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$70 7" Android: Almost Time to Buy? — Parallax Forums

$70 7" Android: Almost Time to Buy?

ercoerco Posts: 20,259
edited 2011-09-26 16:35 in General Discussion
http://cgi.ebay.com/Eken-M009S-7in-Android-Tablet/190574152357?_trksid=p1468660.m2000036

Here's a 7" touchscreen Android 2.2 OS for $70 shipped from a US seller. When they get down to $50, that's not much more than you'd pay for a digital picture frame. THEN I'll use it as a chassis for a mobile robot.

How long before they're "Buy It Now" for $50? Before Christmas, I'll bet.

Comments

  • BeanBean Posts: 8,129
    edited 2011-09-07 18:12
    That is not a bad deal at all.
    If it had Bluetooth I would buy one.

    Bean
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2011-09-07 18:48
    It's cheap, but I would guess it has a resistive single touch screen. So don't expect to play to many games on it.
  • UnknownUnknown
    edited 2011-09-07 18:55
    Bean wrote: »
    That is not a bad deal at all.
    If it had Bluetooth I would buy one.

    Bean

    Any idea how much memory the micro SD card slot can access? If it is capable of reading a 32 GB card then you might have something here.

    Is there any chance you can upgrade Android on this unit?

    How does it compare to full price models?

    Any idea on how long the Litium Ion battery would last?

    Where would you get the aps for it and what kind of aps come with it?

    Can I read/write Microsoft Word files with this?

    What do you use the 30 pin connector port for?

    Sorry for all the questions. Thank you.
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2011-09-07 19:10
    There's an Android Office suite which can read and write MS Office files. Any tablet can install the Amazon Android market app or Get Jar and from there many apps (mostly games) are available. There's also a web server which can come in hand on occasion. Android apps are usually written in Java, and the SDK's are freely available.

    Upgrading the OS version on an Android tablet can be done, but Android is not like Windows. The tablet vendor or a helpful third party needs to compile the sources for your tablet. This tends to only happen for more popular tablets like the Nook or Galaxy Tab.

    No idea how long the battery lasts. The 30 pin connector is probably for a keyboard doc, but don't count on that being available in the US.
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2011-09-08 00:13
    The microSD slot should be able to handle 32GB (or even 64GB if just someone would make such cards), I don't see any reason why it shouldn't. The physical specs for a slot that can read 2GB cards are the same as for those that can read higher capacity cards. And Android kernels are Linux, which can out of the box read 2TB SD cards (it's just that nobody will make an SD card that large).

    1600mAh is a surprisingly small battery though. For such a large device I would have expected something better (there should be room for it). The 1250mAh battery in my Android phone lasts some 3 days if I don't use it.. (no SIM card, no or very little wi-fi usage), and that's when running a (compared to the original) much improved 3party Android w.r.t. battery usage - the 2.1 it came with would last just over a day.

    My OpenPandora handheld has a 4000mAh battery.. and it's much smaller.

    -Tor
  • Peter KG6LSEPeter KG6LSE Posts: 1,383
    edited 2011-09-08 04:01
    Tor at the risk of being nit picky

    SD caps at 4 GB and If the card is more then 4 then its SDHC and this applys to the mini card and the full cards and micro cards .

    but Yes the OS one would hope support it . but be aware the HW has to also ...

    and 2 TB is SDXC ...............
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2011-09-08 04:42
    Peter KG6LSE wrote: »
    Tor at the risk of being nit picky

    SD caps at 4 GB and If the card is more then 4 then its SDHC and this applys to the mini card and the full cards and micro cards .
    Strictly speaking SD caps at 2GB, 4GB SD cards are not made anymore and they were non-standard anyway (they relied on handling certain values as unsigned). Today SD=SDHC for all practical purposes.
    but Yes the OS one would hope support it . but be aware the HW has to also ...

    and 2 TB is SDXC ...............
    The hardware doesn't have to support SDHC as such, there are no hardware differences between SD and SDHC. It's all in the driver. As for SDXC, that's just a technicality, a decision by the SD consortium to do some changes instead of just using the full potential of SDHC. SDHC works all the way up to 2TB (if only someone would make such cards). It's only about how many addressing bits the card uses, and it can use all the way up to cover 2TB. And if a card does, then the driver in the Android Linux kernel would handle it. SDXC came about for two reasons:
    1) FAT32 isn't a good filesystem for such large cards.
    2) With all the data on large cards it would be preferable with higher speed.

    For 1) there's exFAT, but you can also just format the card with a Linux filesystem, and that would work for Android.
    For 2) it's done in two steps: The initial SDXC specification isn't changed from SDHC, you can read such cards with the old hardware (the 3.0 specs). The next level (4.0 specs) has twice the number of data pins so that the bandwidth can increase, for these SDXC cards you would need different hardware.

    So the difference between SDHC and SDXC for the initial 3.0 specification is only about the default filesystem really.
  • Dr_AculaDr_Acula Posts: 5,484
    edited 2011-09-08 06:59
    That is not a bad deal at all.
    If it had Bluetooth I would buy one.

    Bean

    I agree with Bean. I have one of these and I have programmed it with Basic4Android and it is very clever the way you can program it wirelessly with wifi. But you can't control anything with these things - no real world I/O. The best I got was simulating a RS232 signal through the audio output, but even that is a fudge because it has to write the file to the SD card just to play it, so that wears out the SD card.

    Lots of drivers don't work either, including a USB keyboard, USB to serial device and Bluetooth dongle.

    It makes a good music player though.

    I think it is all going to come together over the next year or two, but it isn't quite there yet.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2011-09-08 07:11
    Dr_A,
    But you can't control anything with these things - no real world I/O

    Have you tried M.K.Bori's Android Debug Bridge. As far as I understand that gets you effectively a serial link between Prop and Android device with only a couple of resistors required.
  • Peter KG6LSEPeter KG6LSE Posts: 1,383
    edited 2011-09-08 11:23
    SDHC is not SDXC

    https://www.sdcard.org/developers/tech/sdhc/



    Peter...
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2011-09-08 12:34
    SDHC is not SDXC - as far as V4.0 is concerned. Physical differences. But a V3.0 SDXC is SDHC compatible in the sense that a normal SD slot can read it. The default filesystem will be exFAT but that's a software issue. That's not the point anyway - the original point I was trying to state was that (in answer to a question) that the microSD slot can read any SD(HC) card up to 2TB in size, if a card like that was ever produced - the 32GB limit is only by policy, not by technicality. It's only when you move from v3.0 to v4.0 SDXC that there's an electronic/physical difference between SDHC and SDXC, and that hasn't happened yet. So yes, that microSD slot in that 7" device should also be able to read SDXC 3.0 cards. Neither 2GB nor 32GB is a hard limit for an Android device, whether the card is called SD, SDHC or SDXC 3.0.

    This page spells it out a bit better than I'm able to - my English isn't good enough.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital#SDHC_and_SDXC_compatibility_issues
  • Peter KG6LSEPeter KG6LSE Posts: 1,383
    edited 2011-09-08 13:09
    for the OS no but stiill some of these readers are just hard wired USB and are off the shelf acorn chips and some of those are SD only. as in 2GB SD.

    the one In my toughbook is a USB reader on the host tree so it is fixed to what FIRMWARE is coded on the host controller .

    as far as I can atest .,. I have never got it to read my 32GB SDHC card .
    but the mac can . and as Your cited link says . Linux can do all of the specs out right now ..

    so yes there can be a hardware limit depending on how the card is attached to the computer

    and who makes the controller too .. BTW my 16 works great . so
    my worry was the CHEAP tablet may not have a full spec controller . ..

    SD the most jacked up standard there can be ..

    that and USB ..

    the unstandard standards .
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2011-09-08 13:22
    @Peter,

    Yes, a card reader, with its built-in firmware (i.e. its driver software) can be limited to just SD and unable to read SDHC. But an Android device will be designed with a reader slot of the type used with e.g. propeller boards, and it doesn't contain any firmware - it's just the electrical interface. It won't make sense to build a card reader like the stand-alone ones into the device, it'll be much more expensive. The Android devices can always rely on having a driver ready available, because they're all running Linux kernels. And they don't suffer from SD-only limitations - it'software.

    (don't get me started on USB though.. now _that's_ indeed a messed-up standard! :-))

    -Tor
  • FranklinFranklin Posts: 4,747
    edited 2011-09-08 18:53
    Price going wrong way!!!
  • Dr_AculaDr_Acula Posts: 5,484
    edited 2011-09-08 19:25
    @heater
    Have you tried M.K.Bori's Android Debug Bridge. As far as I understand that gets you effectively a serial link between Prop and Android device with only a couple of resistors required.

    Eureka - this is the missing link!

    http://hackaday.com/2011/03/29/propeller-android-communications-using-debug-mode/

    http://robots-everywhere.com/re_wiki/index.php?title=PropBridge

    And there is a little throwaway line in the description
    An useful side effect of using a debug shell is that even on unrooted phones the Propeller can cause a software reboot on the phone, thus allowing use as a watchdog in long-deployment data collection or robotics applications.

    This is one of the downsides of the android tablet - it uses a lot of power. But you may not need it on all the time, so if the propeller can send the android to sleep for a while, that means your solar powered robot can rest overnight without flattening the batteries.

    Android - Strengths = great display, wifi, lan, great value for all these things. Weaknesses = uses a lot of power and no decent real world interface.

    Propeller = able to shut down to almost zero power consumption, fantastic range of real world I/O. Weakness - no decent display with an easy to use GUI.

    Combine the two together though, and we have a very interesting combination.
  • RavenkallenRavenkallen Posts: 1,057
    edited 2011-09-09 15:56
    It is almost time to buy for me to.... I was playing with a Dell Streak at Staples the other day and i was absolutely fascinated(Until i saw the price). But, i am about to waste a few hundred dollars in car repairs, so i am probably going to put it off once again. Has anyone seen the new Playstation Vita? It looks really cool:)
  • Buck RogersBuck Rogers Posts: 2,190
    edited 2011-09-26 16:35
    erco wrote: »
    http://cgi.ebay.com/Eken-M009S-7in-Android-Tablet/190574152357?_trksid=p1468660.m2000036

    Here's a 7" touchscreen Android 2.2 OS for $70 shipped from a US seller. When they get down to $50, that's not much more than you'd pay for a digital picture frame. THEN I'll use it as a chassis for a mobile robot.

    How long before they're "Buy It Now" for $50? Before Christmas, I'll bet.

    Hello!
    Sadly erco the price as listed then was $199, and it now says "This listing was ended by the seller because the item is no longer available.", which means that the vendor took it off the market. (Which is strange because supposedly almost anything is available there.)
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