Improv: An Open ARM Development Board Running Mer

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Improv: An Open ARM Development Board Running Mer

After dabbling with a KDE Plasma Active Tablet, Aaron Siego has announced today Make Play Live's first product as the Improv. The Improv is an open-source ARM development board that runs Mer OS and is compatible with Wayland...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTUyNjQ

[Mr_Alien_Overlord]

Why?

....?

[mrugiero]

....?

Why not?

[libv]

....?

True. On its own, this is pretty hopeless. You can buy an A20 olimex device which is also fully OSHW, and which would perform just the same. Mer or not to me can be totally ignored, especially seeing the advanced state of sunxi.org.

But. I think this is an intermediate step up to an actual tablet. The flying squirrel tablet will use the same module, just slotted into a tablet style housing. There is also work being done on building a router with the same module. And i am still hoping for a netbook type device which would take this module.

[jonnor]

Agreed that Olimex Allwinner devices are, at least at the moment, much nicer.

The EOMA68 form-factor is a bit interesting though. Having a clear COM/SBC split makes it easier to do a custom PCB for adapting to specific physical or feature requirements, as one can easily reuse the COM.

[sykobee]

....?

Because.

This EOMA68 form factor is interesting form factor (and the A20 SoC is given as an example of a SoC that provides all the necessary interfaces - http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modu...ecture/EOMA-68) - it's a repurposed PCMCIA!

I'm guessing that for development of operating systems, etc, you can have your test stuff all plugged into the EOMA68 chassis, and switch out different modules, each with a different SoC, to test the OS on each SoC in a fairly easy manner. without too much unplugging.

At least the price isn't too bad - more than a Raspberry Pi though (despite more RAM, flash, more interfaces and being dual-core) and it lacks the ecosystem.

[k1l_]

so all this badmouthing of the ubuntu-edge and the "i know how to make a tablet"-endless story to ship a newer raspberry pi?

i dont think this will be a big success because the spots for a cheap board for "everyone" (r pi) or for some with similar hardware (A20 olimex) are already taken. We will see where this will lead to.

[panda84]

so all this badmouthing of the ubuntu-edge and the "i know how to make a tablet"-endless story to ship a newer raspberry pi?

Well, this is not the tablet, of course, but already uses most of the technologies that will come together with it, which are:

• EOMA68 CPU card (I think this is the biggest innovation)
• Mer OS
• the currently most free ARM SOC - Allwinner A20 (visit linux-sunxi.org)
• Plasma Active - which is among the first tablet targetted Linux UI (together with Unity)
• Bodega Content distribution service - among the first proper free software "App / Content store" solution

i dont think this will be a big success because the spots for a cheap board for "everyone" (r pi) or for some with similar hardware (A20 olimex) are already taken. We will see where this will lead to.

I too doubt all of this will be successful, but some of those "pieces" might at least get some traction among Free Software developers.

I'm pretty interested in the EOMA68 standard, both the KDE Tablet and a router are already in the making with this standard:

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/kde_tablet/news/

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/router/news/

[panda84]

Worth fully reading:

http://makeplaylive.com/#/open-hardware/about

I think only Olimex comes close to this "openness". Rasperry PI is actually quite far from this with his Broadcom mess...