Firefly-RK3288 is a development board powered by Rockchip RK3288 processor, and for a board that’s just gone into mass production, I have written about it often enough, so I won’t go into specifications details, Android & Linux SDK, and schematics availability. T-chip has now launched a developer program to give away the board to people with interesting projects. The board normally costs $160 shipped, but if you are selected all you’ll have to pay is shipping.
In order to apply for this contest, send an email to apply@t-firefly.com with the following information:
- Name, country/region
- Personal website/blog, and projects (better with project homepage)
- Usage/project plan of the board
You have until December 5, 2014 to apply. Good luck 🙂
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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Nice looking board. BUT, if you want to gain momentum and to create a user base, with that price, IMHO not gonna’ happen.
Nowadays, if you take a look, the biggest user communities are around the modest (specs and price like RPi, BBB, odroidU, cubox, etc) dev board.
Lubuntu looks promosing, so GL to FF-Rk team.
Way too expensive for a quad core development board compared to Odroid XU 3 lite … not to mention that the odroid oss is way better than rockchip.
Firefly if want a good comunity for their products will need to have this board for sale for an 50 to 80 USD and wil also need serious oss SDK … not what Rockchip offers … most of the cases unusable outdated sources.
The Firefly board is actually cheaper than the Odroid XU Lite $99
– comes with bluetooth / Odroid no bluetooth, buy separately $6.9
– ac wifi / Odroid no wifi, buy separately $8
– Gigabit Ethernet / Odroid only 100Mbps
– SPDIF / Odroid nothing, buy USB-SPDIF for $16
– 16GB EMMC / Odroid nothing, have to buy separately $39
– HDMI 2.0/ Odroid only HDMI v1.4a
– Mali T764 / Odroid Mali-T628
– Remote, cables included / Odroid buy separately eg. $5
Geekbuying price $139.99 excl shipping for Firefly board / Odroid $173.9 excluding shipping($25).
Odroid has better Linux community support though, but Rockchip are also working on Chromebooks and Mainline Linux support.
XBMC/Kodi for Linux support on this would be nice!
@dewet
Correct, Firefly-RK3288 has more features, while ODROID-XU3 Lite has been cost optimized, and if you want to match all options it will become more expensive. The eMMC option is debatable, as you can also boot from a SD card on ODROID-XU3 Lite, and the eMMC performance is likely to be far superior than the one on RK3288-Firefly. So by the end of the day, it all depends on your requirements.
AFAIK Linux on firefly doesn’t have accelerated opengles. Binary blob drivers for midgard gpu available on the arm dev site don’t seem to be compatible with the firefly kernel either. Lima drivers also are not compatible with the midgard gpu. If you don’t need gpio and VGA output you can buy similar rk3288 android board/box for less and install linux via linuxium dual boot.
You are right…. In most EU countries customers also have to pay 19-25% TAX. Shipping costs in most cases involved. On top on that you also need/want a power supply, enclosure etc. So price will skyrocket. So therefore FireFly and others could become a One Day Fly.
They’ve started another campaign to distribute free Firefly-RK3288 boards. Deadline: February 2015.
http://developer.t-firefly.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=290&sid=62dab78511b3b1ba009357fc0c133cb6