SolidRun has been providing tiny development platform such as Cubox and Cubox Pro featuring Marvell ARM compatible processors. However, the price of those platforms are well over $100, so the company decided to provide lower cost development platforms (Cubox-i) based on Freescale i.MX6 Solo/Dual Lite/Dual/Quad that sells for $45 and up.
There are four versions:
- Cubox-i1 – Freescale i.MX6 Solo, 512 MB RAM, 10/100M Ethernet, optional Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module. Price: $44.99
- Cubox-i2 – Freescale i.MX6 Duallite, 1GB RAM, 10/100M Ethernet, optional Wi-Fi Bluetooth module. Price: $69.99
- Cubox-i2Ultra – Freescale i.MX6 Dual, 1GB RAM, Gb Ethernet (470 Mbit real), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, SATA II. Price: $94.99
- Cubox-i4Pro – Freescale i.MX6 Quad, 2GB RAM, Gb Ethernet (470 Mbit real), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, SATA II. Price: $119.99
The devices measure 55mm x 55mm x 42mm. The full specifications are better seen in the comparison table found in SolidRun website.
The 4 models all boot from a microSD card that can be ordered pre-loaded with Android 4.2.2., but you’ll also be able to load Linux distributions, or XBMC images.
That’s another low cost platform that competes with Wandboard, and Compulab Utilite, who also provide single, dual, and quad core products with Freescale i.MX6 processors.
SolidRun Cubox-i platforms can be pre-ordered now, for delivery in November. More details are available on cubox-i.com.
Thanks to Onebir and CSilie for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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The quad-core Cubox-i4Pro with Linux on board and Geexbox XBMC installed for $119.99 should be a
good viable alternative to the single core Little Black Box whose price is scheduled for a price increase to $149.95 after this September the 9th.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k7s2cBGpVI
There isn’t much info about the hardware and the supported formats, limitations.
But it seems to be a nice box.
Do they provide enough information if one wants to learn how to develop a new freescale hardware?
By the way, why boot from SD card and not from a built NAND Flash? This is more similar the real developments I think…
too much if you ask me. you can grab a mk908 quad core for less then $50 what gives this device any advantage over the well known rk3188 or the mk808
And those prices are without VAT & shipping.
Freescale is much more “open” than rockchip and there is a HW accelerated version of XBMC for this SOC (http://stephan-rafin.net/blog/)
@adem
i.MX6 has Linux graphics drivers (etc?)
@Gabe
Most countries don’t charge VAT on exports; maybe it gets dropped later in the buying process..? But yes, expensive compared to GK802:
http://geekbuying.com/item/312807.html
Amazing what people will pay for Gb ethernet, SATA & 1GB more RAM. Apparently :p
hey did you guys hear Xiaomi MI3 is coming out for china they got the tegra 4 chip and international they got the snapdragon 800 chip and i think it going to be around $350 us
That new CuBox-i really looks great on paper, but I will never buy another product from SolidRun due to the horrible support that they had / have for the original Cubox. They made a lot of promises that they just did not keep, like an Android image, upstream XBMC support, and more.
Even though a bit pricy, the original CuBox hardware had so much potential upon initial release, but SolidRun as a company offered poor customer service and very bad software and community support, with close to no communication from the companies employees.
Plus they ship their products from Israel so most their customers end up get their their packages stuck in customs and have to pay additional local taxes and handling charges, and if you have to return a faulty product for repair you have to pay high shipping costs.
$350 ?? I hear at least 4 different prices, this one the cheapest 😀
You must wait I think…
@adem
The i.MX6 Dual/Quad has SATA and GigE built-in. This box connects the SATA lines to an eSATA connector.
Also, Freescale has provided a lot of documentation for the i.MX6 SoC’s, while Rockchip has (AFAIK) provided almost nothing. So their chips may be faster and cheaper, but you’ll always be depending on hacks, workarounds, and reverse-engineered drivers, etc to make it work.
@Javi
its actually a little less then
$350 but that’s in us i think when you want to buy it in Australia or UK it will usually (just a guestimate) cost around $50 more and there are two versions a china version which i think only works with their 3g networks and a international version which will feature snapdragon 800 with the adreno 330 gpu and also i really dont know maybe it might cost more due to shipping an taxes later down the track
Odroid u2 seems to be more competitive because of much higher performance with lower cost.
for me i dont really need this stuff for linux i need it for watching content and playing games thats what it is intended for although every one has their own ideas i my selfe have a netgear readynass duo v2 and i bought it for $120 and the reason why is so i can install a torrent client like transmission and 24/7 upload torrents afterwords i found out that i could watch media from it using android hdmi dongle but like i said every one has their own reasons @Ian Tester
This is great! I just hope SolidRun will provide Debian images for this CuBox, I’ve stuck with Arch for my current CuBox, and the rolling-release is not ideal for a server/media center. Do you (or anyone) have truecrypt benchmarks of the Freescale CPUs? I had to drop the idea f encrypting on my CuBox due to 6,5 MB/s with AES.
At least, they are being honest about the gigabit issue: (*) 1000Mbps link is limited to 470Mbps actual bandwidth due to internal chip busses limitation
@Hedda
How was the support for Linux? Did they charge you VAT even though it was an export? Were there quality issues with the units? (Since you mention return shipping…)
There’s now Cubox-i2w for business customers only – http://www.ereleases.com/pr/solidrun-introduces-lowcost-highperformance-cuboxi2w-solution-digital-signage-market-195766
10% discount on cubox-i board with “openelec-4-cubox” coupon