Sonsivri

Hi All

Found this on aliexpress :


http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Orange-Pi-PC-linux-and-android-mini-PC-Beyond-Raspberry-Pi-2/32448079125.html (http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Orange-Pi-PC-linux-and-android-mini-PC-Beyond-Raspberry-Pi-2/32448079125.html)

1.6 GHz board with all goodies

All the best

Bobi

Interesting find. Wow that's cheap.

Anybody know of a decent "headless media server" application for a board like this? Would need an Android app to control it.  I looked at XBMC as the media server, but the Android apps I saw to control it sucked (at least the remote control apps I looked at). Be nice to be able to play music, internet radio stations, etc, without needing to switch on the TV.

Are you looking for a DLNA compatible player or just a media player that can play files on storage? For the former I think xbmc is your best bet for an Android device. IIRC there is an official remote control app for it in case you haven't tried that.

Info on the $15 board (there are others) starts here: http://www.orangepi.org/orangepipc/

Design resources including OS (Lubuntu, Android, Raspbian, etc), schematics, s/w docs and tools: http://www.orangepi.org/downloadresources/

Useful diagram of the Orange Pi PC:

(http://s24.postimg.org/6jiqmk80l/orangepipc_info.jpg)

That price is for 100 units quantity.
The cheapest I found so far is 21.5€ (model without WiFi).

The $15 is the single unit price, the 100 unit price is $14.85 each...

Total with shipping to the US is only $18.51 (16.56€), a bargain for a single board computer...

As for wifi, yeah, you only get the lower end model for that price, it cost a few bucks more for the full featured one, but even then it's a great deal...

There are some negative comments on the aliexpress site. People complaining about software support (no hardware acceleration on linux and android image is chinese or a stolen Zidoo image). Not sure if this is still the case, but I would hold back for now. Hardware is as strong as the software running on it.

Have you visited the official site?  Yes, there is a hacked version of Zidoo that runs on it, but you are not limited to that OS, there are several other OS ported to it and work being done on others...

As for lack of hardware acceleration this is due tot he chip they used and lack of documentation, it will likely come in time once someone figures it out...

IMO for $15 you can't expect perfection and top of the line performance and support like the Raspberry Pi has since it's a brand new entry level product to get your feet wet, not the end all of single board computers...

The OP-PC is still in its early stage , the SBC uses Cortex-A7/Quad Core SOC from Allwinner ( SOC named as H3) , the only problem with these types of SOCs is that they are not supported by the original vendors to open community , full documentation is not released to general users and so is the sources though one can still found the Android fully supported by the vendor BUT when it comes to Linux then there are many limitations due to non availability of full documentation/code sources . The site/forum administrator named "Steven" is doing good/hard work and soon he will release more and more stable OS versions(with hardware acceleration support for SOC`s on chip Mali GPU ) to be used with OP-PC (this is what i was informed by him personally).

Does anyone know of a UK distributor for this? or within Europe who does small quantities. I'm not to keen on using AliExpress if I can help it.
I'd love to have a play about with one, but I'm not quite ready to buy 100 just yet  :P

New small and cheap Linux Boards:
1. NanoPi-NEO
http://www.nanopi.org/NanoPi-NEO_Feature.html
2. NanoPi-NEO-Air
http://www.nanopi.org/NanoPi-NEO-air_Feature.html
3. Orange Pi zero
http://www.orangepi.org/orangepizero/

As long as we are reviving year old threads:

I wouldn't want to build a product around that Chinese stuff.

It's NOT cheap but much better NXP warp7 platform.
http://www.nxp.com/pages/warp7-next-generation-iot-and-wearable-development-platform:WARP7?&tid=vanWaRP7
https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-79058/l/warp7-the-next-generation-iot-and-wearable-development-platform

My opinion is that these low cost import ARM based boards are pretty much inline with Arduino, great for the hobbyist or student to learn on and knock out some quick and low cost projects, but yes they should not be used as the base for a real design, especially a commercial one in most cases...  The biggest problem you will generally find with these lower cost and even many higher cost ARM chips is lack of proper drivers and firmware support from the manufacture, and an unwillingness for the manufacture to provide you with the information you need to fully utilize the chips or write your own drivers unless you are a big OEM client with lots of pull, willing to sign lots of NDAs and pay big licensing fees to get a peak inside the chip and how it works, stuff like that can cost you big in the long run...  Even the go to Raspberry Pi has had it's share of poor driver and manufacture support for the chip set over it's lifetime...

I wish it were easier to convince customers of this logic :).  It seems they have to get burned by it to believe it.

Although the recent comments do have some truth regarding drivers, there has been major improvements lately in recent Linux kernel (4.13) for all those Chinese branded CPUs.
Specifically for Allwinner, have you seen what sunxi is?