Killer SBC, looks great for a machine vision solution.
rwgast_logicdesign
Posts: 1,464
This thing is super cool, @$200 its a bit more than a PI but its also a lot more powerful!!
Id like to pick one of these things up, it looks like a really good answer for robot applications that need the full power of a PC but don't want to build something as big as an eddy! Heck this alond with a uController could turn a BoeBot in to something as powerful as an eddy bot. Its called the gizmo and it has an AMD dual core. This board has i2c, spi, adc, and dac. I think adding something like an mcp23018 i2c port expander could really make this a capable board for embedded applications
http://www.gizmosphere.org/buy/
What do all you guys think about this, looks a lot better than a PI?
Id like to pick one of these things up, it looks like a really good answer for robot applications that need the full power of a PC but don't want to build something as big as an eddy! Heck this alond with a uController could turn a BoeBot in to something as powerful as an eddy bot. Its called the gizmo and it has an AMD dual core. This board has i2c, spi, adc, and dac. I think adding something like an mcp23018 i2c port expander could really make this a capable board for embedded applications
http://www.gizmosphere.org/buy/
What do all you guys think about this, looks a lot better than a PI?
Comments
It seems everyone has gambled on "extra small" hardware after seeing the sales numbers for the Raspberry Pi.
My points:
1. great hardware isn't enough in itself - it needs freely available documentation, tools and other software. And a community
2. the Pi "gained" (so to speak) the large community by virtue of being cheap.
3. None of these new hardware boards / gizmos are as cheap as the Pi, a few might come close.
4. For most of the newcomers, documentation and / or tools are lacking, or they use binary blob drivers
5. Many people still use hardware (like the Propeller, Arduino, etc) that came before the Pi.
6. why should a large number of people form a community around one of these newcomers, which are more expensive than existing alternatives?
7. without a large community, these newcomers will vanish quickly.
You will need 'a bit more' again, above that $200....
["The Sage debug tools are available immediately for the AMD G-Series Platform at an introductory price of $1499 for the SmartProbe® and $399 for the EDK integrated development environment. "]
but the idea of these lower power i86 cores does appeal - perhaps not at that system-level price tho....
Meanwhile SoC vendors are doing stacked-die, which can slash PCB routing and that is a key feature of the Pi.
Now $49.95. $39.95 for Academic version.
Meanwhile, I do have my Cubbieboard with Ubuntu Linux up and running and other Linuxes available.... for $49USD. What I quick discover is that I don't need all the GUI overhead for robot projects and dumping all that will actually make an AVR SoC run much faster in useful tasks. And I also wonder if I really need the Linux/Unix OS for the majority of task oriented robotics projects that I am interested in.
In other words, these Single Board Computers are all about having, using, and creating files to do everything. The get a bit distracted by do that and there may be lower level, more primative dedicated devices that serve better. Operating Systems are not always necessary.
This is kind of like buying an electric screwdriver when a plain old screwdiriver is generally all I need.
Im not sure what the specialized tools are, sounds pretty pricey. I was just thinking this would be a better option than a mini-itx/atom, that assumption is probably to good to be true though
These days it appears that using cameras and image analysis becomes more enticing, as images are everywhere.
It will be a big plus for a bot to have it on board . But how make it cheap , light, and easy ?
I tried it with an Eeepc some years before but this too big bot (like Eddie) is now under my desk (the Eepc is 1100 grams).
Looking at different image analysis tools it seems that roborealm is the way to go , found nothing better. But it runs only on Windows !
(found Linux and Opencv a bit hard for a non professional like me)
For the small PCs may be the Ebox (277grams , about 100$, can support XP) see here:
http://robosavvy.com/store/product_info.php/manufacturers_id/45/products_id/1839?osCsid=a763c2d9e92b16e802b38084740f2357
Hope to find new ideas here.
Jean Paul
This is the AMD Embedded G series. You need ot read up on which OSes it will support and what it is for. It seems to be a computer/TV sort of media center.
http://blogs.amd.com/work/2012/09/19/my-experience-with-the-amd-embedded-g-series-apu/
Single Board Computers from AMD or Intel or others for x86 architectures has a long history of requiring the board maker to come up with all the hardware drives. And very often Linux has been shut out due to little or no information. I just don't get enough info with this one to feel that I know where to get started ... unless you consider writing checks a good starting point.
The Beagleboard, Raspberry Pi, and so on have be a breakthrough in that dilemma. It was quite common before that to have a single board computer cost more than a regular motherboard by the time you added in all the support items.
The Raspbery Pi and the Cubbieboard are supposed to support a camera if you want one. At least with Linux, you might eventual get what you want done.