An American's 1st impression of UDOO

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by sirrab, Jul 26, 2014.

  1. sirrab

    sirrab UDOOer

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    After playing with a quad version UDOO with the "official" V1.0 of UDOObuntu OS for a few days..... not impressed..... The UDOO is advertised as a 4x Raspberry Pi plus..... Why is the class 4 micro SD OS boot device part of the starter kit? Why not class 10? Why not be able to boot from the SATA port? Or provide a "live" version to boot from a CD/DVD from USB, then be able to select where you want to install the OS? Seems very dumb to advertise the speed advantage, and provide heavy duty brakes with sub class micro SD card with the "starter" package. If one were to put an SSD on the SATA port, and be able to boot from it, one would have a big jump start on performance for a reasonable cost.... Why can't everything onboard work with the "official" Linux OS recommended? Or at least better documentation for "go getters" to jump ahead to get stuff working? For nearly $200.00, I expected at lot more. I still think it has potential, maybe.... Why is there no log in and password entry, like every other linux system? Played around to try and play .mkv videos from a local media server, set up and working with anything else I've want to use.... except the UDOO... Is the state of ARM Linux flavors the bottle neck? Or is UDOO "proper" relying on the community to propel them into a viable contender? Lots of questions.... not alot of answers..... yet.... Just my $.02 worth of opinions from a few days of playing around...... Looking and waiting for more and better possibilities.....
     
  2. jaeg

    jaeg Member

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    It can be booted from SATA. For example: http://elinux.org/UDOO_boot_from_sata
    A class 4 is probably provided because it's cheaper than a class 10 of the same size and even with a class 4 it's still faster than a Raspberry Pi.
    Also you can change if it logins at the beginning or not. It's a standard Linux feature so if you Google around you should be able to find out how to change it.
     
  3. sirrab

    sirrab UDOOer

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    You can NOT boot from the SATA port, unless you start booting from the micro SD card first. Yes, a small speed penalty until the system is tranfered to the SATA drive. I reiterate, why put the brakes on a already faster SBC? Perhaps I am expecting too much....
     
  4. jaeg

    jaeg Member

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    It's an incredibly small speed penalty to use the SD card to transfer to the SATA.
     
  5. mikelangeloz

    mikelangeloz Member

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    Thank you for your feedbacks, they are precious to get what your experience was like and make UDOO better. I honestly agree with most of your points, and I think you should know why some choices have been made. Also, some things that could seem obvious to users, are quite complicated in reality, and deploying them in a distribution or a system which should fit the needs of the widest audience possible requires some compromises. So, here

    Why is the class 4 micro SD OS boot device part of the starter kit? Why not class 10?
    We realized that. A big bottleneck, and that really affects UDOO performances. We are planning to change that.

    Why not be able to boot from the SATA port?
    It is definetely possible. You need the SD card just to load the U-BOOT (few bytes of data, so really no difference of having it on SD or hard drive). The U-boot "tells" the board where the boot partition is. So that's why its needed.

    Or provide a "live" version to boot from a CD/DVD from USB, then be able to select where you want to install the OS?
    More an issue than a solution to create a Live CD. We are working on a wizard installation on hard drive, with UDOO configuration tool.

    Why can't everything onboard work with the "official" Linux OS recommended? Or at least better documentation for "go getters" to jump ahead to get stuff working?
    Agree. Developing a system that works with everything, out of the box, is extremely complicated. We are doing this with UDOOBuntu, and feedbacks are crucial to fix what's not working. There are so much peripherals, configuration, systems etc. We just cannot test 'em all.
    For the wiki, we are building it as detailed as possible: http://elinux.org/UDOO
    You can see it updated on daily basis.

    Why is there no log in and password entry, like every other linux system?
    We preferred user friendlyness over security for this. Loggin with user and password is not an obvious task for everybody (also you need to know them from the beginning).

    As I told you. I share some of your insights. And little by little we're addressing problems and doing our best to deliver a software system which can express all of UDOO hardware potentials. Takes an epic amount of time and dedication. The best help we can have is to have feebacks and insigths.

    Hope I cleared some behind the scenes stuff...
     
  6. sirrab

    sirrab UDOOer

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    Thank you for the insight of the "behind the scene" issues and efforts. When I said "everything onboard", I meant the hardware already present on the UDOO. I wasn't able to make Wi-FI work, nor bluetooth.... The network manager S/W is the culprit, I believe. Blue tooth isn't a biggy for me yet... I can connect via Ethernet, so all is not lost. I'm still a newbie with Linux...That said, I have 3 computers running versions of Linux... iMac, my main desktop(Ubuntu) and a media sever using OpenMediaVault. Thank you again for your and everyone else's effort, they are appreciated.
     
  7. xwalter

    xwalter Member

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    I think one of more problems is how to communicate uddo side with arduino
    I'm following a project , jarduino and I'm doing a porting for ubuntu desktop
    In windws 7 everything work well but in ubuntu there is the usual issue with the RXTX2.2pre2 and RXTX2.2pre1 and else
    Many project are developed woth different rxtx version and when I try to do something I have the usual error "Mismatch ,,,,,"
    I know the problems are not directly imputable to udoo , but I think that udoo will hardly fly tall.What the perople want is to manage communication between udoo side and arduino due to have and embedded system in a few space ,Working with c# and visual studio with arduino is not a problem , but under ubuntu-linux is it .
    SATA also is difficult to understand which device to buy , connection ect
    But I' very tired to say the same things , nobody respond and it's also difficult to find good answer onto the web stack overflow and other sites make only confusion . This is because I say that UDOO team has to do something serious ,
    In java o python the have to develop a platform where we can develop over it , but nothing
    They say udoo=4 raspberry + arduin odue but is not true because raspberry is more preparated inside the kernel , there are a lots of bokks and tutorial ....instead to use UDOO you can uso arduino due and a small windows mobile 8 OS pc .
    If you want to create a project with arduino due , a panel pc is less expensive than udoo+lcd panel and more easy to program .
    But they don't want to understand and then there few people that develop udoo and share projects because there are a lot of problems .
    This is really a sin ....
     
  8. xwalter

    xwalter Member

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    mah...
     
  9. Andrea Rovai

    Andrea Rovai Well-Known Member

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    Hi xwalter! In my opinion the situation is quite good actually, well for sure the UDOO team has to work on it but I'm not so desperate as you are :) You tell that Arduino 2 + panel PC is less expensive than UDOO. Well, I disagree, at least for the prices I can check on the most common marketplaces :) Moreover, there are several projects, like Carmadillo, or the interactive museum they realized probably 2 months ago, you simply can't do with Arduino 2 + PC because it's unfeasibile for obvious reasons. And I have also lot of hope about the kernel improvement! This could be something really important 4 future projects.
    By the way, community is growing - I mean, hackster.io is doing a great job in pushing UDOO - these weeks there was the idea-competition, and apart from the fact I dislike idea-competitions, it's a good start, isn't it?
     
  10. xwalter

    xwalter Member

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    now I have discovered ho wto use the RxTxlib in java on udoo
    I'm writing a compiler-interpreter in java to interact to arduino due by udoo, using a java GUI with buttons and more .
    I'm also doing a porting of a java framework over the serial port and bluetooth using android
    The price of a panel I konw is expensive than udoo with touch panel , but if you want to build an application which works in the tim eyou also have to appraise the SATA hard drive instead the microSD , i don't know how many accesses can supports this card ......
    The problem for me is that udoo is saleable as 4 raspberry +arduino due ...maybe is right but the documentation is very few .I know that important is to know linux but the udoo support are making a lot of low level sample projects.It is better if they make one project but complete and usefull
    ;)
    Try to calculate the developing time when you don't have documentation or when you stay 3 monts to find the correct rxtxlib and then tell me how much does it costs one project .....my friend , arduino , raspberry ,STM32 , TI ....the y produce good boards with a lot of samples and documentation , this is the commercial difference , important is not to make but to sell good
    ti saluto
     
  11. Andrea Rovai

    Andrea Rovai Well-Known Member

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    Hi xwalter,
    first of all I ask you to write in a correct english please. It is not requested to be smart as Hemingway, but at least read again what you write and pay attention: I'm sure that reading your posts twice would level up the quality of your posts a lot. Not to be unpleasant: I ask this just for the community and for the readers :)
    Can you explain us this sentence for example?
    "The price of a panel I konw is expensive than udoo with touch panel , but if you want to build an application which works in the tim eyou also have to appraise the SATA hard drive instead the microSD , i don't know how many accesses can supports this card ......"
    You say our projects aren't complete. Well, I can absure you that if you follow the instructions straightforwardly you make the project real. Have you got specific issues about a specific project? Good, issues are an opportunity to discuss and explore further the subject. If you have a specific issues we are more than happy to try to help you as far as we can. But I think it's not productive to say everything is bad. Actually, I think that it would be unproductive also if you say that everything is good!

    About the documentation, really, could you explain your problem better? I mean, you say that there is no documentation. Have you checked the Downloads section? Please, be specific and tell us
     
  12. yankneck696

    yankneck696 New Member

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    Andrea, people from around the worls will e on these forums. Also, you may want to read your own post twice before submitting. People have reasonable gripes. I want to use this board & was all excited about it, until I started reading the threads in the forum. With all of the issues & "Extended ETAs" I am now reconsidering it. Even if I need to spend more to make my build easier, I might have to do that.

    Ed
     
  13. yankneck696

    yankneck696 New Member

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    Also, in just the first paragraph of the manual, there are grammar issues......

    Ed
     
  14. ekirei

    ekirei Administrator

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    Hi xwalter, probably this guide is what you need to use the Java RxTxlib:
    http://www.udoo.org/ProjectsAndTutorials/udoo-serial-libraries-examples/

    ekirei
     

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