Hi I always thought FriendlyARM and Hiteg are same and make same mini2440. But recently Hiteg launched a V2 of the mini2440 but I dont see the same available at FriendlyARM. Can somebody shed light on how the two are related. Thanks Pankaj
All the announcement on their site tells me is that it is the 256M version of the standard board.
FriendlyARM.net is a official distributor of www.arm9.net which is the original designer and manufacture, you can see the latest NEWs on www.arm9.net. Hiteg is not an official distributor of www.arm9.net, but they announce themself is the original manufature, in fact, it is not true. The Chinese FriendlyARM(www.arm9.net) is in guangzhou city. The pre-install is Linux+qtopia-2.2.0, many apps is signed with "Designed by FriendlyARM" as the YouTube video shows.
Ok, I got it. So it seems both are independent but happen to manufacture the same board with the same name mini2440 :-) and both claim to be the original designer and manufacturer. Now are FriendlyARM and arm9.net the same company or FriendlyARM is the Chinese distributor for arm9.net? Whats the official name of the arm9.net company? Who all are the distributors for arm9.net mini2440 across the world? I am looking to OEM mini2440 but teh confusion between who is the distributor and who is the original manufacturer is causing a lot of confusion.
Hi, So Hiteg/www.developmentboard.com is just full of crap? This from their FAQ: --How to identify boards which are intended for the chinese market. Ask the sales person, if the board will ship with an English manual. If you bought via EBAY, return the package immediately and inform the EBAY team about the fraud. Only boards sold by Hiteg Ltd. via developmentboard.net are genuine and ship with an English Manual, warranty and a technical help center in English and German Language. --My Mini2440 shipped with a Chinese User's manual You bought your board from an unauthorized dealer in China, which sold you a copied ( fake ) version of the Mini2440. We will not provide those user's with an english documentation. Developmentboard.net customers however can ask any time for updated or missing manuals. please provide your invoice number and your email address to our support stuff, we will handle all issues prompt and unbureaucratic. They sell in euro, but their bank is in China... Very weird lot... Thanks, Errol
i do think hiteg have good sales service, and the quality of mini2440 development board is very good. and i would like purchase euro, and i know that it is foreign invest company, and for us is convient. better use Dollar . and i am willing to buy more board ,like sky2440, i am considering have long term business with this company
Hi, Evan since as you said, just here (http://www.friendlyarm.net) provide a very good platform to talk about the mini2440 board, and it is JUST HERE to sale mini2440 with DOLLAR too. we (the real manufacture in China guangzhou) will release mini6410 (based samsung's S3C6410 arm11 chip) in next month. and We will print "Designed by FriendlyARM in Guangzhou" on the back of PCB to avoid the crustily fake. now, the real mini2440 has provided the 64M/128M/256M/1GB nand flash version, but how the Developmentboard.net? if they continue buying on the sly quiet, and saling on their website, we'll make some sign on the mini2440 PCB. the Developmentboard.net is unscrupulous! regards mindee
What bothers me the most about Hiteg is that they claim THEY are the only real seller and every one else sells fakes.
in fact, mini2440/micro2440 is sold in several cnountry, but there is only one authorized point in Europe, it's http://www.friendlyarm.net or http://www.watterott.com , for others, you can see the list at http://www.arm9.net/agent.asp for Developmentboard.net, it has two persion only, a German and his Chinese girl friend, it's in the China Hainan Province. we have their guarantee(with their sign) for forbidding the mini2440 board, but they dont comply with it.
Hi, So bad that I read that post now! I spent many time in 2009 waiting for Hiteg v2 to come out thinking they were the original manufacturers. why did I thought such ? because they told me !!! I also asked why Hiteg <-> FriendlyArm to got a clear point about it and never got a real answer. So bad, because like te poster here, I bought the Hiteg board and got some problems now to compile, no assistance at all(Leon seems to have disaspear from mails and his forum's posts answers too) ; the english doc seems to be incomplete and old, I had to get examples and the GCC (2.95 & 3.3.1) from here instead from the provided DVD. In addition, I was happy to buy the Hiteg Megadisplay (more exepensive ) that let you have more fonctionnalities and don't have any doc to use it. Now what ? like pankaj I'm ennoyed to compile my code for I2C and SPI
By accident I thought the Friendly ARM device was made by Hiteg (www.developmentboard.com). I contacted them by email to ask for documentation in English and for support. I indicated to them that my company was interested to purchase in volume. Instead of offering help and encouraging me to purchase from their company, they were very rude and insinuated that my company (biomed) was a group of hobbyists. Their unprofessional response gives the impression that they would not be a good company to do business with (legit or not!). This is also obvious from their FAQ on their website. It seems to them that the only "Frequently Asked Question" is whether the boards purchased on eBay are legitimate. If they had any REAL customers, I am sure they would have generated some REAL FAQs. Also, their website has many misspelled words which also indicates that they are not legit. By the way, the name of the contact person was Evan (the only person on this site who seems to thinks that Hiteg is legit- humm...)
Here is an example of a company who seems to be a real company. Check out their FAQ page: http://www.andahammer.com/faq/ They also have a good section on how to display the Linux icons in English rather than in Chinese. I think this is a real company- not Hiteg. I would recommend people stay away from www.developmentboard.com. As a representative of my company, I would never buy from a vendor who claims to be a single source. If you work for purchasing, you know you can only safely buy products which can be sourced from multiple vendors.
I am interested also in buying quantity of the Mini2440 and have noticed that the cost of the unit from Germany is 50 euros more than what I can get it for in the U.S. So I checked the website www.arm9.net (which is in Chinese only) and found that all the contact emails are hotmail accounts. If this is truly a professional company and www.arm9.net are the true manufacturers why don't they have normal company email addresses? Are they truly the manufacturer of FriendlyARM? Who is the best person to get in contact with to get large quantities of the Mini2440?
Bret You point out the same problem that I wanted to show : everything around the FriendlyArm production is fuzzy : - ThaiEasyelec - microArm - Hiteg - embest ? - etc.... So I'm also interested by that question
Here is the latest email I got from microARM: Hi Bret, Thank you very much for your interest in our products. Yes we do ship to Europe. However unfortunately all our products are out of stock now and we are manufacturing and will get back to you with our quotes as soon as we get our new shipement. By the way since we are maintaining our website our company's emails may not work you can email us at yuefeitan@gmail.com which is always active. Thank you very much MicroArm Systems I own an internet company and having website maintenance doesn't prevent the mail server from actually working. Any one here actually got one of these boards? Where did you get it from, and how have you found it?
Ok, I think I have found the manufacturer and am in negotiations with them about supply. I will keep you all posted about what I have found once I get some documentation and confirm their credentials. Meanwhile my email address is bret.hemberg@smebizit.de if you wish to contact me.
Bret, your website smebizit.de is very professional! www.arm9.net (FriendlyARM from Guangzhou) is the original manufacturer. Just my two cents.
Thanks Rob, but SMEBizIT is a holding company not a trading one.
Additionally, considering I am in negotiations with the manufacturer (I have already contacted arm9) then your two cents has been worth a lot.
Maybe I can help a little here without getting into who designed what and when. ARM9.net is FriendlyARM, and operates under a corporate name in Guangzhou, China, which is upstream a ways from Shenzhen City/Hong Kong. They do not have a controlled distribution system though ARMWorks (andahammer.com web site) is listed for the US and Watterott for Europe. Others are able to buy from FA and caused a price war last spring but they don't provide support. They are either hobby businesses or have added Mini2440's as a sideline to the main business, like car stereo and video. The eBay sellers are all in China, mostly Shanghai, and can operate on razor thin margins that will not support product development. Zhou Weidong, AKA Esky-sh on eBay is in Shanghai and does a good job at finding or designing useful add-ons. FA sold the QQ2440V3 before the Mini2440 was designed. Hiteg is run by some German engineers who are based in China in Haikou on Hainan Island and they sold almost entirely to OEMs until recently (roughly the time of the Mini2440). The Mini2440V2 is newer and was probably intended to have 128M RAM but the chips needed for an S3C2440 were produced only briefly before the memory industry jumped ahead. I think one company still makes them but you can't promise a long life product with a single source for memory. The V2 also has I2C on an unused line of the FFC to the LCD module. Thus the MegaLCD with backlight control and some extra user space I/O. Are there other differences? Hiteg's boards are black and FriendlyARM's are blue. The FA 3.5 is a Toppoly 240x320. Hiteg's 3.5 is 320x240, or naturally landscape mode. Another significant difference for some users is that Hiteg is certified RoHS and ISO9000 and uses ALL industrial temp range components. Also, the power supply from Hiteg is UL and CE and fused. The one from FA is about 1/4 the cost but has fake cert stamps and is subject to confiscation by US Customs and no fuse inside. Both FA and Hiteg can be bought in volume from ARMWorks where some OEM customers are buying 2000 a month. There is also a good stock of spares and connectors. I must say that FA's boards have been extremely reliable with the 7" LCD being the weakest element and even there with only about 5 returns to ARMWorks in 18 months. Both companies have small staffs and can be hard to reach when everyone is busy. A solid knowledge of Mandarin is pretty much essential for working with FA. No one building Linux distros has beat their boot time and the graphics speed of the Qtopia that FA ships. It looks like both boards are going to get a workout on a large project in a region with typical day time temperatures of 120F. My bet is with the Hiteg parts chain (all from sources outside China) quality control. FA says they can do customizations but they are too busy to do much but keep up with demand. Hiteg is also busy but is much more pro-active about custom work or changes and finding ancillary suppliers for injection molding or graphics, etc. That is the basics without getting into NDA territory. ARMWorks will have Hiteg boards on the web site soon.
Thanks Charlie for these indications. What I can only say is about what I saw : Hiteg is reachable only from China even if, as you said, some of them are Germans nothing is possible in Europe.My project is pro,not for hobby or personal use, so I'm concerned about OEM and reliability company. Tough it's not so easy. About the V2 that have many told interesting features, I bought it but never had any doc how to use it. One precision : "Are there other differences? Hiteg's boards are black and FriendlyARM's a re blue. The FA 3.5 is a Toppoly 240x320. Hiteg's 3.5 is 320x240, or naturally landscape mode" Not sure about it. If I could I'd post a Hiteg's board picture to let you see that under a serial number sticker you could read "FriendlyArm". Concerning busy things, it seems that Hiteg are really busy since the V2 came out : Leon don't answer you anymore (as its messages; cf. upper my post) . "No one building Linux distros has beat their boot time and the graphics speed of the Qtopia that FA ships." If it seems that I complain for everything : I'm not, I'm just disapointed that I have to come here to have informations to get that board working. Nevertheless, Hiteg give additional modules, cool HowTos.
Mine all say Mini2440 Mark II, which was the original name for the V2 design. No indication of FriendlyARM. However, it is my understanding that FriendlyARM did some manufacturing for Hiteg before they went their separate ways. I will be testing, but I believe the FA LCDs will work just fine on the Hiteg Mini2440V2 board. The Hiteg 3.5 and 7" MegaLCD's may or may not work on the FA Mini2440. I'll have to see if the I2C line is held low or high, the LCD defaults to normal behavior. I didn't mention that Hiteg also offers some Sharp LCDs and extended temperature LCDs. Also, there are a few FriendlyARM 8" 640x480 LCDs appearing on eBay. This was a short lived project and is not a commercial product. Fine for one-off things perhaps, but don't expect to be able to get more. It is too bad it didn't work out. It would have been nice.
LOL, Welcome to China guys........ I live and work very close to the GZ operator, I also did a bit of work with a company down in Shenzhen called "UCdragon". They have the YL-P2440 which is a different board a but has similar functionality, also has IDE interface, they DO design their own boards. (dig about in the friendly arm you will find references to UCdragon), also they were doing this range >4 years ago. Anyway I digress. It is always very difficult to get to the bottom of these arguments, however: hotmail: Chinese like hotmail. Just because they do not have their own email address does not mean they are 'always' unprofessional. In China it is VERY difficult for a company to register its own website and email server, it is a real pain in the ass, plus there are fines of about 15,000-20,000 RMB if the security is breached or unacceptable content is found. Service: Generally China suppliers do anything that makes money. Support is second because in China people are used to buying products then having to service themselves, it is part of the culture. They are not a 'service orientated' culture yet, but it is changing. (the way round this is via personal connections) Mandarin/ Cantonese is normally a pre-requisite in South China. Who made what: Basically you will be told anything to part you from your money, that is NOT to say Friendly are are the problem What the law says: 1. Intellectual rights ARE protected in China if you can be bothered to plow through the red tape. 2. ALL companies have to be LEGALLY registered in China. (but are not) 3. it is ILLEGAL for a foreigner to have a business in China , UNLESS it is a JV with a mainlander. 4. ALL money transactions are supposed to be to a COMPANY account, it is highly illegal to issue cash to a company to a private account. You can tell the difference: A. If it is 2-3 chinese characters , it is a personal account.(anything goes) B. If it is more it is usually a company account (expect to pay tax) As for RoHS and ISO9000 , it is a lot of bollocks, generally everything is OK for the inspection then components are substituted in later, also the fastest way to get the certs. is to use a manufacturing subcontractor that complies----- then switch subcontractors later.
I'm in China too and what Bob says is true. The main problem with Chinese companies and FA are very typical is that they have little or no after sales service. But the customers in Europe and the US want the products really cheap, so you get exactly what you pay for. As for "who copied who" the FA boards are based on the Samsung Development Board. If you want to buy in volume make sure you understand Chinese business practices before you commit yourself, or my advice is use ARMworks or Watterott. I buy all my FA boards from a local distributor here in China rather than direct from FA, because at least I get good after sales service. Phil
what you say is understandable. Nevertheless, we are not tourists visiting China, much more like customers. Therefore, we shouldn't have to be aware of each country habits, it's about a mini2440 not a pizza.
Too bad only found out about this forum today. Bought some mini2440 board from Hiteg recently but found that it was preloaded with WinCE6.0 . When I asked for WinCE5.0, was told that CE6.0 is better and they cannot keep supporting all OS version and blaaa bla bla.....also they want to charge me to provide WinCE5.0 image and support..... What the Heck!!!! their website mention WinCE5.0/6.0 and Linux.
You searched for <mini2440> before buying the board? And did not find this site? The only people who do not charge for support for a BSP(board support product) for the mini2440 is Pengutronix. Go to their site and download the latest board support package for Linux and you'll be off and running in no time. Good luck if you want to run WindowsCE5.0 try www.andahammer.com
Thanks davef, but is the Hiteg mini2440 and friendlyARM mini2440 board the same?
A quick read of this thread suggests that there are physical manufacturing differences. As far as actually running Linux or WinCE on it I have heard nothing that suggests that they behave differently.