Alternative Android Devices and ARM embedded device etc........

 Hi all,

On the thought of how Linux will conquer the world, I ran into these ARM based devices of which I could see unlimited hackabilities:

Allwinner based devices and board:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Allwinner_A10_devices

and here another one just came out:
http://cubieboard.org/

Not much info on the cubie board, but the price is right and if people can latch on as much as the MK802, than it would be very interesting. It have similar spec. as the Mala A100 devices, maybe they just strip the case and sale the bare board instead, who know. Just quick search, you can now buy it on aliexpress (in limited quantity, 512MB as well as 1GB model):

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/cubieboard-prototype-512M-2012-8-8-revision/633682724.html

But as it said, it is prototype board, so you take your chances. 

Look at the embedded devices market, it is fair to say ARM based devices is taken a fair chunk of it and one reason is the adoption of  Linux on it. The tool chain seems to be quite well develop and it is quite easy to port from one model to another. All this is fine when you have 512MB or even 1GB to play around, but what happen if you just want it for a quick embedded application? An interest and very useful article from Jeelabs on the Ecosystem of development/enbedded ARMs:

http://jeelabs.org/2012/09/13/the-arm-ecosystem/

I think the main thing that will make or break the ARMs into the hobbist/maker market is an Open IDE, that is flexible enough to support different varies of the make/model/implementation of the chip. There currently so many different way to develop and upload application to an ARM board, and almost all of them are proprietary. This does not help with the adoption of ARMs; too many chooses is no chooses and a close system is no good to anyone. I think one of the reason why the Arduino platform is successfully, which in turns leads to the large adoption of AVR among the hobbist, is that it offer a open "standard", which everyone can follow. Now this "standard" might not be the best in the world, but it offer an entry point where people can enter. Once people start adopting this standard, they can stay with it, as it offer compatibility with other devices in the family or they can move on with the same standard, but with better or more advance coding, like C etc.   Now whether this will ever happens, we remain to see and I certainly will be watching, specially TI is selling this:

http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/stellaris_head.html?DCMP=stellaris-launchpad&HQS=stellaris-launchpad

TI is selling them for USD12.99 (was USD9.99 when I got mine). For that you get a ARM® Cortex™-M4F (2 in fact if you count the one which provide the USB host). Quite a powerful processor.

Ben

Update, 4/10/2012:

One step closest, but not sure about the direction. Anyway Arduino have the same idea of putting ARMs on Arduino format and hopefully an IDE to follow:

http://hackaday.com/2012/10/03/finally-an-arm-powered-arduino/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hackaday%2FLgoM+%28Hack+a+Day%29 

Update, 5/10/2012:

Check this out for an IDE:

http://www.coocox.org/index.html 

Update, 14/1/2013:

Looks like apart from the cheap MK802 from China, the Korean are at it too. Take a look at this:

http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G135341370451&tab_idx=1  

Yes, it is a Quad core Android/Ubuntu development board. It uses the same cpu as in the Samsung Android phone eg. Note II etc. 1G RAM and just about everything you need for a standalone server and at USD89! Quad core development board, now what will they think of next! It looks like better supported then the china one too.