Gadgetory

hello there my name is Gary Sims rounder Authority one of the most important uses of a single board computer is as a rapid prototyping and development platform recently I reviewed the humming board SBC from solid run and as they say the proof is in the pudding that's why solid runners use their own technology to build a truly miniature PC and here it is the Q box at just 2 inches by 2 inches by 2 inches the Q box is a marvel of engineering on one side of the cube is a set of ports including the power socket HDMI Ethernet in two USB ports the rest of the cube is fairly bland to fully understand the innards of the Q box you should check out the full review of the humming board but in short the Q box uses free scales imx6 processor the imx6 range is based on arms cortex a9 design and scales from single to quad-core the Q box comes in two variants a dual-core version the Q box I 2x and a quad-core version the Q box I for pro oven the two extra cores the i-4 Pro comes with 2 gigs of RAM rather than one gig and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are included by default rather than being an option my test unit is the dual-core version one of the primary uses of the Q box is as a media player since the cube supports Android and Linux there are several ways of achieving this for example you could use Android with an app like Netflix or you could use Linux with a media player like Kodi solid run provides a couple of Linux distributions that boot straight into Kodi one is geek box and the other is openelec or open embedded limits entertainment center open Lake is a small Linux distribution that turns the Q box into a Kodi Media Center in fact you can order a micro SD card preloaded with openelec when you buy the Q box this makes using Kodi a breeze just boot up the Q box and you're straight into the media player I did a brief test by inserting a USB stick with some mp4 files the USB stick was recognized by the Q box without any problems I was able to navigate to the files from within Kodi and played the videos the playback was smooth and the sound goes through the HDMI cable to the TV one of the great features of is that our Android apps which act as a remote control I downloaded Yost the XBMC / Kodi remote and tried it out with the version of openelec running on the cubox the app found the cubox straight away and I was able to control Kodi quite easily if you want to try another operating system then solid run has a special firmware called ignition which allows you to easily download new firmware version is download the ignition from saurons website I'm writing onto a memory card using win32diskimager then you boot the cue box with the ignition firmware and use its UI to pick which operating system you want to use ignition will then automatically download the OS from write it onto the microSD card once copied you just reboot the cue box and the new OS will start if you want a Linux distro that isn't on the official list in ignition there are plenty of community provided distros can be written directly onto a microSD card you can find full instructions on solid runs website the cubox is compatible with Android and currently runs Android 4.4 KitKat it is one of the official firmware that you can download via ignition the Android experience is pretty good and for the most part you'll get the same experience you would from a smartphone or tablet sans the touchscreen lack of the humming board the cubox I version of Android includes Google Apps so you get access to the Play Store as well as other Google services like Gmail G+ YouTube and so on the performance of the cubox is basically the same as the hummingbird I 2x the benchmark scores from the humming board I - II actual review apply here ie the Q box called around twelve thousand nine two two and four Epic Citadel you'll get frame rates for around 24 to 28 fps for media playback the Q box supports accelerated decoding for a large number of video standards including mpeg-4 xvid h.264 h.263 and vp8 I tested the cubox using YouTube and Netflix both ran without any problems the only minor problem with Android on the Q box is it doesn't recognize flash drives when they are plugged into the USB port this isn't something that most Android users try with their smart phones so it isn't surprising that doesn't work the humming board I - e^x had exactly the same problem it is an Android specific issue has USB drives work fine and the Linux and openelec there are several different Linux distribution available for the cubox many of our ignition on the list you'll find popular names like Debbie an arch and open SUSE unfortunately many of the distros come without a desktop and you need to log in via the command line interface but doesn't mean you can't add a desktop but extra effort is required one exception is open SUSE during the ignition installation you can opt to install xfce after the initial installation you'll be taken through a text-based wizard which configures a few things about open SUSE once the configuration installation is complete you'll have a full xfce desktop and you'll have access to quite a wealth of applications programs like Firefox and GIMP are pre-installed and you always have the choice to add more as I said before there's quite a strong community behind the humming board and the cubox so there's no shortage of Linux distributions and for those who want to hack port code in tinker then the cubox offers just as many opportunities as any of the other popular SBC's or mini pcs the cortex a9 calls using the imx6 are more advanced than the cortex a7 cores using the Raspberry Pi 2 for example the cortex a9 supports out of order execution while the a7 doesn't on paper at least a quad core cortex a9 processor should be faster than a quad core cortex a7 processor the cubox is certainly interesting mini-pc it offers a lot of flexibility since its support for Android and Linux is excellent and excels running Kodi the design of the cube is neat and inspirational the box itself is unimposing but yet when noticed it will impress it's a clever way of turning a television into a smart TV or a media player you can buy the cubox right now from a solid runs website at just 120 dollars and there it is my name is Gary Sims from Andrew authority I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please don't forget to give it a thumbs up also don't forget to subscribe to and Roy thora T's YouTube channel a big shout out to my brothers at Android authority Jace Joe Josh lon KB the tech ninja ash and Tyler Martin and as for me I'll see you in my next video very small cubes