On Wed, Dec 25, 2013 at 6:42 AM, Erix erixbzh@gmail.com wrote:

Hi everybody,

first at all, Merry Christmas to all of you.

hi erix

what do you think about this "new" one?

pretty damn good!

http://www.tbsdtv.com/launch/tbs-2910-matrix-arm-mini-pc.html

driven by a Freescal MCIMX6Q5EYM10AC / Quad ARM Cortex-A9 at 1.0GHz and 10/100/1000 wired Ethernet, WIFI IEEE 802.11n/b/g + SATA

the GPIO port looks a bit... little.

it's basically a fully-functioning computer, they're pushing USB-TV sticks (i've just been investigating rtl-sdr.org), $150 without any extras is quite a lot but then again there aren't many quad-core ARM systems with 2gb RAM _and_ full MiniPCIe and everything else this board has. and by using an iMX6 there's plenty of GNU/Linux OSes for it.

good find, erix.

l.

Erix wrote:

Hi everybody,

first at all, Merry Christmas to all of you.

what do you think about this "new" one?

http://www.tbsdtv.com/launch/tbs-2910-matrix-arm-mini-pc.html

driven by a Freescal MCIMX6Q5EYM10AC / Quad ARM Cortex-A9 at 1.0GHz and 10/100/1000 wired Ethernet, WIFI IEEE 802.11n/b/g + SATA

And don't forget the 2GB ram.

Overall there seem to be lots of hacker friendly products coming out based on the IMX6 which bodes well for future software support. I'm going to compare this one with the WBQUAD as it's the one i'm familiar with that is reasonablly priced and has 2GB of ram.

the GPIO port looks a bit... little.

OTOH it looks like it's on an easilly accessible pin header socket, the WBQUAD has lots of IO pins but they are on tiny connectors. This board has a miniPCIe slot, the WBQUAD doesn't.

This board has EMMC the WBQUAD doesn't.

The makers of this board look like they will be giving lots of support for using it as a TV box.

This seems to come with a case, cases for the wandboard quad are an optional extra.

This board uses a heatsink/fan for cooling while the wandboard quad uses a large passive heatsink.

The wandboard quad is a CPU module and baseboard combination, this means that you could take just the CPU module and integrate it in your product. This product comes is a single board.

All these features may be either very important or totally irrelevent depending on your application.

In terms of nominal price this board seems to be a little more expensive than a wandboard quad. How that translates to final price will of course depend on where you live (and i'm not going to create an account just to find out if they offer any all inclusive options to the EU or if I have to wait and see what I get charged after it arrives).