
Qualcomm Snapdragon, DragonBoard 410c Fire Up at World Maker Faire - wootboards
http://makezine.com/2015/09/25/qualcomm-snapdragon-dragonboard-410c-fire-up-at-world-maker-faire-new-york/
======
jepler
I have one of these, and so far it's a mixed bag. First off, the wifi is badly
broken in ubuntu because _NO_ multicast ethernet packets are received by
Linux; they are apparently being filtered in the ethernet card by the binary
blob. No solution exists at this time, and the shipped Ubuntu kernel doesn't
support any USB network adapters I have.

On the other hand, it did work well enough for me to make a basic port of
LinuxCNC to it, though without a working PREEMPT-RT kernel it cannot be used
to control hardware.

Of the ARM SBCs I own, this board is way below ODROID U3 and RPi2 -- it's
buggy, it's not particularly high spec (other than being aarch64), and it
doesn't have the world of accessories that RPi has. (Pick ODROID for
performance, RPi for accessories)

But if you want to port an app to aarch64, or just say that you own a 64-bit
arm system, and your hardware budget is under $200, DragonBoard and hikey are
basically the two games in town.

~~~
tbr
Have you retried with a more recent image? After I kicked them about the USB
Ethernet situation Ndec enabled a few more drivers for the kernel in the
Ubuntu images. Both my ancient Pegasus USB1.1 and a newer USB3 GBit card then
worked out of the box.

The WiFi situation is indeed annoying and I've complained about it, they seem
to be since looking into it, but as the driver is open source, someone else
could check too and send patches. There even is a debug tool to intercept the
proprietary QC driver commands (used in Android images). It should just be
reconfiguring the filters away from their broken default state.

~~~
TD-Linux
Yeah, I had a similar situation on the Hikey 96board. I ended up downloading
their kernel source and building a bunch of additional modules so I could get
USB Ethernet, as the wifi was basically useless there too.

~~~
tbr
Yeah, luckily that was very straight forward. Did that too before they
released the new images.

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jcr
Though the Dragon Board looks great, the specs on the HiKey board are even
more impressive [1, 2], but I haven't found anyone selling them yet. There is
a variation of the HiKey board made by LeMaker that has more RAM [3]. The
96boards "Enterprise Edition" boards are just stunning [4, 5] and have two
DDR3 SO-DIMM sockets, but again, they aren't shipping yet.

[1]
[https://www.96boards.org/products/ce/hikey/](https://www.96boards.org/products/ce/hikey/)

[2] [http://www.em.avnet.com/en-us/design/drc/Pages/HiKey-
board.a...](http://www.em.avnet.com/en-us/design/drc/Pages/HiKey-board.aspx)

[3] [http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/09/23/lemaker-
hikey-96board...](http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/09/23/lemaker-
hikey-96boards-development-board-comes-with-1-to-2gb-ram-sells-for-75-and-up/)

[4] [http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/06/28/amd-
announces-96board...](http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/06/28/amd-
announces-96boards-enterprise-edition-server-board-powered-by-
opteron-a1100-processor/)

[5] [https://community.amd.com/community/amd-
business/blog/2015/0...](https://community.amd.com/community/amd-
business/blog/2015/06/23/extending-arm-s-ecosystem-for-server-developers)

~~~
tbr
I got mine from Arrow(US) in July. They suspended shipping at some point after
that due to missing FCC tests, but you could still get the board if you signed
a waiver.

The HiKey board has different pros and cons. Pro: It's received a lot more
engineering time, as it was the first 96board. Actual open source first stage
bootloader, from what I can tell. Con: WiLink8 WiFi; Initially unobtainium as
"produced" by Circuitco in homeopathic doses; HiSilicon also needs quite some
proprietary blobs for things.

So far ALL 96borads have their problems and surprisingly all of them seem to
violate the LINARO/96boards spec in multiple ways.

~~~
TD-Linux
I think there were hardware bugs on a lot of the Hikey wifi boards too. Mine
always failed in the driver and I ended up using USB Ethernet after rebuilding
the kernel.

The onboard eMMC is also extremely slow, luckily it's easy to switch it to
boot off a microSD instead.

The kernel forked at 3.17 and hasn't been updated since.

So far I'm pretty disappointed, both hardware and software wise. I find it
surprising Linaro would put their name on this, I really hope this isn't the
"reference" for quality.

------
keenerd
Pros:

* cheapest 64 bit ARM

* 8GB flash

* onboard GPS

Cons:

* relatively slow cores

* 1GB ram

* no usb3

* no ethernet (100 or 1000)

* no sata

For lightweight desktop/server use, this is a horrible board. The XU4 blows it
away on all counts. However, the inclusion of onboard GPS shows more what it
was meant for: things that move. Likely battery powered things that move.

The utility of the board comes down to the max and idle power draw. The XU4 is
the board to compare the DragonBoard against; it does 2.5W idle and 8W-12W
peak. If Qualcomm can beat those by a factor of four or so, then I could see a
place for the DragonBoard.

------
littlewing
Would be interesting to see a comparison/benchmark similar to:
[http://www.davidhunt.ie/raspberry-
pi-2-benchmarked/](http://www.davidhunt.ie/raspberry-pi-2-benchmarked/)

------
jhallenworld
Why not choose an Intel ecosystem board, something like:

[http://www.minnowboard.org/meet-minnowboard-
max/](http://www.minnowboard.org/meet-minnowboard-max/)

Traditionally they have been behind on development boards like this but things
have been improving. Unless you must have lowest power I'm thinking that you
are in many ways better off:

    
    
        64-bits? No problem.
        Performance? Intel has a matching Atom for every Arm.
        Compatibility? Run desktop Ubuntu.. heck, run Windows
        Drivers? They are all open source and work.
    

There are a bunch of extremely cheap Z3735F based systems available also, for
example:
[http://www.geekbuying.com/Search/?keyword=windows+mini+pc](http://www.geekbuying.com/Search/?keyword=windows+mini+pc)
("pc stick" and "mini pc").

(I do like ARM, but at the Cortex-M0 level as a PIC replacement).

~~~
tbr
Minnowboard Max has the same unobtainium problem like the HiKey. That said,
it's about to change.

Luckily also there a second manufacturer stepped in and the 'Turbot' version
was recently announced. Same as the LeMaker version of Hikey, should have less
of the usual Circuitco Unobtainium problems.

------
ezequiel-garzon
Off topic, I didn't know the spelling "faire", and didn't come across having
lived almost a decade in the US. My dictionary just says "obsolete spelling of
fair". Does it carry a slightly different meaning? Why this obsolete choice?

~~~
bryanlarsen
Renaissance faires use the renaissance spelling. Maker faire is perhaps trying
to evoke those.

------
StringyBob
Interesting to see a board with built in GPS for mobile apps, as well as
wifi/bluetooth.

Nice to see Cortex-A53 for a bit more CPU performance (compared to raspberry-
pi), but anyone know how GFX driver support compares to the r-pi?

~~~
tbr
Note that GPS so far only works under Android with the QC propriatary binary
mumbojumbo. Not sure about the graphics drivers, would need to check.

~~~
tmuir
I would imagine that there will never be a fully open source gps, as this
would allow anyone to bypass the "am I a missle?" test.

~~~
TD-Linux
There are already many open source implementations of GPS using SDR.

In addition, most consumer GPSes just have firmware that does the SDR bit and
output NMEA strings. There's literally no reason for the driver receiving NMEA
strings to be proprietary.

~~~
tmuir
Then what is preventing an open source implementation from exceeding the
60,000 ft and 999mph limits imposed by the US DoD?

~~~
TD-Linux
Nothing.

------
bmurphy1976
Looks interesting, but seems a little pricey. It looks like the ODROID XU4
([http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php](http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php))
but with the ODROID you at least get 2GB of RAM. Either way, it's good to have
competition.

------
rwmj
I've had one of these on order for about six weeks (from
[https://www.96boards.org/products/ce/dragonboard410c/](https://www.96boards.org/products/ce/dragonboard410c/)).
Are they shipping now?

------
exabrial
No gig-e? :(

~~~
jzwinck
What would you do if it had gigabit Ethernet that you can't do now?

~~~
xanderstrike
Use it as an HTPC/Streaming PC? A lightweight desktop replacement? Digital
signage? Home automation? Home server? Built in b/g/n is a nice touch but most
prefer the ease of installation, reliability, and goodput of ethernet over
wifi for anything important.

I suppose you could use a USB ethernet adapter, but now you're just
sacrificing a USB port to have a less capable XU4. I'm not sure what market
they're targeting here. I suppose you're just supposed to build mobile devices
around this.

~~~
Dylan16807
Yeah, ethernet is nice for a bit of reliability but it's not that important.

But I was focusing more on the 'gigabit' part, and what you listed generally
doesn't need it.

