The Odroid-C1 gathered quite a lot of attention since it came out… And now it got also ours!
For those of you who have been on planet earth lately, sure you’ll begin to notice the increasing number of Single Board Computers available. After the original Raspberry PI in 2012 ( or Beagleboard even before…) a great plethora of boards tried to rival the english PI, and gather their slice of the cake. Some did pretty good, some other failed.
Sure enough, one that got quite lot of attention is the Odroid C1, thanks to its Raspberry-like 35$ price tag, and more than compelling hardware specs . Let’s have a closer look at it:
If we should make a comparison based on mere specs, here’s what makes the Odroid C1 interesting:
- Amlogic ARM® Cortex®-A5(ARMv7) 1.5Ghz quad core CPUs
- Mali™-450 MP2 GPU
- 1Gbyte DDR3 SDRAM
- Gigabit Ethernet
- eMMC4.5 HS200 Flash Storage slot
- UHS-1 SDR50 MicroSD Card slot
- USB 2.0 Host x 4, USB OTG x 1
- Infrared(IR) Receiver
We have a 1.5 Ghz quad Core CPU, which on paper is faster than many competitors (not only the PI). I’m not able to say how those figures are actually a sensible improvement, as I just started looking at the Amlogic SOC ( which seems quite ubiquitous in embedded multimedia appliances).
But what makes it really interesting for Volumio based scenarios are the Gigabit Ethernet, the eMMC memory slot (sold separately) and the integrated IR receiver. Add that Hardkernel seems to have the widest range of accessories for their boards, and you get that we can consider the C1 one of the best candidates to power a Volumio system.
Talking about real-world performances: the Odroid C1 delivers one of the smoothest Volumio experiences. It boots faster, and loads faster than the high-specs comparable quad-core boards (UDOO, Cubox-i).
As a bit of side note: Odroid claims on their website, that the board is going trough a redesign, and a new (and more expensive) board revision will be available from mid august, of course my thoughts are based on the current model.
For those of you with an Odroid C1, grab the image from the DOWNLOADS page as usual, and drop your feedbacks on this thread !
A huge thanks to Gkkpch who made it possible and contributed actively to the release!