The Raspberry-Pi has been a media darling as of late, and deservedly so. It’s a full computing platform that can do many wonderful things, all for less than a few day’s worth of Starbucks lattes. But what if you simply need moah powah?
In that case, you need the ODROID-U2 from Hardkernel. How does a 1.7Ghz quad-core strike you? 2GB of RAM, perhaps? With 10/100 ethernet, 2 USB ports, and micro HDMI, ll for less than $90? I can feel your burning stare of disbelief. Go ahead, check out the link for yourself. I’ll wait.
Aha, so you’ve seen it with your own eyes. Now that stare has turned into a soft mad-scientist chuckle, eh? It’s ok, we had the same reaction ourselves. ODROID is short for “Open Android”, and apparently Hardkernel has developed an entire ODROID product line in the past. Previous models have advertised development applications from e-book readers to internet TV.
The U2 runs either Android 4 or Ubuntu Linux (and perhaps other Linux flavors as well, though we’re not sure). It features a Samsung Exynos 4412 Prime SoC, which includes an ARM Cortex-A9 as the central processor. Unlike the Pi, you’ll need some accessories to get it running out of the box, as you must power it with an external adapter and not via USB.
Since the Raspberry-Pi is reportedly a little sluggish for media-intense applications, it would be interesting to see how this little bugger performs as a media center or car-PC. Either way, low cost hardware like the ODROID is a huge win for the hacking community, and we can’t wait to see what comes down the pipeline next.
