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Comment by zhobbs | Hacker News Reader

Are any of these ARM solutions open source for the full stack?

Arduino is nice because I can use it to prototype something, and then if I want to mass produce it I can take the open schematics, rip out what I don't need and produce custom boards. Is that possible with any of these ARM solutions?

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Take a look at the Olinuxino: https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO https://www.olimex.com/dev/imx233-olinuxino-maxi.html

They've got one version running an admittedly slow i.MX processor, and another coming down the pike running an Allwinner chip. As a bonus, though, it's all reasonably easy-to-assemble TQFP chips.

> As a bonus, though, it's all reasonably easy-to-assemble TQFP chips.

The A10/A13 require memory which is only available as BGA, though.

Fair point. You can find BGA memories with ball spacing just slightly north of impossible, though. As far as I'm aware, that isn't possible with most (any?) A10/A13 chips.

You might be surprised to learn that the A13 is available as QFP:

http://olimex.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/cortex-a8-in-tqfp-sur...

BeagleBoard/BeagleBone have full schematics available (http://beagleboard.org/hardware/design)

There are no ARM with complete open source because they all have the GPU integrated. The Mali is probably the closest to open due to the LIMA project with the Freedreno project backing Qualcomm's Adreno (and maybe work with the Freescale mx5x) getting access to the sources isn't particularly hard (but does require an NDA) but you still won't get the most important part, which is the source to the shader compiler library in there

I'm really keen to try out the Carambola, a $22-EUR device with built-in wifi. It's really barebones in terms of peripherals, but that's perfect for many internet-of-things apps.

http://shop.8devices.com/carambola

Anyone have some experience with these?

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