Looking for a little more power than the Raspberry Pi offers, John Lane wonders if the CubieBoard A20 can deliver...
The Raspberry Pi is great, as you'll know if you've not ben stuck under a rock for the past three years. But there's so much more out there. You can now choose from loads of alternative small-board computers, including many that are packed with additional features for not much more money than the Pi. One such board, the CubieBoard, was launched in 2012 with native Ethernet, a built-in 4GB NAND flash drive and an on-board SATA connector. An upgrade in 2013 giving it a dual-core CPU and 1GB of memory was released as the CubieBoard 2, sometimes referred to as the CubieBoard A20 after the AllWinner A20 chip at its core. Although roughly twice the price of a Pi, it's still affordable, and it can run Linux and Android.
For your £45 you get the power, SATA and USB cables that you need to get started. You just need to add a power supply (a USB phone charger will do), keyboard, mouse and a HDMI display.
The underside of the board sports two 48-pin connectors among a heap of connection options. One such is VGA video - you can directly wire up a VGA port and use any old VGA monitor, opening up a the possibility of using it with hardware that may otherwise be thrown away, which could potentially be a huge factor when assessing total cost of ownership. Other nice touches include a reset button, audio line-in and an infrared port that will come in handy if you want to use a remote control with it.
There is a micro-SD card slot, which is one of several places the board will boot from - you can also boot from the NAND flash ROM or via the network but you can't boot from the on-board SATA interface. There is also a variant of the board that has a second micro-SD card slot instead of the NAND flash ROM.
An additional mini-USB On The Go port is provided to connect the CubieBoard to a desktop PC to perform flash updates using AllWinner's LiveSuit software. This mode of operation is called FEL mode and operates similarly to the recovery mode available on some smartphones.
The on-board NAND flash ROM comes pre-loaded with Android, so you can plug in and use the device straight away. But you’ll most likely want to install a Linux distro to use it for your own projects, and this is where the fun begins...
Something to bear in mind is that, unlike the Raspberry Pi, the primary way of communicating with the CubieBoard is over its serial port. You can activate its HDMI port during boot, but a serial port is handy if you want to see early boot messages, something we found essential for troubleshooting. We used a USB serial adapter and the GNU screen tool for this. To install another operating system you’ll need an SD card; the easiest way to get started is to download a prepared image for your chosen Linux distro. For those coming from a Pi background, the obvious choice is a distro called Cubian, a Debian spin inspired by Raspbian. For a more hardcore experience, "ArchLinux ARM” supports it too.
Cubian comes in three flavours, a desktop version with the Mate desktop or a text mode called Nano, either with or without the HDMI display support; the latter leaves more memory free for you to use. It’s a 2GB image that will require a micro SD card of at least that size. The download is a 7-Zip archive so you'll need to install the appropriate tool to unpack it (try apt-get install p7zip-full or pacman -S p7zip).
Install your chosen image onto a spare micro SD card. Do this from another machine with dd (take the usual precautions to ensure you write to the correct device). Insert the card into the CubieBoard, attach a keyboard and monitor and start it up.
You're given the chance to change some options when you start Cubian for the first time, and this is a good time to localise your install and set a password. You can then log in and you'll find the usual gamut of applications. The included SMPlayer gave good results streaming full-screen standard video across the network, but the device struggled with high definition material, even after installing the more capable VLC.
Cubian includes a tool to transfer your installation from an SD card onto the internal NAND ROM. All you need to do is install and run the cubian-nandinstall package, shut down, remove the SD card and then restart. However, this failed for us, and attempts to gain answers via the forums were unfruitful.
Those comfortable with a more bare-bones approach may prefer Arch Linux ARM. If you follow the CubieBoard 2 install instructions to the letter, you'll be able to boot the board without any problems and log in to Arch Linux over SSH. The default Arch install leaves you on your own, however - you'll have to manually configure the HDMI output unless you're happy with the serial port and/or SSH. However, the active forum is a haven when in need of support.
The inclusion of a powered SATA port sets it apart from most of the other small-board computers available, while having twice as many cores and memory affords more acceptable performance.
The CubieBoard and Linux-sunxi forums are good but there is nothing like the ecosystem that has grown up around the Pi. However, this has the greater impact on beginners, and we feel that the CubieBoard isn't aimed at more advanced users. Experts can use Arch Linux ARM and its forum, where there is a dedicated AllWinner sub-forum.
Verdict
A well-capable board with varied connectivity options and good support for Linux and Android.
Specifications
CPU Mali400mp2, OpenGL ES GPU
RAM 1GB DDR3 @480MHz
Video out HDMI 1080p
Networking 10/100 Ethernet
Storage 4GB NAND flash
Connectors 2x USB Host, 1x micro SD slot, 1x SATA, 1x infrared, 2x 48-pin headers exposing I2C, SPI, RGB/ LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, R-TP