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VIA Hops on the Low Cost PC Bandwagon with a $49 APC Android System - Page 2 — Parallax Forums

VIA Hops on the Low Cost PC Bandwagon with a $49 APC Android System

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Comments

  • TonyDTonyD Posts: 210
    edited 2012-11-05 01:40
    Heater. wrote: »
    ....
    The bad news is that I have yet to see how easily we can hook it up to the Prop or other real world gadgets.
    Yes, I'm disappointed with its lack of GPIO I/O. Not having GPIO seems to be a major oversight on their behalf.
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2012-11-05 04:50
    Does it have a serial port? The general strategy I've seen people use with processing is to create a serial protocol to talk to an mcu. The PC does the high level human interactions and computation, while the mcu does the real time work.

    The Chumby hackers also used that approach as well. The Chumby was designed as a consumer product, but hacker friendly.
  • prof_brainoprof_braino Posts: 4,313
    edited 2012-11-05 06:52
    Martin_H wrote: »
    Does it have a serial port? The general strategy I've seen people use with processing is to create a serial protocol to talk to an mcu. The PC does the high level human interactions and computation, while the mcu does the real time work.

    if you can install and use GO lang (similar to C without some of the bloat) there is an option to use propforth
    and synchronous serial.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2012-11-05 08:01
    prof_braino,
    ...GO lang (similar to C without some of the bloat)...

    That can't be right. Go has a lot more features than C, concurrency for example, and I believe the required run time support is larger. But yes they have removed old junk from C and made it a goal not to make things as complex and ugly as C++. (Hmm..except they kept that stupid notation for octal literals from C, blech).

    I can't believe the APC does not have a serial port somewhere as a debug console or such, must keep looking. I'm going to resist the temptation to order one as I have boards and projects piling up here.
  • Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL) Posts: 1,720
    edited 2012-11-05 19:30
    re:I can't believe the APC does not have a serial port somewhere as a debug console or such,

    UART_PH

    http://apc.io/media/apc/library/apc-pinout.pdf
  • rod1963rod1963 Posts: 752
    edited 2012-11-05 20:25
    It's worthless for experimenters doing real-world stuff. Spend more and get real a experimenters board like the Beagle bone and not have to be locked into Linux as well.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2012-11-05 20:58
    rod_1963,
    ...get real a experimenters board like the Beagle bone and not have to be locked into Linux as well

    Wow, that must be the first time in history that being able to run Linux is described as being "locked into Linux". What do you mean?

    Anyway after a quick google around I have yet to find any OS for the Beagle Bone that is not Linux based, so unless you have an alternative or I create my own it's seems I am locked into Linux with the Beagle Bone.

    I do agree that the APC does not seem to be a hacker/experimenter device. It's obviously not aimed at that market. Which is a shame. Even just a header with some GPIO and UART etc like the Raspi would make it more attractive in that space with almost no extra cost.
  • frank freedmanfrank freedman Posts: 1,983
    edited 2012-11-05 22:56
    Meh, I would have to see how they do in production before building something around these units. Already sold out on two limit, you are looking in the hundreds, curious to see how fast their capacity can recover over multiple customers with larger orders. And you may get a feel for the board from feedback from some of the users who did get one. Interesting to see how fast they can clear the backlog and support long term production.
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