Beginning Embedded Development

I think Ben gave the wrong impression there, as I have more than enough PCs in my house as it is, so gettting one to dev on wouldn't be a problem. When Ben stated "number of functions" he meant that we want the SBC to be as generic as possible not that we wanted to use the SBC as a general PC.

What we are looking is a SBC with as many Features as possible in the sense of USB, ethernet ports etc at minimum cost (we are only starting out so dont want to commit too much cash to it in case we decide its not for us =A3100-=A3150 is not unreasonable imo but much more than that and its a no go.) so that we can do multiple projects on it without having to go out and buy a new SBC each time.

The specs we agreed it should have as min:

200Mhz CPU 32Mb RAM (we would prefer 64 but that is price dependant) 256Mb On board flash (we could get away with smaller but I'd rather start big and scale down, although a board that uses SD cards instead is also acceptable). 2x USB host ports (minimum, 4 at most) 1x Ethernet port (Again *if* we could find one with 2 that would be better as one of the projects we had in mind was a network based one) case (if possible to protect the board (from my tea addiction :) ) )

I realise I may not even get all that with our budget, everything except the 2 USB ports and the ethernet port can be adjusted to keep the price down.

The main reason for a desire to learn embedded programing comes from the very low power overhead of an embedded system.

Thanks to all that have taken the time to reply.

We are still looking at boards but hopefully we can decide which one to use soon..

Reply to
Pvt Ryan
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Thanks to everyone for their replies so far.

I'd like to reiterate Ryan's point...we're both awash with PCs...and are looking for a new challenge. This isn't an exercise in trying to develop something on the cheap - it's simply a case of not throwing away several hundred quid each on something that's not going to do what we want - we're trying to do our research first to make sure we get the right gear first time.

Thanks again for your replies

Ben

Reply to
ben.norris

Take a look at

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especially
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and
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If you want to create something similar to the NSLU2, you could begin with one. To add other USB ports, you could simply take a (relatively cheap) USB hub, strip any casing and include it into the box; something like in:

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This is for the EEE PC, though.

I don't think you will get your do-it-yourself-solution any cheaper than this. Because - what others said - you won't get a board with the components you'd like for anything like 100$ ; and even with a budget of 200$ you'd be severely limited.

You can, of course, do with the NSLU2 whatever you would do with your custom board. And, as it's ARM architecture, it's a real embedded device. Not to forget - it is supported by a known Linux distribution, which means, that, if you don't have the time or the will to develop any further, you can still get a working and usable system.

Best regards, Sebastian

Reply to
Sebastian

Hi,

As a wee bit of confusion seems to be creeping in, £100-£150 is equivalent to $200-£300 today (Thursday).

Sorry, no suggestions on hardware as we use our own here.

HTH, John McCallum, Edinburgh

Reply to
John McCallum

Hey Ryan and Ben,

I'm currently working on a project based on an Atmel AT91SAM9260 ARM9 processor and am very happy with it so far. There is a great deal of active development going on with this processor family, and it's fairly well supported in Linux. There is also a very active community of developers on this platform at

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and on the ARM-Linux mailing list. I'm using the development board supplied by Atmel, which is quite expensive, but Olimex has recently released a board which fits most of your requirements:
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. The board includes a working Linux binary for initial experimentation (though you'll inevitably want to get your own custom kernel working) and at EURO 140, is well within your price range. It only has a single USB host port, but you can get a cheap USB hub to expand it if need be.

Knowledge. I recommend you purchase a few books on embedded Linux development. I can personally recommend Linux Device Drivers, which you can read online for free at

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(though I prefer a hard copy) and Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love (this is not specific to embedded Linux, so your prior Linux experience may be enough). I'm also currently reading Linux Appliance Design by Bob Smith et al and have found it incredibly useful so far. It gives an excellent description of a typical embedded Linux system with lots of tips that you just can't find online (believe me, I've looked).

The Linux documentation project (

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), various mailing lists, linuxjournal.com, kerneltrap.org, kernelnewbies.org, linuxdevices.com, Usenet (which you're obviously aware of already), and I'm sure there are tons more.

Good luck and have fun! Alex

Reply to
okalex

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