JohnSwenson wrote: > > What I am envisioning is a fairly simple first board, primarily designed > to be a black box player, I would like to leave off the HDMI for the > first board, it adds a significant amount of complexity. Designing this > board will be fairly straight forward so something can be done and out > there to a few developers quite quickly. > > ... > > This process gives a working board that does not need a full blown geek > to get working (plug in the SD-card, turn it on), at that point we have > something that might appeal to more people and we can start looking at > industrial design and options for a more flexible board (display > outputs, running server etc), but I think its a good idea to start with > a very simple one first to get bugs ironed out and find out what it is > capable of doing. > So, if I understand you correctly, what you are basically saying is: 1. Iteration 1: Create a batch of 25 boards to the most interesting people around here, preferably the group would be a mix of audiophiles, software developers and DIY enthusiasts. 2. Let them experiment a bit and implement/package the software for it. 3. Iteration 2: Review the experimentation, re-design what's needed to make it future proof and design a new board that could be produced for a bit more people, possibly even pre-packaged in a case with pre-installed software.
In this scenario, my priorities would be to make something as fast as possible in iteration 1, as long as you are reasonably sure that: - The changes in iteration 2 will still work with the software written for iteration 1 - The changes in iteration 2 will result in similar or better audio characteristics compared to iteration 1 In my mind, it's important that we can use the experimentation of iteration 1 board to improve the board in iteration 2. Top notch audio quality and making it future proof is not important in iteration 1, it will be a temporary solution and you just need something that's good enough to allow the experimentation needed to evolve it to the iteration 2 board. CPU and memory isn't important in iteration 1 as long as you feel that you are prepared to improve both of them in iteration 1. You are not going to want to improve it because of the experimentation on iteration 1 board, you are going to want to improve it to make room for future software improvements which will happen after iteration 2 board has been released. For iteration 1 board, you could safely go with a 600MHz CPU and 128MB memory if you like, as long as you are prepared to change it to 1GHz+ and 512MB+ in iteration 2 to make it more future proof when you add the HDMI output. For iteration 1 (without HDMI output), 600MHz and 128MB will be plenty, nobody is going to do something that requires more than that during experimentation on iteration 1 board. The faster CPU and more memory is needed for things that might happen months after the iteration 2 board has been released. The people signing up for iteration 1 board will likely have no problem to also sign up for iteration 2 board, but the people who only sign up for iteration 2 board is going to expect something that works on longer terms, they don't want to hear that an improved iteration 3 board revision is available 3 months after they purchased the iteration 2 board, at least not unless you explicitly also say that iteration 2 is a temporary board for further experimentation. For iteration 1 board, I'm not sure you even need the built-in DAC if that delays iteration 1 or makes it more expensive, because from a software perspective iteration 1 will focus on developers who try to experiment how to get the software to work properly with USB DAC's and S/PDIF connected amplifiers. If you feel the DAC part needs some experimentation by the 25 developers/audiophiles, and you put it on a separate board, you can maybe even first design and release the main board and then a bit later design and release the DAC sub board. You can even choose to skip the S/PDIF in the iteration 1 board, but doing that might result in that you might get a harder time to find 25 people with development experience to participate, some people who are developers and would be willing to test iteration 1 probably don't own a good USB DAC today and isn't prepared to buy a good USB DAC as a temporary solution just to try iteration 1 board. As I look at it, the parts that can result in significant more memory needed in the future is: - HDMI output: People are going to want to show a lot of cool things on the TV and this will require more CPU and memory, since the HDMI output isn't part of iteration 1, you won't see the needs during experimentation, so you have to guess a bit what's needed. Obvious use cases that people are going to request to be able to show through HDMI output are hires album art, VU meters/visualization and maybe even video. I know video is to ask a bit much, but you are definitely going to get requests for that if you add a HDMI output because people are going to start thinking about AirPlay support pretty soon. - Audio processing like room correction, equalizer and similar things: Most of this could maybe be handled by the DSP and not affect the CPU much, but if the CPU is involved it could require a faster CPU and possibly also more memory. - Built in server: This is going to require both more memory and faster CPU, but based on what I know I'm not convinced this is what we should design for. It really doesn't make sense to design the hardware to run LMS in each individual player, if we want a solution without a computer we probably want a solution which doesn't rely on LMS and then the server part (if needed at all) can be designed a lot more lightweight than LMS is today. Whatever we do, we don't want to repeat Logitech's mistake and try to run LMS on a device which doesn't have the necessary resources, that will just result in disappointing users and a lot of complaints. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97881 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
