The Dragonboard 410C from Arrow has been certified for Windows 10 IoT-Core and comes with Android installed. This blog takes a close look at the board’s features. . Subsequent blogs will look at using the board in Android and IoT-Core modes.

 

About the Dragonboard 410c

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Top side

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Rear side

 

The board is a feature rich, relative high performance single board ARM computer. It has on-board WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS including on-board aerials. With 1 Gig of RAM and 8 of Flash as well as Micro SD storage there is a significant capability for developing a substantive consumer or IoT device. Its media capabilities far surpasses many other similar purpose SBCs. It does though lack implementation of some I/O capabilities such as headset and UART although these only require the relevant connectors and some level shifting; the signals are present on the board. As supplied, the board has the Android operating system installed which the next blog in this series will cover. Windows 10 IoT-Core is certified to run on the board. A later blog in this series will cover that.

 

Board Layout

The board conforms to 96Boards format which means standardised daughter boards can be used with it for implementing I/O.

See: 96Boards


Features

Qualcomm Snap Dragon 410c Features

CPU

1.2MHz Quad-Core ARM Cortex A7

Memory

1GB

Storage

- Virtual storage implemented in memory.

- 8GB eMMC 4.5 (Flash)

- MicroSD (SD 3.0 (UHS-I)

GPU

Qualcomm Adreno 306 @ 400MHz

USB

2 USB Host Ports
1 OTG (Micro USB)
* Host and OTG can’t be used concurrently

Networking

Onboard Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n

BlueTooth

Onboard BlueTooth 4.1

Video

HDMI (16:9 @ 1280x720 recommended) (Full size connector)

- 1080p@30fps HD video playback and capture with H.264 (AVC)

- 720p playback with H.265 (HEVC)

Camera

Integrated ISP with support for image sensors up to 13MP.
No on-board camera. Possible USB support as well.

Audio Output

- HDMI Audio

- BT Audio

- No analog audio but is available on audio expansion connector

GPS

Yes

Peripherals

12 GPIO pins

Profile

96 Boards

Low speed Expansion

40-pin connector:
UART, SPI, I2S, I2C x2, GPIO x12, DC power

Audio Expansion

16-pin analog for stereo headset/line-out, speaker and analog line-in.
Note: Expansion connector not fitted

High Speed Expansion

60-pin high speed expansion connector:
4L MIPI-DSI, USB, I2C x2, 2L+4L MIPI-CSI

 

Interfaces

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The recommended power supply is 12V with a minimum of 1A. If USB peripherals require significant power, then 1.5-2.5A is recommended. A powered USB hub could alleviate the higher current need, whilst providing more USB ports.

Note: Digital signal are generally 1.8V and will require level shifting when interfaced to many external components.

 

Switches

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In the picture above, from bottom left of the board, the right most push button is the power button. Pressing this will put the device into suspend.  It can also be used to resume. The other two push buttons’ main function is volume up and down or zoom in/out depending upon the app context.

 

User LEDS

There are 4 LEDS located in between the two USB Host sockets. The are “USER LEDS 1 2 3 4”.

 

The Low Speed Bus

(Windows 10 IoT-Core Context)

11x - GPIO pins
2x - Serial UARTs
1x - SPI bus
2x - I2C bus
1x - 5V power pin
1x - 1.8V power pin
4x - Ground pins

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