Come to the Asylum and look at the Rascal, then. There's a $100 board that needs only a 5V supply and runs Debian, $84 in quantity. TS-7500 from embeddedarm.com. I have likely mentioned it before.
* Drew Van Zandt Artisan's Asylum Craft Lead, Electronics & Robotics Cam # US2010035593 (M:Liam Hopkins R: Bastian Rotgeld) Domain Coordinator, MA-003-D. Masquerade aVST * On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 5:11 PM, Tom Metro <tmetro+hhack...@gmail.com>wrote: > Tom Metro wrote: > > Next up was Federico. He started with a demo of "little bits," which are > > modular circuit blocks that you can assemble sort of like LEGOs. > > As someone pointed out, this is almost the same ideas as: > http://www.mail-archive.com/hardwarehacking@blu.org/msg00094.html > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DwzskCmTgE > > or there was another one that was an even closer match that had fully > enclosed modules that connected together with magnets. I thought I > posted about it to this list, but I can't find it and don't recall the > name. (Twine, a ruggedized sensor developed by some MIT Media Lab kids > is related, but not what I'm thinking of.) > > > > He next showed off a Raspberry Pi (http://www.raspberrypi.org/), showed > > a close up board view using a USB microscope, and then demoed booting it > > to Debian and started up X with the xfce desktop. > > > > Lastly he demonstrated a CuBox computer (http://www.solid-run.com/), > > which is impressively packaged as a 2" cube. > > FYI, Newark (US arm of Farnell/element14) has an RPi page: > > http://www.newark.com/jsp/displayProduct.jsp?sku=83T1943&CMP=KNC-G-SUPP-RASPBERRYPI&mckv=sZwE3zPRh|pcrid|10193933301|plid| > > (They're actually paying for a Google Ad that links there.) > > but it shows zero in stock (and quotes a lead time of 141 days). They > have a bunch of accessories, including a red plastic case. > > > While I was interested in the RPi demo, I'm still not sure what I'd use > one for, as it seemed to be underpowered as a media playback device. > > The Gertboard (thanks Kurt) might change that: > http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/tag/gertboard > > (I'm surprised to see they are already on rev 2 of this board, even > though the RPi was only just released. But I guess he had easy access to > RPi prototypes.) > > If they could get a $35 board running Linux that also had a > good ecosystem of peripherals (be it Arduino shield or something else), > then it would be a useful platform. > > However the Gertboard isn't just a motherboard for peripheral boards, > but an all-in-one peripheral board, so it likely won't be cheap. (I > didn't see any mention of pricing.) It will at least double, if not > triple or more the cost of creating an RPi project. > > The RPi, as Federico pointed out, does have a GPIO connector, so you can > always hack together your own I/O. > > > The Cubox sounded better suited for media playback, but once you get > past the cool packaging, it sounds like there will be more powerful > (better CPUs) alternatives in the same price range. > > > I'm still curious to learn more about the Rascal (the locally developed > ARM board that runs Linux and has Arduino shield compatible connectors), > which I mentioned on the HH list last week. I asked Federico about it > after the talk, and he said he hadn't heard of it. (And said he was > behind on reading HH email.) > > To me, this board makes the most sense once you've decided to scale up > from an Arduino to a device running Linux. The big down side is the $100 > ~ $150 price. If they can get the price down further with volume, it > might be more convenient than hacking stuff onto an RPi. > > -Tom > _______________________________________________ > Hardwarehacking mailing list > Hardwarehacking@blu.org > http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking >
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