7 Lesser Known Open Source Boards You Should Know!

Open source boards are used to build a variety of systems. While some use them to make complex stuff like robots etc. others use them just to hack some boards. When it comes to boards, people usually talk about the Raspberry Pi or Beagle-bone. But there are plenty of others available.

1. 86Duino/86Duino One

86Duino is an open-source embedded platform based on Vortex86EX SoC, easy-to-use hardware and software integrated. This Arduino-compatible board can support many x86 O/S as well as those running on the original Arduino base system. It supports DOS, Windows and Linux.

2. Odroid-XU

This is the world’s first big.LITTLE architecture based bare-board computer. It contains the following components,

- Exynos5 Octa Cortex™-A15 1.6Ghz quad core and Cortex™-A7 quad core CPUs
- PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU (OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenCL 1.1 EP)
- 2 GB LPDDR3 RAM PoP
- USB 3.0 Host x 1, USB 3.0 OTG x 1, USB 2.0 Host x 4
- HDMI 1.4a output Type-D connector
- eMMC 4.5 Flash Storage

3. A20-OLinuXino-Micro

This open source hardware has an HDMI port, two memory card connectors and a number of GPIOs. Its features include,

- A20 Cortex-A7 dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU and dual-core Mali 400 GPU
- 1 GB DDR3 RAM memory
- 4 GB NAND FLASH memory
- SATA connector with 5V SATA power jack
- HDMI FullHD 1080p
- 2x USB Low-Full-High-Speed hosts with power control and current limiter
- USB-OTG with power control and current limiter
- VGA output on 6-pin 1.25mm (0.05") step connector
- 100 MB native Ethernet
- LiPo Battery connector with battery-charging capabilities
- Audio headphones output
- Microphone input on connector
- 2x UEXT connectors
- LCD connector compatible with with 4.3", 7.0", 10.1" LCD modules from Olimex
- 160 GPIOs on three GPIO connectors
- Micro-SD card connector
- SD/MMC card connector
- DEBUG-UART connector for console debug with USB-SERIAL-CABLE-F
- Status LED
- Battery charge status LED
- Power LED
- 2KB EEPROM for MAC address storage and more
- 10 BUTTONS with ANDROID functionality + RESET button
- 4 mount holes
- 6-16V input power supply, noise immune design
- PCB dimensions: 142 x 82 mm

4. Wandboard Quad

The Wandboard is a ultra low power complete computer with high performance multimedia capabilities based around the Freescale i.MX6 Cortex-A9 processor.

5. Radxa Rock

The Radxa Rock is shipped with Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) and Ubuntu/Linaro 13.09 dual boot on the NAND flash (on-board storage) and it works out of the box. Once you get started, you can flash latest Android image and several Linux images.

6. Hackberry A10

Based on the popular 1.0Ghz ARM Allwinner A10, the Hackberry A10 developer board is a powerful, hackable Android / Linux PC. The Hackberry A10 has both WiFi and Ethernet, 3D acceleration and hardware video decoding capable of decoding full HD video via a Mali400 GPU.

7. MinnowBoard

This is an Intel Atom-powered board that provides a low cost alternative for other embedded chips. It has a dedicated community that supports open source hardware.

8. Arndale Octa Board

Is the worlds most powerful ARM based development board, providing developers with an ARM Cortex-A15 with Mali-T604 Samsung Exynos5250 development platform.