Monday, 16 July 2012

HackBerry A10 board

As always I'm on the look out for the next hackable board, my interest turned to the Gooseberry board which essentially is an tablet PCBA. I must commend the Gooseberry founder for sourcing such a board and neogating the price. For me the lack of Ethernet and USB ports means that it didn't fill my requirements. However the idea of sourcing existing PCBA's seems to be good one although this is not easy as most Chinese manufactures will only deal with you if your buying a 1000+ units. Another drawback is that existing PCBA most likely won't have GPIO,I2C,SPI interfaces.

Having spent a few months trying to source a board the closest I could come to a useful board is this pcba.


Hackberry A10 available to buy from here . 





Its a small (approx 10cm x 8cm) board supporting a A10 (All Winner) cpu. After drawn out neogations with the manufacture I got them to produce me 2 boards with 1GB ram and 4GB flash which I have just received. The board by default boots Andriod 4.0 and has the following specification:

A10 All Winner
4GB Flash
1GB Ram
2 x USB
1 x Ethernet
1 x Wifi
1 x HDMI
1 x headphone
1 x mic
1 x component video
1 x infra red sensor
1 x 5v power socket
1 x SDHC slot

The board does seem to hold some potential as there seems to be place holders for additional connectors. Furthermore it looks like the board has a multi-purpose layout, as there seems be to markings for the SDHC connector to go on the front or back of the board, similary this also applies to the USB connectors. Sadly theres no GPIO or SATA (unlike the Mele boxes).

Here's a further update about the board.

My first attempt at booting Ubuntu and Puppy Linux is here.
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28 comments:

  1. Ricardo17 July 2012 at 06:47

    Ok, So the price will be avaliable after a group manifests about buy this board or there is a preview?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jas17 July 2012 at 13:21

      If you are interested in gaining a sample board then I could look into getting hold of a number of boards for those interested. Please post a comment on the blog. Price will depend on the numbers interested.

      Delete
  2. CampGareth17 July 2012 at 17:25

    Hmm, this'd be an interesting board certainly but I think I'd only buy one if it slotted in between the 35 USD RasPi and the 130 USD Odroid-X, and even then somewhere near the lower end, say 60-70 USD. Should be plenty of interest though if you can get media coverage. Personally the RAM is more important than anything else.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ZOIDA18 July 2012 at 05:52

    I'll have 2!

    ReplyDelete
  4. ZOIDA18 July 2012 at 05:52

    HOW MUCH?????????


    THIS IS JAMAZING

    ReplyDelete
  5. ZOIDA18 July 2012 at 05:53

    U DA MAN.

    GOOSEBERRY AND RASPBERRY SUCKS

    ReplyDelete
  6. zoobab18 July 2012 at 07:39

    It seems to be a board of this device:

    http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/592062804-Hot-New-Model-Google-Android-4-0-ICS-TV-Set-Top-Box-IPTV-Allwinner-A10-CPU-wholesalers.html

    http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Amazing-New-Model-Android-tv-box-Allwinner-A10-CPU-android-4-0-ICS-1080P-Full-HD/610958_592047897.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jas18 July 2012 at 11:35

      As mentioned on my blog it seems to be a generic pcba therefore I'm not suprised if there are devices based on it. The problem is that almost no one will you sell the pcbaor customise it for you unless your commiting to 1000+ units. I've managed to get a manufacture to customise my boards.

      Delete
  7. Unknown18 July 2012 at 12:24

    I would buy one too, for about up to 80 USD. Otherwise the Odroid-X with the Tegra 3 gets too interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ciquta18 July 2012 at 15:33

    i'm looking forward to get one!

    ReplyDelete
  9. ultimateohm23 July 2012 at 09:59

    Is there a button (or jumper or something equivalent) for re-installing firmware by LiveSuit.exe?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jas24 July 2012 at 00:19

      I was also trying to find if there was a jumper or not. There are some solder pads for a reset switch on the pcba. On one the boards the uboot activates the usb port and I'm currently booting an andriod from an usb stick :). I'll look into LiveSuit further when I get time.

      Delete
  10. Unknown23 July 2012 at 13:25

    I'd be interested if it would run some form of Linux.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jas24 July 2012 at 00:20

      I'm currently still trying to determine all the features of the board. Once this is done then I can look into getting ubuntu up and running.

      Delete
  11. SKY24 July 2012 at 21:16

    I would be interested in buying one of these as well.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Unknown25 July 2012 at 06:53

    Count me in for 60-65$ i'm interested. Is there any battery connector?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jas25 July 2012 at 22:59

      Theres no battery connector on the board.

      Delete
  13. Technologov28 July 2012 at 10:24

    Very interesting indeed !

    However, according to the products that are based on this board, it seems to have 512 MB of RAM, not 1 GB.

    Look here:
    http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/592062804-Hot-New-Model-Google-Android-4-0-ICS-TV-Set-Top-Box-IPTV-Allwinner-A10-CPU-wholesalers.html
    ..and here:
    http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Amazing-New-Model-Android-tv-box-Allwinner-A10-CPU-android-4-0-ICS-1080P-Full-HD/610958_592047897.html

    Can you confirm that this board has 1 GB of RAM ?

    What will be the price and availability ?

    What is the difference between PCB and PCBA ?

    -Alexey "Technologov"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jas28 July 2012 at 21:58

      As mentioned in my blog my have boards have been altered to my spec which includes 1GB.

      I'm still working with a suppler regarding pricing and avaliability.

      PCBA - A PCB populated with electronic components

      Delete
  14. Adi28 July 2012 at 16:23

    Hi Jas, I have device with same board which I ended bricking while trying to install CWM from >> http://rikomagic.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=142 (hoped the CWM will work since this device is also A10).

    Did you across a way to connect the device with the computer ? since its has no USB OTG or any other device I am stuck finding a way to connect it directly to a computer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jas29 July 2012 at 13:52

      Which device is it exactly?

      You could try this is rescue tool - http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?6,8966[/url]. However you would have manually recover the nand flash images.

      Delete
    2. Adi29 July 2012 at 22:51

      Hi again Jas, its the A10 tv box with 1Gigs memory ( TV_100 )
      I know which file got jacked up its the /dev/block/nandg I already have the backup of the file however since I cant boot up the device at all I am trying to boot the device from MMC to restore the file.
      I ll try it out and let you know on the results, I am new to the ARM based device hacking scene so not sure how to go about manual recovering the NAND flash.

      Delete
    3. Jas30 July 2012 at 02:03

      Hi Adi, thats interesting from what I can determine there no 1GB version available of this board. Do mind posting/email a link to the A10 tv box or pcba.

      If you boot using the rescue tool then it may affect your nanda/nandd/nande paritions so you will have re-image these as well. By the way nandg is the recovery parition.

      Another way to try and recover if you have the firmware image is to dd this to a sdcard and boot with that.

      Delete
    4. Adi30 July 2012 at 08:15

      Yeh,let know what email I can send it to,I ll pass the details for the 1GB supplier.

      Before I bricked the device I concatenated a file(CWM image) to the nandg file and passed the command to reboot into recovery, so I guess If I can somehow kick the device out of recovery I may be able to boot the original image ?

      I guess I can DD to a sdcard however unfortunately dont have the firmware image it will be great if you can upload or pass them along.

      Cheers !

      Delete
  15. Methanoid31 July 2012 at 14:07

    Someone kick me when we have a price for this...

    ReplyDelete
  16. andy5 August 2012 at 15:38

    Great news these boards are on sale by the way and brilliant news you've worked out some kind of deal with Miniand!The hackberry is just what i needed as it has a Lan port that the Gooseberry can't offer.

    I'm curious though, is Miniand a reseller, or did you just forward the manufactures details to them? Are you behind the sales of this device? It would be nice to know as you're one of the good guys who is more interested in Open Source than commercial which unfortunately Miniand are more about. It would be great if you had some say in perhaps future products or where this board is used in...

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Jas7 August 2012 at 00:49

      I'm still involived in sales of these boards and their future directory. If the go to the miniand forums you will find that they are open source friendly and the forum developers have made huge progress in getting Ubuntu builds working on the MK802.

      Delete
  17. nibu4 March 2013 at 19:47

    Hi
    I would like whether i could attach a 3g module to it. Is it possible?

    ReplyDelete

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