Linksprite has been pretty busy recently. After announcing the $39 pcDuino3 Nano, they’ve now unveiled a new board named pcDuino Acadia 1 powered by Freescale i.MX6 Quad processor with 1GB RAM, 8GB eMMC, a few common ports, and Arduino headers in order to connect Arduino shields to their Linux/Android board.

pcDuino Acadia 1 (preliminary) specifications:

SoC – Freescale i.MX6 Quad with four ARM Cortex A9 cores up to 1.2GHz, and Vivante GC2000 GPU with support for OpenGL/ES 2. x, OpenCL EP support, and OpenVG 1.1.

System Memory – 1GB DRAM

Storage – 8GB eMMC, 2x micro SD card slots (up to 128GB), and SATA

Video Output – HDMI 1.4 with HDCP support, LVDS

Audio Output – 3.5mm analog audio interface

Camera – 1x MIPI, 1x CSI

Connectivity – 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet (limited to 470Mbps)

USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG

Expansion Headers – Arduino UNO compatible header with 14x GPIO, 2x PWM, 6x ADC, 1x UART, 1x SPI, 1x I2C

Misc – IR receiver, up to 6 buttons?

Power – 5V/2A via power barrel, Li-Po battery interface.

Dimensions – 12 x 6.5 cm

The company claims to provide Ubuntu 12.04 and Android 4.4 for the board, as well as the usual API and development tools available for other pcDuino boards. The operating systems seem about right, since these are the exact versions you can get with the Wandboard, and the Yocto Project should be easily portable to pcDuino Acacida 1. This board is not the first Freescale i.MX6 Quad board with Arduino headers, as UDOO Quad has been around for a while, and features an external Atmel SAM3 MCU to manage I/Os. On a side note, UDOO is currently flooding my twitter feed with their Biggest Joystick in The World project which has gone viral.

There’s no heatsink on Freescale i.MX6 Quad, but based on the other boards design, one will certainly be needed unless they underclock the CPU. UDOO Quad achieves it without affecting the Arduino header, but adding another set of connector, to move the shields higher, so I’d expected something similar with the new pcDuino.

pcDuino Acadia 1 availability and pricing are not available yet. More information should eventually be published on Acadia 1 product page.