  731M  2.7G  22% /

When I’ve then tried to login via the VGA screen, I realize the USB keyboard did not work at all with this board, which could explain the many USB debug message I could see in the serial terminal…

If you want to use LCD instead of VGA, the script files to do so are in script_GPIO_LCD_800x480 directory in the FAT partition of the microSD card.

More Information and Technical Support

If you prefer to build u-boot & the kernel yourself, and use your own rootfs, you can follow the instructions in Building bootable SD-card with Debian Linux Image for   A13- OLinuXino. Those are the instructions for A13-OLinuXino, so you may have to adapt the instructions for A13-OLinuXino-MICRO.

If you want to use/test the latest kernel and bootloader, there’s an easier method using sunxi-linux nightly builds. If you don’t want to keep the rootfs but update the kernel and U-boot you can do as follows:

wget https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-bsp/raw/master/scripts/sunxi-media-create.shchmod 755 sunxi-media-create.shwget http://dl.linux-sunxi.org/amery/sunxi-3.0/latest/a13_olinuxino_hwpack.tar.xz/sunxi-media-create.sh /dev/sdX a13_olinuxino_hwpack.tar.xz norootfs

This will create an image for A13-OLinuXino board (512MB RAM), and if you try directly the system will crash at boot time. So until a13_olinuxino-micro_hwpack.tar.xz becomes available, you’ll need to copy the script.bin file from the Debian image to the FAT partition.

You can get hardware and software support on Olimex Forums and consult A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Wiki (In construction). If you are modifying the  the kernel or u-boot source code or find bugs related to the kernel/u-boot, contacting sunxi-linux mailing-list may be a better option.

Conclusion

If I just look at the board specifications and compare it to other low cost boards such as the Raspberry Pi or Cubieboard, Olimex A13-OLinuXino may not look the best value at 35 Euro + shipping, and Debian is not really stable on this board right now, although I’m pretty sure it will eventually be.

One of the advantage of the Olimex board is the VGA connector which is missing on the other 2 boards aforementioned. A13-OLinuXino-MICRO also has 4 expansion headers, including the UEXT connector that gives you access to over 20 low cost modules. This can make the board very attractive for embedded projects as it’s relatively straightforward to add some features such as GSM/GPRS, sensors, GPS. RF connectivity…

Finally, all Olimex boards are open source hardware, which means you’ll get access to hardware design files (and not only PDF) and source code, which is not fully the case for most other boards, especially for the schematics in original format and PCB layout.

Read more: http://www.cnx-software.com/category/processors/allwinner-a1x-a10-a13/#ixzz2L8MGkT1H