Dealextreme is selling a board (Model SAA-250) featuring Telechips TCC8925 Cortex A5 processor with 1GB RAM, and 4GB Flash. They sell it as a “Android 4.0 DIY Intelligent TV Box / Advertising / Development Motherboard”, but it’s basically an Android set-top box board without casing, power supply, nor remote control, and you should not expect to do that much development (except Android app development) on it since no source code is available.
Here are the board specifications:
- SoC – Telechips TCC8925 up to 833 MHz ARM Cortex A5 + 1080P VPU + Mali-400 GPU. (Dealextreme says it’s a dual core Cortex A5 up to 1.2 GHz, but if it’s TCC8925, that’s just plain wrong)
- System Memory – 1GB RAM
- Storage – 4GB flash + SD card slot
- Video Output – micro? HDMI 1.3 up to 1080p + CVBS AV output
- Video formats – RM/RMVB, MPEG, MKV, AVI, FLV, VP8 up to 1080p
- Audio I/O – Headset input, Optical Audio SPDIF.
- Connectivity:
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
- 10/100Mbit Ethernet
- USB – 3x USB Host + 1x USB OTG
- IR sensor
- Power – 5V/2A
- Dimensions – 12.0 x 12.0 x 2.1cm
- Weight – 91g
The board comes preloaded with Android 4.0.3. When I look at the board picture, I actually see 4x USB host and 1x mini USB OTG, and no HDMI output. I can’t not find other references to this board anywhere, so you’re probably out of luck if you want to find the original firmware. Telechips TCC8925 did release the Linux kernel and part of Android source code, so in theory Linux could run on the board as well, without GPU and VPU support. One the advantage of Telechips TCC8925 is low power consumption thanks to Cortex A5, so for example it should be possible to power the board with one USB port (no power supply needed).
The board is sold for $77.30 on DealExtreme. If you don’t really need all the extra USB ports, Ethernet or SPDIF output, you’d probably be better off with something like CX-01 mini PC that’s available for about $37.
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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