"The update and iteration speed of mobile phone hardware is unmatched by other hardware products. The performance of the flagship machine in the first two years is not worth the current 1000 yuan machine. This kind of thing can be found everywhere. Especially after the mobile phone application processor enters the 64 bit era, the remaining 32-bit processors are basically used for other purposes. The most representative is the cortex-a7 series of arm. As we all know, arm cortex-a7 is actually a very satisfactory generation product of arm. While maintaining good performance, it has high energy efficiency ratio and strong scalability. It is suitable for multimedia and display applications. At present, it is mainly active in automotive, consumer electronics, industry, medical / health care and other fields.
Recently, aiban.com got another MTK mt6572 platform development board based on arm cortex-a7 processor - Hurricane 001 Android mobile phone development board launched by raindrop technology. Although it is literally called Android mobile phone development board, the author believes that it mainly refers to the rich functions of the development board, which can be compared with the current smart phones, but in terms of performance, According to the current actual situation, it is obviously not applicable to the mainstream Smartphone development, but as an application in embedded fields such as industrial control and human-computer interface that does not require too high performance and does not pursue hardware performance. In short, it is not surprising that the hardware scheme eliminated by mobile phone scheme is used for other purposes, which is also very common in the whole industry. As for the hardware scheme, let's first understand hurricane 001.
The hurricane 001 development board obtained by aiban.com includes an external 3400mah battery, a MINIUSB cable and a 5V / 2A charging adapter. It is not clear whether these are standard or not. The board can be purchased in Taobao store.
Hardware overview
After careful observation, it can be found that the hurricane 001 development board is actually composed of the function expansion board of the backplane and the core module board ap7200. The only value of the backplane is to expand the function of the module. For users, it is convenient to verify the function, performance and other parameters of the core board. Therefore, the layout of the backplane is not mentioned. The main resources are also some peripheral interfaces commonly used on mobile phones, such as speakers, microphones, 3.5-inch screens with capacitive touch screens, cameras, motors, SIM / microSD card holders, keys, RF antennas, etc. in addition, it is worth mentioning that the hurricane 001 development board can also be equipped with high-frequency RFID (the interface under the backplane speakers), one-dimensional bar codes, Functions such as two-dimensional bar code are convenient for customers who need it to design their own mobile terminals.
Specifications and parameters of Hurricane 001 development board:
CPU: mt6572, dual core 1.3GHz
Memory: 512MB lpddr2
Flash storage: 4GB EMMC flash
Operating system: Android 4.2
Stereo audio: high performance stereo speaker output, stereo headset output
Display screen: support capacitive multi touch, 320 × 480, 65K color, 3.5-inch display
Keys: the development board provides 8 function keys and a key interface. The interface supports 24 matrix keys
User interface: 1 USB interface, 2 UART serial ports
Slot: SIM card, SD (TF) card
1 headphone port
1 DC charging interface
1 3.7V battery interface
Two 2 * 10 row needles with a spacing of 2.54mm (see the schematic diagram for specific functions)
RFID function (extended function module): high frequency 13.56M, support iso14443a / ISO14443B / iso15693, operate M1 card, destroy card, CPU card, read ID card ID number PSAM card (extended function, need to make a small adapter board to lead out PSAM card):
Support psam9600 and psam38400 barcode functions (extended functions): one dimensional barcode, symbol se955; 2D barcode, symbol se4500
Camera: 5 megapixels
Three dimensional acceleration sensor
Wireless communication: WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS positioning, WCDMA 3G network system
Convenient hand-held power supply: built-in power management module, plus battery can work; 5mA ultra low standby current; DC 1000mA charging current, USB 450mA charging current
Charging circuit: the built-in charging circuit can charge the battery by inserting USB or 5V adapter
Software driver: pre installed software and device driver to meet the requirements of customer application development
Although the functions of Hurricane 001 development board are very comprehensive, it is basically only used for function testing and debugging in the early stage of development, and what really needs to be used and purchased in large quantities is the core module ap7200 of the development board.
Open source development board recommendations:
Olimexino-85s and development module A 16.9x12.7mm world's smallest Arduino compatible circuit board. It is based on attiny85 Su and is equipped with a preloaded micro tiny85 boot loader.
Intel x86 Intel Edison Suite A low-cost, ready to use product, the first product in the general computing platform, suitable for consumer electronics applications such as the Internet of things.
P1602-dk02 development board An open source, energy-efficient, high-performance computer only the size of a credit card based on the Epiphany multi-core chip developed by adapteva.
The size of ap7200 module is 55mm * 44mm and leads to 145 pins. In the process of use, users can treat it as a huge MCU. The strong integration also enables the module to have rich peripheral interfaces, such as display and touch screen, speaker, microphone, camera, keyboard, GPIO, UART serial port, USB, SIM card, TF card, WiFi and Bluetooth antenna, 3G and GSM antenna, GPS antenna, power interface, etc. With these interfaces, users can DIY desired products according to their own needs, such as display terminals below 2.4 ~ 10 inches, and data transmission between devices can be carried out through wireless communication; Enable and control the function module through GPIO; Capacitive touch and keyboard provide input; The module has its own power management function, and the input power supply is 3.7V.
After reading these, are you very curious about what hardware the core module is composed of and why it is so powerful?
Remove the shield to make the internal resources clear at a glance. There are even several chips that the author is very familiar with, such as mt6223, which was a GSM baseband chip a few years ago. I remember that it should still be in the era of functional machines running everywhere. I didn't expect that it has been shipping now. In addition, mt6572a and mt6166 are also MTK integrated chip solutions in the glorious era of WCDMA. The GPS / BT / WiFi wireless solution on the development board is realized through the MTK mt6627 four in one wireless solution. Generally speaking, the radio frequency hardware circuit of this module still accounts for the vast majority. From this point of view, if this module is used in products, it must use GSM / WCDMA and other wireless networks. Otherwise, it has no significance to purchase this module.
Although the powerful functions described above make us feel very incredible, if you think about it carefully, the position of this module is actually quite embarrassing. The main contradiction is that the current 4G penetration rate is too fast. The role of 3G in the once brilliant WCDMA system is very embarrassing. For example, some terminals need GPS positioning, If you want to use the base station for positioning, GSM / GPRS in 2G is enough, and in terms of coverage management, GSM must have an advantage. If you want to transmit larger data streams, compared with 4G network, it is more reasonable. Therefore, if you want to use mobile network services in current applications, either 4G or 2G directly.
In addition to the wireless network, relying on the strong integration of MediaTek's overall solution (itself is the SOC chip developed for mobile phones), the functions of ap7200 are indeed very rich. If it is not used as the main board of mobile phones, it almost has the problem of excess functions as any other application. Therefore, based on the above points, for this product, the author's point of view, although ap7200 can significantly accelerate the product development cycle, I can't think of a good field in terms of the actual application field. It seems that there is always a contradiction between excess functions or incomplete functions (not equipped with the current popular 4G). Of course, this is also a problem that some powerful modules on the market more or less exist. What we need is that users can find and locate its products or directly use it for early development and testing, and treat it as a development board.
In addition, if you look carefully, you can also find that flying wires have been moved on the ap7200 module, which may be due to the engineering board obtained.
Power on measurement
OK, after basically understanding the data of Hurricane 001 Android mobile phone development board, let's plug in the battery and start up to see the operation effect of the built-in Android system. The system should be an ecological system of Andrews, and there is no software. Although the configuration of the development board is not very good, the operation is still very, very smooth.
However, after downloading multiple software, the system will prompt that the built-in flash storage is insufficient. Indeed, in addition to the space occupied by the Android system, there is not much left for users. It can also be seen from this point that the module is to deeply customize products for users, rather than constantly installing apps to realize different applications.
Open source development board recommendations:
Olimexino-85s and development module is a 16.9x12.7mm smallest Arduino compatible circuit board in the world. It is based on attiny85 Su and is equipped with a preloaded micro tiny85 boot loader.
Intel x86 Intel Edison Suite A low-cost, ready to use product, the first product in the general computing platform, suitable for consumer electronics applications such as the Internet of things.
P1602-dk02 development board An open source, energy-efficient, high-performance computer only the size of a credit card based on the Epiphany multi-core chip developed by adapteva.
However, we still need to try various functions of the development board, such as music playback function.
Watch online videos.
Ann rabbit's running score. When running this software, you can obviously feel stuck and can't do what you want.
In addition, the author happens to have a Unicom 3G card. Although it is not the size of a standard SIM card, it is still possible to align the pin position.
We can see the displayed 3G symbols on the screen, but the system UI is not optimized. 3G symbols overlap with WiFi symbols.
It's also very good to make a phone call under the test. The call is very clear, but the sound is a little low, and there is no button to adjust the volume.
However, due to the conditions of the test instrument at hand, there is no comprehensive tester, so it is impossible to actually test the RF conduction performance. It is a pity.
At the next step, you should have made it clear what you need to do with this development board. If you only want to develop app, I'm sorry. Some of the above have explained that this board is not suitable for developing app, and it's completely unnecessary. Now it's easier to buy an Android phone, which is powerful and cheap. For example, the latest Meilan note3. Therefore, if you choose hurricane 001 development board or ap7200 core board, you can either directly select it as MCU selection and directly apply it to your project, or learn and develop the underlying driver of Android technology. If these two points are clear, you can build a Linux system development environment for learning and development, For example, you can use the very popular Ubuntu environment. Raindrop technology also provides users with a complete set of software development materials, including development environment construction and demo routine source code, which can be understood in the raindrop Technology Forum, and will not be explained one by one in this article.
Summary
This paper introduces the hurricane 001 Android mobile phone development board launched by raindrop technology. The ap7200 core module on the board has rich functions, especially in terms of wireless functions, including 2G / 3G (WCDMA), WiFi / BT / GPS, etc. if users have appropriate project applications, they can use them directly, which greatly shortens the R & D cycle. Of course, in the article, the author has repeatedly stressed that if you do not make mobile phones, tablets and other devices, there is a problem of excess functions in the module. Compared with many users, they prefer to buy hurricane 001 development board for learning and developing Android underlying drivers and ROM customization, or take one example against the other, and develop higher specification hardware configuration through learning According to the actual needs of Android based handheld devices, industrial tablet devices, security devices, etc., in general, this is an artifact of Android underlying driver development.
Open source development board recommendations:
Olimexino-85s and development module is a 16.9x12.7mm smallest Arduino compatible circuit board in the world. It is based on attiny85 Su and is equipped with a preloaded micro tiny85 boot loader.
Intel x86 Intel Edison Suite A low-cost, ready to use product, the first product in the general computing platform, suitable for consumer electronics applications such as the Internet of things.
P1602-dk02 development board An open source, energy-efficient, high-performance computer only the size of a credit card based on the Epiphany multi-core chip developed by adapteva.
Original statement: This article is original by Aiban. Reprint is declined“
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