The Cubieboard is a low cost development board powered by AllWinner A10 with 512MB/1GB RAM, 4GB NAND and lots of interfaces. However some of processor interfaces are only available via the extension headers, and access to interfaces like VGA and LVDS would normally require some (minor) hardware hacking. That’s why George Ioakimedes (IO Technologies LLC) has decided to design and manufacture a carrier board (baseboard) for the Cubieboard.
The Cubie baseboard provides the following:
- 2mm pitch female sockets to insert the Cubieboard
- All 96 Cubieboard pins brought out to 0.100″ (2.56mm) pitch headers
- 4-pin power header to match optional power input header on Cubieboard
- LVDS header with separate LCD Backlight connector to match low cost LVDS cable
- 4-wire touch screen connector
- Standard 2.5mm DC jack, 12V-18V input
- Onboard 5.0V switching regulator to power the Cubieboard and provide 3A (available on 0.100″ header)
- Onboard 3.3V switching regulator to power LCD and provide 3A (available on 0.100″ header)
- 15W Stereo Class D Audio Amplifier
- VGA circuit and HD15 connector
Some people have complained about the difficulty to handle 2mm pitch header on the Cubieboard, the baseboard fixes this “issue” by bringing Cubieboard signals to 2.56mm pitch headers.
The company provides the schematics and BoM in PDF format, as well as LCD touchscreen driver (USB), and the LCD display’s datasheet in the download section of its website.
The baseboard can be purchased for $29.99 + shipping, but it seems out of stock right now.
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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Well this is nice but it would be nicer if I could actually buy the Cubieboard which is out of stock and I’ve no idea when it will be back in stock.
@Marius
hmm, if you want to buy one you have to monitor miniand regularly…
I don’t know if it’s because they have problems with sourcing components, or if it’s because they want to be extra careful with stocks, and only plan manufacturing once stocks are nearly depleted.
@Marius
It’s back in stock: https://cubieboard.myshopify.com/
But depending on your country, you may only be able to choose more expensive DHL shipping, because Tom is only allowing China Post shipping to countries where customs are known not to cause problems. If there’s no China Post option for your country, and you know these problems don’t apply there, you can mention it here:
http://groups.google.com/group/cubieboard/t/e6ccdd4d02267b84
There are also AliExpress sellers with stocks & (more or less) reasonable prices.
@cnxsoft
Thanks , cnxsoft, good point. I was just able to buy it but I got it from the shopify store. Miniand will only ship with DHL which I don’t like. Too expensive and customs is more difficult.
Hmm… I’ve bought one cubieboard from IO Technologies site 10 minutes ago… And then realized that it’s not featured on the site! This is the product link: https://store.iotllc.com/product.php?productid=2 Hope, this company is not a fraud )
Cubieboard it’s based on allwinner. So no GPL code for hardware acceleration under linux (Almost every supplier is violating GPL in cina). This suck so much for a “supposed developer board”. Better go with other kind of SOCs like raspberry or Amlogic based soc.
@yareg
As long as you used Paypal you should be OK I guess. They’re probably legit if they offer Paypal.
@Nessuno
I’m not realyl sure what you’re talking about. No ARM vendor offers hardware acceleration under Linux, not open source anyway.
Raspberry Pie is just too weak and it’s not that open source either. The Amlogic stuff is harder to find and Allwinner has a big advantage over others, their stuff uses a config file.
This really helps a lot, I have a Chinese tablet with no sources but I’m able to use a generic open source kernel togerther with its config file.
Also Allwinner has linux-sunxi which is a pretty OK community working on the kernel and Linux stuff.
@yareg
George has been seen a lot on Cubieboard G+ community and mailing list, so my guts tell me he’s trustworthy
@Marius
@Nessuno
Nessuno most probably refers to the “openness” of AMLogic and Broadcom because XBMC Linux can run on those 2 targets.
@cnxsoft
To be quite hones I don’t care much for XBMC but I know reverse engineering of the Allwinner stuff is a WIP so it will probably work on Allwinner soon enough.
You’re right though, that’s probably what he ment. I was thinking about the 3D stuff where we don’t really have anything that’s open source on ARM, except maybe for Freedreno I guess.
@cnxsoft
IO Technologies has sent me a package today, so now I need to wait when the Cubie baseboard will be in stock. It will be really useful. Maybe, I should contact George with this question.
I noticed Seeed Studio will sell Cubieboards. They’re ~$55 shipped worldwide (inc power & SATA cables, no case or debugging cable):
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/cubieboard-p-1404.html?cPath=132_206
This may be the cheapest source for people who don’t mind waiting for China Post (& don’t need the case/debug cable). They’re out of stock, but told me they’ll have stock next week.
Can I connect the LCD of an Asus A7T laptop to this board ? (The laptops mainboard has a defective graphics processor and I would like to use the LCD)
@John
I don’t know the answer to that one, you’d better as the baseboard guy directly or on cubieboard forums.