This is a Guest Post by Alex Marinho. Do you want to write guest posts on ARMdevices.net? Send me an email charbax@gmail.com and let me know what you want to write about.
I love computers and I am fascinated by them, and the idea that i can mount my own computer with my hands like lego and this has in the 90’s. Now we have mini pcs or hdmi tv dongles small computers that you can put in your pocket but they have some faults.
1-Internal wifi with bad performance, solution for this issue, external antennas that were implemented by the manufactures (see cozyswan s400 hdmi tv dongle and others)
2-A audio combo jack,is important for people that have lcd monitor’s that dont have speakers, they need the audio combo jack (see MK806 hdmi tv dongle)
3-A 2-pin connector for a fan and holes to fix the fan into the board, for heating problems.
4-change the usb 2.0 to usb 3.0 for better performance (see hardkernel odroid xu+E)
5-the storage issue, all hdmi dongles have nand flash that is welded and you cannot remove to upgrade, only by microsd card.
People nowadays use microsd cards to install linux and to boot from the card but a youtube user posted that booting from a microsd card is not very fast and the performance is not very spectacular.(30MBps)
So the best solution is using a Emmc card with a connector in the bottom-160 Mbps (see hardkernel)
so with paint and gimp i altered some pictures of hdmi tv dongles that i found in the internet to show you what I considered should be the perfect Hdmi tv dongle
In this first picture I added by paint some holes and a 2-pin fan connector to put a “future” fan like this (photo from a russian web site)
In the third picture, I removed by paint the NAND FLASH and I added a Emmc connector. And the combo audio connector because a lot of people that I know they dont have speakers in their lcd monitor.
In the market there is already a company (hardkernel) selling this emmc cards with connectors, but is very expensive if every company that does hdmi tv dongles adopt this standard i think that the price will come down, and everyone can altered their storage very easy.
I am writing this post to show people that they can present good ideas to change the statuos quo of the designs of the hdmi tv dongles or mini pc.
And manufactures could see what can they do to change for a better way the mini pc.
