Iteaduino Plus – ARM Cortex-A8 Dev-Platform

ITEAD studio is based in Shenzhen, China, which is located with China's biggest electronics market as well as one of the most integrated electronic supply chains in the world. A vast number of exciting and innovative products are designed, sourced and manufactured around us every day.

In electronics the big picture is usually more compelling than the nuts and bolts of electronic design. To make innovation easier, we offer various modules and development platforms to accelerate the development process and to reduce barriers to entry and to soften those steep learning curves.

You can visit our site for more our products: imall.iteadstudio.com

We got some reply from the forum post , readers were confused between CORE and Baseboard, and don't know what they will get form the perks.

Iteaduino Plus - ARM Cortex-A8 Dev-Platform1.Every Perks includes a Iteaduino Plus (Basebaord + CORE board), and other accessories that refereed in the perks description.

2. The Micro-SD card in Preks is 8G CLASS10

3. The final product come with standoffs, and well protected in BOX

4. The Rich package and Advance Package will come with 5V 2A power adapter which not mention in the perk discription

5. It's a Flexible Funding, so no matter whether it reach the 20,000 goal, we will ship out the Perks to you – but if it can reach, there will be some little surprise in your package, like Micro-SD card reader or so.

Here I would like to introduce a new product – Iteaduino Plus. This development kit adopts ITEAD A10 CORE, you can use it as a cost-effective single-board computer, the performance of which is more powerful than Raspberry Pi which now popular around the world:

  • 1G ARM cortex-A8 processor, NEON, VFPv3, 256KB L2 cache
  • Mali400, OpenGL ES GPU
  • 1GB DDR3 @480MHz
  • HDMI 1080p Output
  • 10/100M Ethernet
  • 2 USB Host, 1 micro SD slot, 1 SATA, 1 USB OTG
  • 70 extend pin including I2C, SPI, RGB/LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, R-TP.
  • Running Android, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions

You may not find anything special by only seeing the configuration and parameters above, and you may consider it similar to other low-cost single-board computers, then let me tell you the special features of this board which are quite different from other products:

We innovatively integrate main control, memory and power supply circuit into design of a CORE board, and the entire system can run up only with a stable 5V power supply. There are simple pin breakouts on the baseboard, a variety of interfaces can be expanded into sockets. As a result,after you have completed your development with Iteaduino Plus, you can design a dedicated baseboard for the CORE according to your needs and then apply it to your project.

The CORE module integrates an ARM Cortex-A8 core processor, 1G DDR3 SRRAM with power circuit of the entire system- including lithium battery charging circuit. Pins of A10 chip are expanded to the both sides of the module, users can use the core board directly as a module or CPU. The design of baseboard isquite simple, you only need to break out the pins to the corresponding socket or connect them to the corresponding circuit without need for design of complex multiple high-speed circuit board.

 

As an evaluation board for ITEAD A10 CORE, the baseboard breaks out all common interfaces, such as HDMI, USB, Micro-SD, RJ45 Ethernet and audio input and output, etc. Connect the HDMI to monitor, USB to mouse and keyboard, connect to the router through the network cable, plug with Micro-SD card with ITEAD OS, then connect to the power supply, you can use it as a linux server.

 

In addition to those commonly-used standard interfaces mentioned above, more pins on the core are expanded to both sides of Iteaduino Plus baseboard for 2.54mm pitched pins. For pin diagram,

In addition to those commonly-used standard interfaces mentioned above, more pins on the core are expanded to both sides of Iteaduino Plus baseboard for 2.54mm pitched pins. For pin diagram,

If you only take Iteaduino Plus as a low-cost single-board computer to browse the webpage, write documents and set up servers, etc., you will be wasting our efforts made on expanding so many hardware pins.

We customized a set of Ubuntu distribution, named ITEAD OS, for Iteaduino Plus, in which we integrated driver needed for the underlying operations and provided simple operation functions for the upper layer.

We want to offer simple operations like Arduino, so that users can operate bus interfaces directly, such as GPIO, UART, IIC and SPI. In addition, we will continue to port more libraries to this distribution in the future, thus you can directly manipulate various shields and modules offered by ITEAD without writing about the underlying operations. For example, you can use function below to make a call directly

gsm.call (“13800138000”);

We have released a BETA version of ITEAD OS, the official version will be released after the completion of our funding together with the latest hardware.

Iteaduino Plus - ARM Cortex-A8 Dev-Platform SchematicITEAD OS is a minimum operating system modified based on Ubuntu customization including but not limited to customizations of the original system as follows:

  • Core: Linux linaro-alip 3.4.29
  • CPU performance optimization: running at the fixed 1.0GHz
  • Preloaded with wireless LAN driver with RTL8188EU chip
  • Preloaded with Chinese font
  • ITEAD OS SDK development kit offers support for simple GPIO operations
  • ITEAD OS SDK development kit offers support for GPIO8-bit and 16-bit bus operations
  • ITEAD OS SDK development kit offers support for simpleUART operations
  • ITEAD OS SDK development kit offers simple upper-layer time operation functions
  • Script expansion is automatically done according to the actual capacity of Micro-SD card
  • Clock synchronization with the Internet time server is automatically done

The following common tools software are preinstalled:

  • Vim: Text Editor
  • Git: Git version controls Shared Virtual Hosting services of the system projects
  • Samba: SMB / CIFS network protocol link software between UNIX and Windows
  • Build-essential: supports compiling environment such as gcc
  • Perl: programming language tool
  • SSH: Secure network connection program
  • Python: python language compiler tool

Currently, we have already customized a shield named Iteaduino PLUS Arduino PLUG for Iteaduino PLUS. It offers interfaces compatible with Arduino, thus all Arduino-compatible shields can be used on it. Besides, it also provides Grove interfaces which can be connected to a variety of electronic brick modules and a header compatible with 26-pin GPIO interface of Raspberry Pi, so a variety of shields customized for Raspberry Pi can also be used on it.

(The final product is BLACK ENIG and may not 100% the same as this green prototype board shows)

final product is BLACK ENIG

In the future, we will continue to release a variety of shields for different industry applications, such as the servo control board and video acquisition board, etc. Moreover, faster and more powerful core boards are also coming. Please be relieved that all of these boards will be compatible with one another to avoid repeated purchasing. Let’s just imagine that, in the future, you can directly upgrade the system from single core to dual core or even quad core only by replacing a core board, how cool it is!

  1. Datasheet of A10 Chip
  2. User Manual of A10 Chip (Register map)
  3. Datasheet of A10 CORE (beta, need to change image and some pinmap)
  4. Datasheet of Iteaduino Plus (beta, need to change image and some pinmap)
  5. ITEAD OS BETA SDK functions manula
  6. Iteaduino Plus User Manual (beta, need to change image and some depicts)
  7. ITEAD A10 CORE Schematic
  8. ITEAD Plus Schematic
  9. DEMO – How to use GPIO
  10. DEMO – USE UART to make a call by SIM900 module
  11. LCD Driver Manual
  12. Iteaduino Plus pinmap
  13. A10 CORE Pinmap (BETA)
  • Lightweight Linux Desktop – by connecting USB mouse and keyboard and HDMI monitor to Iteaduino PLUS, you can use it as a light weight linux desktop. Iteaduino PLUS supports most of the ARM linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch ARM Linux, Puppy etc.
  • Android TV – by connecting wifi dongle and the wireless air mouse to Iteaduino and HDMI output to TV, you can enjoy Android with Youtube, Netflix and many more apps on Iteaduino Plus.
  • NAS – Iteaduino Plus can drive 2.5 inch hard disk, thus you can use it as a home network file server.
  • Home Automation – There are 144 pin expansion headers on Iteaduino PLUS, most of them can be used as GPIO. With network access, you can control a lot of things, so, just explore your imaginations.

1. Arduino Plus

1. Arduino Plus

It can be used to breakout the pins of Iteaduino Plus as Arduino footprint, so you can connect Arduino shields to the Iteaduino Plus with this adapter. And this plug offer an OLED display, when you use the ITEAD OS, it will show you the IP address, CUP and RAM Occupancy of the Iteaduino Plus.

The latest version provide the XBee interface, so this plug will support XBee zigbee module, BTBee bluetooth module, WifiBee wifi module, GPSBee gps module as well.

2. Motor Plug

It can be used to driver 3 stepper motors at the same time – so you can use Iteaduino Plus + Motor Plug + 3 stepper motors to build a small CNC.

3. IoT Plug

It can be most of Internet of things applications. Like IR repeat, 433MHz/315MHz RF repeat, zigbee repeat and so on.

1. Acrylic case

Protect you not to touch the solder joint on board. One bottom and one top, with 8 standoffs and 4 nuts, so compatible with one more plug.

It will come with the Rich or Advanced package , even though we didn't mention it in perk.

(The final product will not 100% the same this beta prototype)

1. Acrylic case

 

2. 5.5V 2A USD Power adapter

3. FAST Wireless LAN Card

4. Foca

5. HDMI Cable + HDMI to DIV adapter

6. Mini keypad

 

Source: Iteaduino Plus – ARM Cortex-A8 Dev-Platform

 

 


About The Author

Ibrar Ayyub

I am an experienced technical writer holding a Master's degree in computer science from BZU Multan, Pakistan University. With a background spanning various industries, particularly in home automation and engineering, I have honed my skills in crafting clear and concise content. Proficient in leveraging infographics and diagrams, I strive to simplify complex concepts for readers. My strength lies in thorough research and presenting information in a structured and logical format.

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