Cases for embedded appliances

Hi,

I'm working on a small devices, with some simple requirements. The software is mostly done, so we're ready to move over to testing it on an embedded board of some sort. The board will be running linux.

I'm trying to find out the best way to get our code onto a piece of hardware that we can sell as a small-volume project. We would like this to be in a small appliance sized device (non-rackmountable. something around the size of a small router, or a tivo, something like that)

Our needs: CPU - at least 300MHz, maybe more RAM - not sure. 64MB minimum (maybe less, but we'll see) Network - at least one 10/100 interface, maybe 2 Video - none. Disk - we need 120GB or more of storage

I would also like a small flash disk for storing the OS, etc.

Ideally, i would get boxes in the mail with these specs, load my code, stick a logo on them, and mail them out.

So, who should I talk to?

I'm looking to get prototypes for testing within the next week or two.

Suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

--buddy

Reply to
Buddy Smith
Loading thread data ...

Hi,

I'm working on a project which needs to be made into an appliance-like device.

The software is mostly done, so we're ready to move over to testing it on an embedded board of some sort. The board will be running linux.

I'm trying to find out the best way to get our code onto a piece of hardware that we can sell in small volumes. We would a small appliance sized device (non-rackmountable. something around the size of a small router, or a tivo, something like that)

Our needs: CPU - at least 300MHz, maybe more RAM - not sure. 64MB minimum (maybe less, but we'll see) Network - at least one 10/100 interface, maybe 2 Video - none. Disk - we need 120GB or more of storage

I would also like a small flash disk for storing the OS, etc.

Ideally, i would get boxes in the mail with these specs, load my code, stick a logo on them, and mail them out.

So, who should I talk to?

I'm looking to get prototypes for testing within the next week or two.

Suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

--buddy

Reply to
Buddy Smith

The cheapest and most energy saving, IMO, are the VIA boards.

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Have alook at the VIA EPIA M series. The 1GHz board has a comparable speed of 500MHz and when running Linux, draws less than 10W when mostly idle. When running Win2k, the idle consumption is 40W.

Rene

--
Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com
& commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net
Reply to
Rene Tschaggelar

Are you sure? We measure about 15W running Win98se.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

For a form-factor like you describe, you will probably wind up doing your own board. While commodity "PC" hardware is incredibly cheap, moving one degree from mainstream becomes instantly very expensive. For instance, look at prices of embedded form factors (ETX, for instance) versus microATX.

So, my advice is that unless you are doing something that can look exactly like a PC -- including having a VGA connector, keyboard, and mouse on there to get access to the BIOS -- go ahead and take the bull by the horns and do your own integrated PCB.

Reply to
Ian McBride

An interesting idea. A definite disadvantage of the VIA boards is that they constantly change the content of the board. The follow up tends to have a different VGA chipset, different cpu, and so on. Other manufacturers such as the mentioned bcmcom, might have more constancy. Doing your own board means doing a layout for hundreds of MHz, not everyones speciality. Plus it means making your own BIOS. And if your board is not PC compatible, debugging on the target is much harder too.

Did you do your own board ?

Rene

--
Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com
& commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net
Reply to
Rene Tschaggelar

Ian McBride wrote: : So, my advice is that unless you are doing something that can look exactly : like a PC -- including having a VGA connector, keyboard, and mouse on there : to get access to the BIOS -- go ahead and take the bull by the horns and do : your own integrated PCB. : :

Two issues -

1) I've never done PCB design myself, so we'd have to hire another contractor to do it

2) The volume is low enough that this would be WAAAYYY too costly. Maybe if we knew we could sell a million of them it'd be worth it :)

ttyl,

--buddy

Reply to
Buddy Smith

It made sense for us, at about 2000 units a year. We have PCB people, but you can budget $1-$2 per pin for layout, and maybe 120 hours at $85/hour to create a schematic for this type of thing, assuming you have a solid set of requirements.

In our case, we left the X86 architecture for this, though, going instead to a high-integration Motorola PowerPC microprocessor running ucLinux. Fortunately, we recompiled our code and "it just worked," but this is not always the case. I'll admit that rolling your own 32-bit x86 board is a real pain. The local bus is basically undocumented and hideously complex and you have to rely on you chipset to do everything.

Tivo is a good example of a "near PC." A tivo equivalent can be run on a linux PC, but the company went with their own IBM PowerPC board to save cost. And this cost is not just cost of goods, it is cost of support. For a consumer application, embedded PC's are difficult to lock down and easy to screw with. I've seen service calls on $100K+ systems based on a PC and found the problem is because the customer figured out he could install MP3 filesharing software on it and use it to build his music library. It takes much less of a knucklehead than this to touch some bios setting and then you're explaining how to connect a VGA monitor and keyboard to get past some "Hit F2 Key To Continue" screen.

I'm not say> : So, my advice is that unless you are doing something that can look

exactly

there

do

Reply to
Ian McBride

Which is why you ask the EPC vendor to give you a BIOS with customized defaults - including the password. If the consumer happens to destroy CMOS in any way, he just gets two beeps on powerup instead of one - and the boot process continues unmolested.

Many embedded PC applications don't give the user a way to access any of this stuff anyway - no keyboard.

Embedded PCs make good sense for some applications, particularly low-volume applications. Development time is *drastically* reduced, for instance.

Reply to
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

I don't remember the figure, but this was definitely not cheap, at least (I think) in the case of Ampro. But yep, an embedded PC can be a tradeoff in cost per unit versus development cost. In our case, it wound up being an inexpensive way to a dozen or so prototypes, but we still had the bite the bullet after that.

Reply to
Ian McBride

The reason we deal with BCM and Advantech is that they are almost an order of magnitude cheaper, in some cases, than other vendors. Many of the EPC vendors are selling the *exact* same product (OEMed in some cases) for 2-3 times the price that you can buy it from these two vendors. Daylight robbery.

Anyway - Assuming you're willing to flash the BIOS yourself during software preload, the NREs for a simple BIOS customization (custom CMOS defaults, maybe a boot logo) range from free to $2500. It's more expensive if you want them to preload your BIOS onto the boards.

Reply to
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

This is interesting. How many BIOSs give you the flexibility to route their screen display to a serial port instead of a VGA console? I've got an EPC with no keyboard, mouse, or screen.

Reply to
James Dabbs

This isn't a feature we have ever asked for. That would probably be a "full custom" BIOS. The features I was talking about - boot logo, CMOS defaults, some PnP tweaking - are all really just a matter of running a BIOS-vendor-supplied binary merge / feature editor utility to bring modules together.

How often do you need this, anyway? As soon as your OS starts, the BIOS probably isn't handling the "console" anyway - your OS is. So the only real use is setting up CMOS defaults and seeing POST messages... no?

Reply to
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

their

IIRC, CP/M used a serial port as the primary monitor connection.

Old-style MSDOS had a CTTY command that routed text output to and received text input from a serial port.

Reply to
Richard Henry

Hi Buddy,

I can recommend our new net4801, check it out on

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It might meet your needs, but the CPU is only 266Mhz now and as the standard case only take 2.5" drives, the HD is currently limited to 80 Gbyte.

But if I have to say it myself, it's a very nice unit and in 6 months

2.5" drives would probably hit 120 Gbyte....

Regards,

Soren Kristensen

Buddy Smith wrote:

Reply to
Soren Kristensen

The Motorola MBX2000 had a bios that did this. You selected it with a Jumper, and you could buy the board without a VGA controller.

To bad Motorola cancelled it.

their

Reply to
Ian McBride

I have dealt with VME processor boards from (former) "or Industrial Computers" that did this. It was Award BIOS and the feature was rather buggy.

Vadim

Reply to
Vadim Borshchev

their

I don't know how many but JKMicro makes at least one board that does this. It works flawlessly in my prototpying. In fact there is no video port on the 386Ex model I'm working with, uFlashTCP.

Reply to
DM McGowan II

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