The appeal of consumer products is that they can be much cheaper than industrial or custom products. Using a PC, and parallel port card with LinuxCNC can make for a very affordable machine controller, but I am always on the lookout for other options. Embedded processor cards are popular now, but after one gets all of the bits needed (power supply, housing, interface card, etc.) it's cheaper to find a surplus PC and be done with it.
I recently needed to replace the radio in my car and while cruising eBay I saw an Eincar 2DIN radio and thought radios are sold in the millions which keeps the cost low, it has a decently sized touch display, a capable processor, USB and other I/O, and is already running Linux. It seemed most of a controller is present. I found very little information on what goes on inside these radios, so I had to get one to take it apart. Here is what I found inside: http://wallacecompany.com/tmp/Eincar_radio/IMG_2440-2a.png Now, I'm not so sure it would work as a controller. The radio boots immediately. The screens look sharp and react quickly. The touch feature works very well, all of which makes for a good radio, but most of the hardware inside is radio hardware, so the main board would be wasted on a machine controller. Basically, that leaves the display and the housing. So, I'm back to piecing together some sort of beagleduino thing if I want a pad class controller. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Command Line: Reinvented for Modern Developers Did the resurgence of CLI tooling catch you by surprise? Reconnect with the command line and become more productive. Learn the new .NET and ASP.NET CLI. Get your free copy! http://sdm.link/telerik _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
