Hardkernel Celebrates 15 Years by Shrinking the ODROID-M1: Meet the More Efficient ODROID-M1S

Embedded computing specialist Hardkernel is celebrating its 15th anniversary with a new single-board computer launch, taking its existing ODROID-M1 design and cutting both the size and the price to make the ODROID-M1S.

"ODROID-M1S is an affordable Arm Cortex-A55 quad-core single board computer with higher energy efficiency, slimmer form factor, and many input/output ports," Hardkernel writes of its latest design, brought to our attention by CNX Software. "Thanks to the built-in fast 64GB eMMC storage, 4GB or 8GB LPDDR4 RAM, bundled power adapter, and bundled case, you can build your own embedded system at low cost right away."

The ODROID-M1S is an update to, but not a copy of, the year-old ODROID-M1 — taking into account, Hardkernel says, customer feedback which included a desire for a smaller, more energy-efficient design — which, ideally, would also cost less. As a result, the memory speed has been knocked down a little, the SATA 3.0 port is gone, there's no MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI) connector, and fewer USB ports.

The system-on-chip, too, has changed: the Rockchip RK3568 with its quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor, Arm Mali-G52 MP2 graphics processor, and 0.8 TOPS neural network coprocessor has been replaced by the Rockchip RK3566 — dropping the processor performance from 2GHz to 1.8GHz, but otherwise retaining the specifications of its predecessor. The ODROID-M1's 16MB of on-board SPI flash, interestingly, has been swapped out for a 64GB eMMC benchmarking, Hardkernel claims, at 180MB/s throughput.

The smaller board packs fewer ports, offering only one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 port plus a micro-USB 2.0 On-The-Go (OTG) port, plus a USB Type-C port for power. There are two general-purpose input/output (GPIO) headers, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi-style header and a 14-pin header, a UART header for a dedicated serial console, 3.5mm analog audio output, gigabit Ethernet, microSD and M.2 M-key NVMe storage options — the latter dropping from a theoretical maximum throughput of 1.6GB/s on the ODROID-M1 to 400MB/s on the M1S — and an HDMI 2.0 port with 4k60 support and a four-lane MIPI Display Serial Interface (CSI) connector.

In other words, the board delivers a reasonable selection of ports and connections despite its smaller size — and the move to a different system-on-chip means it also delivers on the efficiency front. According to Hardkernel's internal testing, the ODROID-M1S draws 1.1W at idle and 3.52W under heavy CPU load — down from 1.3W idle and 4.5W loaded for the original ODROID-M1.

Hardkernel is taking orders for the new ODROID-M1S on its website, starting at $49 for the 4GB model with unpopulated GPIO headers; the company has also confirmed a range of accessories, including a plastic case, eight- and five-inch touchscreen displays, an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) kit, and a "Multi IO Training Board" which connects to both GPIO headers and offers an OLED display, CAN FD, RS232, and SPI buses, five-key keypad, and more.