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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Any news about the linux source files for supporting video playing with hw acceleration?
great .. looks like we at last will at least see an SOC maker will decent linux support father a range of cheap boards .. bye bye the andro-linux mess of allwinner SOC’s 🙂
@pszab
Just look at the older i.mx53 SDK on Freescale website. I expect to see similar support for the i.mx6 once it’s released. Just hope they don’t keep delaying it until 2013.
@mac me
Agreed. I’ve seen enough of the poorly supported and documented Chinese SoC. I’d rather pay a little more for a product with a proper open SDK and full English documentation.
Thank you for the article we received many nice and warm reactions.
We posted pictures of the gerbers and additional information on the http://www.wandboard.org page.
The final revision PCB’s that we are confident will go to mass production are currently being assembled. We will be posting pictures of the boards next week and the week after we will start posting youtube movies.
@wandboard
Please consider making versions with the full non-lite dual and quad processors with working sata connectors. Thanks.
Yes please. Quad core, SATA, generic Linux and documentation … if only.
Look http://www.bcmcom.com/bcm_product_AR6MXQ.htm
Picture of the board are now available
http://www.wandboard.org/index.php/blog
Including high-res pictures: http://www.wandboard.org/images/blog/wb20121024-900px.zip
Wandboard is available from last week of january in India from Tenet Technetronics.
visit: wandboard.tenettech.com