Intel Edison

FredBlais

For those interested, it seems that Intel Edison products are now in stock at Sparkfun Electronics (Arduino version, breakout version and module).
https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/272

ValeT

The Edison is really cool. The issue is that it isn't as easy to use as the Raspberry Pi though. That's what I have heard at least.

Definitely not as cool as a Propeller ActivityBoard though

FredBlais

ValeT wrote: »

The Edison is really cool. The issue is that it isn't as easy to use as the Raspberry Pi though. That's what I have heard at least.

It depends and how you use it, it can be easier than the Raspberry Pi. The Edison runs Linux and you also have a Quark processor on it. If it works like the Galileo, I believe that the Quark processor is used to emulate an Arduino, that way you can use a custom version of the Arduino IDE from Intel to program it. I think the Arduino is easier to program than the Raspberry Pi.

Also, on the Raspberry Pi you can have keyboard/mouse + monitor and you cannot do that with the Edison. But the way I use my Pi, it is standalone and sit next to my router, I use it to run things like webserver and when I have stuff to do on it I always use SSH.

ValeT wrote: »

Definitely not as cool as a Propeller ActivityBoard though

The propeller is my favorite MCU, but you have to select the right tool for the job to do. On a module a bit larger than a postage stamp, you have 1GB RAM, 4GB Flash, lots of IOs, 500MHz dual core Atom + 100MHz Quark MCU, Wifi and Bluetooth LE. I wished I had that when I was in university and doing robotics competition. The way we worked back then was to make our custom PCB with PIC18 programmed in assembly. To change our code, each time we had to reconnect the programmer module to the robot and download the new code to it! Towards the end of my degree, I managed to get people to try the Propeller. Using the objects in the Obex and programming in Spin saved us a lot of time!

Heater.

The Edison is junk. Compared to all the hundreds of ARM based SBCs and modules available now, of which the Raspi is only the most widely known, the Edison is over priced, under powered, lacking in features and consumes to much power. As an attempt by Intel to grab a share of the embedded market it does not look good.

"Intel - The walking dead" as an acquaintance and long time developer of embedded systems explains here: http://embeddedexperience.blogspot.fi/2014/01/intel-walking-dead.html

FredBlais

Heater. wrote: »

The Edison is junk. Compared to all the hundreds of ARM based SBCs and modules available now, of which the Raspi is only the most widely known, the Edison is over priced, under powered, lacking in features and consumes to much power. As an attempt by Intel to grab a share of the embedded market it does not look good.

"Intel - The walking dead" as an acquaintance and long time developer of embedded systems explains here: http://embeddedexperience.blogspot.fi/2014/01/intel-walking-dead.html

Heater, that's a bit harsh saying it's junk...

the guy who wrote that article is wrong on many points. Linux is not running on the "pentium based" Quark. It's running in the dual core Atom. Also, I don`t see why someone would want to run headless Windows so this is a bit irrelevant. The Edison module changed a lot since he published this
old Edison : http://cdn2.sbnation.com/assets/3825565/intel-edison-560.jpg
new Edison : https://cdn.sparkfun.com//assets/parts/1/0/1/3/9/SparkFun_Edison_Boards-14.jpg

If you go back a couple years ago before the Raspberry Pi, there was no cheap ARM SOM and 50$ for the Edison is reasonable. A product similar is the Gumstix ( https://store.gumstix.com/index.php/category/33/ ) and it`s not that cheap. The Raspberry Pi B+ is 40$ (and you need an SD card) and the BBB rev C is 55$.

There is some more info on Raspberry Pi vs Edison in this article : https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1603

I think that for a product to be successful you need a good community. Raspberry Pi and Beagle Bone Black are successful. I don't hear too much about the hundreds of other ARM based SBCs.
UDOO 100-135$
Radxa Rock 80-100$
Humming Board (45$ i1 cheapest module half spec of Edison) 99$ i2ex SBC
Banana Pi 45$ + pricey shipping on Aliexpress

Perhaps you just don't like Thomas Edison

Heater.

I can't see anyway for normal "makers" to use an Edison module for less than 100 dollars. You need a break out board to mount the module on. You know, to get at GPIO, Ethernet etc.

At that point you have a more expensive and complex solution than say a Raspi. And it consumes more power, a real downer when it's embedded in your latest robot creation.

I'm not convinced the Edison is any faster than a Pi. Correct me if I am wrong.

Then you can't program the thing without a PC to connect it to.

Then it does not have all the fun of accelerated graphics.

I can't see an advantage to the Edison in this space.

Perhaps they should have called it the "Edsel"

FredBlais

There is no internal peripheral for Ethernet on the Edison, only WiFi.

I'm not sure it uses more power, here is the spec for the Edison :
Input 3.3 to 4.5 V
Output 100 ma @3.3 V and 100 ma @ 1.8 V
Power Standby (No radios): 13 mW
Standby (Bluetooth 4.0): 21.5 mW (BTLE in Q4-14)
Standby (Wi-Fi): 35 mW

According to the forums Rpi run between 1.5W and 2W

It's less powerful and no GPU. but then, you don't run a Desktop Environment with the Edison so you don't need fast computing. You need a PC to program it, like the Propeller.

Intel are getting better in the low power space, just take a look at the latest Chromebooks, the Bay Trail (Atom and Celeron) ones have battery life similar than the ones with ARM and have much better performance.

Heater.

It's hard to compare power consumption. In Chrome books, for example, I get the idea most of the power goes toward making the display visible. So the CPU load may get lost in the noise. I don't know.

Still, the Edison falls down on price and ease of use for the normal maker. I presume makers are the target audience, what with all this talk of Arduino compatibility. Seems like an expensive way to do what an 8 bit AVR can do already.

When it comes to serious low power "Internet Of Things" devices there are many other solutions out there already.

Let's see how things pan out here.

In the meanwhile I have my Propeller's, my Raspis, my Espruinos, and a bunch of other nice toys to play with.

FredBlais

I agree, the pricing and ease of use is not quite there yet. It's at least a step in the right direction from Intel. Maybe it's not the best solution for the maker because there are a ton of existing solutions available at lower cost. Nonetheless this module can be appealing to someone who is designing a 2 layer "baseboard" with the peripherals he wants and the Edison is a drop-in solution for a Linux computer with internet access.

jmg

FredBlais wrote: »

The Edison module changed a lot since he published this
old Edison : http://cdn2.sbnation.com/assets/3825565/intel-edison-560.jpg
new Edison : https://cdn.sparkfun.com//assets/parts/1/0/1/3/9/SparkFun_Edison_Boards-14.jpg

Intel also does this
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/galileo-maker-quark-board.html

but I agree they have great potential, but are slow to get things right.
The Galileo (-> Galileo Gen 2) has a good engine, but a totally strange choice for IO pathway
Looks like the CEO walked past an intern, and had an idea...

When intel gets around to doing the Galileo & Edison properly, they have great potential.
Even RaspPi is going through iterations, as they fix the mistakes....

A quick look at Edison, looks like intel did improve some things :
The 70 pin connector (low cost mate) they added gives decent IO, but no mention found of peak IO speeds ? - but certainly should avoid the i2c bottleneck of Gen1

Found some IO speed ceilings on Latest Edison
(edison-module_HG_331189-002.pdf)

All Edison I/O (with the exception of USB) uses 1.8 V signaling.

i2c ~ 100Khz, 400KHz and 3.4MHz
SD card, up to 50MHz (level shifters assumed)
UARTs ~ 64-byte buffer size, Baud rate from 300 bps to 3.686 Mbps.
SPI :~ 25 MHz Master mode, 16.67 MHz slave mode.(no QuadSPI?)
GPIO - Edge detect, > 100nS at 50MHz
I2S master 192K, 96K, 48K, 16K, 8K 16, 24b/Frame
I2S slave 192K, 96K, 48K, 44.1K 16, 24b/Frame
( ie I2S up to 9.216MBd?)

USB - not clear which of 1.5Mbps/12Mbps/480Mbps - but 480 is likely.

Some of those buses could be good for P1/P2/P1V links ?

Tubular

To me its the first Intel product in a while that's interesting. Having bluetooth *and* wifi 'sorted' makes the value well worthwhile, imho.

I made up a compact breakout board that I think is an improvement on the offerings from Intel. 2 micro usb connectors at left, micro sd header at right, aduino shield holes along the top. There's a few pads on the back for i2c or spi chips (rtc?).

It doesn't quite fit in a matchbox yet, but it will!...

jmg

Tubular wrote: »

To me its the first Intel product in a while that's interesting. Having bluetooth *and* wifi 'sorted' makes the value well worthwhile, imho.

I made up a compact breakout board that I think is an improvement on the offerings from Intel. 2 micro usb connectors at left, micro sd header at right, aduino shield holes along the top. There's a few pads on the back for i2c or spi chips (rtc?).

Looks cute.
The SO8 pads sound a good idea for quick testing of i2c and SPI routines - especially if they have isolate 0R jumpers.
.

FredBlais

@Tubular, wow that's great! Do you have your Edison yet? Where did you get the dimension to make the Edison footprint? That is mounting holes + connector position. If you did it with Diptrace, do you mind sharing the schematic and layout?

Tubular

Hi Fred
No edison yet, need to place an order with Mouser/Digikey soon, also the Hirose connector was out of stock before.
The dimension files - 2 sources, https://communities.intel.com/servlet/JiveServlet/previewBody/23158-102-4-27348/edison-module_HG_331189-002.pdf
and the attached zip has a dxf, and pdf version of that dxf.
I didn't use Diptrace, but from memory you can import a dxf so perhaps that will help. I don't mind sharing the layout but wouldn't mind checking it works and there aren't major mechanical clangers.

FredBlais

I was wondering... what is the trace width/clearance of your signals around the 70-pin connector? It's dual layer right?

Tubular

Yes its to suit OSHpark 2 layer, so 6 mil track and space where the tracks break out, and 27 mil vias with 13 mil holes

Bill Henning

FYI,

The Banana Pi is actually quite powerful, I have a review & benchmarks at

http://www.mikronauts.com/banana-pi/bpi-review/

My RoboPi (Propeller based) was designed for the Raspberry Pi, but works equally well on the Banana Pi.

http://www.mikronauts.com/raspberry-pi/robopi/

FredBlais wrote: »

Heater, that's a bit harsh saying it's junk...

the guy who wrote that article is wrong on many points. Linux is not running on the "pentium based" Quark. It's running in the dual core Atom. Also, I don`t see why someone would want to run headless Windows so this is a bit irrelevant. The Edison module changed a lot since he published this
old Edison : http://cdn2.sbnation.com/assets/3825565/intel-edison-560.jpg
new Edison : https://cdn.sparkfun.com//assets/parts/1/0/1/3/9/SparkFun_Edison_Boards-14.jpg

If you go back a couple years ago before the Raspberry Pi, there was no cheap ARM SOM and 50$ for the Edison is reasonable. A product similar is the Gumstix ( https://store.gumstix.com/index.php/category/33/ ) and it`s not that cheap. The Raspberry Pi B+ is 40$ (and you need an SD card) and the BBB rev C is 55$.

There is some more info on Raspberry Pi vs Edison in this article : https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1603

I think that for a product to be successful you need a good community. Raspberry Pi and Beagle Bone Black are successful. I don't hear too much about the hundreds of other ARM based SBCs.
UDOO 100-135$
Radxa Rock 80-100$
Humming Board (45$ i1 cheapest module half spec of Edison) 99$ i2ex SBC
Banana Pi 45$ + pricey shipping on Aliexpress

Perhaps you just don't like Thomas Edison