OLIMEX© 2013
A10S-OLinuXino-MICRO user's manual
1.2 Target market and purpose of the board
The boards from the OLinuXino family are easy to setup and powerful. It is possible to use them in
almost any application as a host board. They are suitable for embedded programming enthusiasts,
Linux and Android gadget fans (they can just use the board as a media center or fully functional
Linux-PC for instance) and also professionals (since its low cost makes it very good solution for
application-orientated embedded systems). The main usage of the board is software embedded
development without the urge of understanding perfectly the hardware.
The strong points of the boards are the processor speed, the small form factor and the low price-to-
productivity ratio.
Customers have full access to the technical documentation of the board. The software is released
under General Purpose License and the board is considered open-hardware – all schematics and
board design files are available to the customer under the Creative Commons Attribution-
ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
1.3 Board variants
There are two major board variants. According to the names: A10S-OLinuXino-MICRO-4GB and
A10S-OLinuXino-MICRO. The 4GB version has a built-in NAND memory suitable for the storage
of an operating system without the need of a SD card. The 4GB version comes with already
programmed Android 4.2.2 image.
The other Olimex boards with close characteristics are the ones with A13 and A10/A20
microcontrollers. The A13 boards feature a generation older processor but since they have been
longer on the market they have better Linux support. The A10 boards feature the bigger (than A10s)
processor of the Allwinner A10 family. The A20 boards feature the new dual core processor and
pack exceptional (for an embedded device) computing speed.
Additional Linux support and features are added overtime. The Linux support is a work in progress
and you should not expect full Linux support after the initial volume of such boards have become
available on the market. If you are in a hurry consider the older OLinuXino designs (which have
almost everything supported, have examples available and so on).
1.4 Organization
Each section in this document covers a separate topic, organized as follow:
–
Chapter 1 is an overview of the board usage and features
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Chapter 2 provides a guide for quickly setting up the board and software notes
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Chapter 3 contains the general board diagram and layout
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Chapter 4 describes the component that is the heart of the board: the A10s – Allwinner
processor
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Chapter 5 is an explanation of the control circuitry associated with the microcontroller
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Chapter 6 covers the connector pinout, peripherals and jumper description
–
Chapter 7 provides the schematics and the dimensions of the board
–
Chapter 8 contains the revision history, useful links and support information
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