The Wandboard is a low cost Linux ARM Cortex-A9 ARM board comprised of a CPU module and an interface board. There are actually 2 versions of the board (single and dual core) which are developed by a team of engineers during their spare time:
- Wandboard Solo – $69 – Freescale i.MX6 Solo + 512 MB RAM
- Wandboard Dual – $89 – Freescale i.MX6 Dual + 1 GB RAM
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Both boards come with Audio I/O, Optical S/PDIF, HDMI, a camera interface, 2
micro SD cardslot, a serial port, an expansion header, USB and USB OTG ports, a SATA connector and Gb Ethernet. The dual version also adds Wifi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth support.
There are not so many boards with native SATA support, so for those of you who need SATA this could be really be a good option. [Update: Although there’s a SATA connector on the baseboard, this is not supported by the Solo and Dual modules, so it’s just there for future modules. See forums]
Another interesting feature of the boards is that the people behind the project decided to use EDM (Embedded Design Module) standard for the expansion connector. This standard has been designed by CoM/SoM companies such as TechNexion, and the connector is a standard MXM type 3 connector which provides access to 314 pins rather than the 200 pins with a SO-DIMM module.
There’s no quad-core version planned for now, so if you need to use Freescale i.MX6 Quad, you can always get Boundary Devices Nitrogen6X board, although it’s not as cheap.
Runtime images are being developed for Ubuntu, Linux Angstrom and Android, but those and the source code cannot be released just yet, because they are still under NDA with Freescale. This restriction will be lifted once the CPU becomes available.
Only the mechanical files are available right now, and I can’t see info about the schematics, PCB layout, yet alone a picture of the board. Yet, they plan to ship the board mid-to-end November, which appears to be a pretty aggressive target to me. You can get more information on Wandboard website and register your interest to be informed when the boards become available.
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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