Hardware to prototype on?

Question

I am looking for some suggestions on a hardware platform that I need for prototyping. The requirements are:

- First and foremost, needs to be easy to develop software for. IE: it should be free to develop software, be easy to download code to, not require tons of setup time...

- Hardware wise, it needs to support 2 serial ports preferably, some sort of flash storage, and some sort of input mechanism on the hardware itself

- Does not need to be graphics based, the software I need to write can be pure text

- Flash memory greater than 8MB

- A way to get files written to flash off to an external PC

- Battery powered

- Does not need to be terribly fast.. logging short strings at 100Hz max.

- Preferably easy to obtain used, so it's cheap... but not a must.

- Linux supported is always a plus, but not a must again.

This will be used as a prototype for a datalogging application. I would need to write a program that listens on both serial ports, and simply datalogs the serial text to files in flash memory. The input method (touch screen, keypad, etc..) would be used to start/stop logging by interacting with the program. Once datalogging is done, the files would be transferred to an external PC.

I am guessing some sort of cell phone or PDA, but there are so many that I was hoping to get suggestions on some commonly used ones. I currently have the prototype system using a laptop as the datalogger, but it's time to shrink it down so the system is a little more mobile.

Ideas?

Joel Koltner · Accepted Answer

[reading]Mmm... Linksys NSLU2?  Re-program it with, e.g., OpenWRT.  One serial port built in, has a bunch of USB ports on it that you can hang a second serial port off of and a huge memory stick.  They're ~$60 on eBay (ironically, they've been going up in price now that Linksys no longers makes them.)For software development, you can realistically write your code in C, C++, Perl, Python, shell scripts, etc. -- it has enough memory and CPU to support this.More along the PDA path: A Nokia N800.  They were ~$220 new, although they appear to have just been discontinued as well.  Contains two SDHC memory slots, and you'd need to take the one USB port, run it to a hub, and then add your two serial ports.  Perhaps not really the best approach -- you're paying a lot of money there for a nice touchscreen LCD and WiFi that you wouldn't be using?---Joel

turban2k · Answer

portlhmm, very interesting, but I don't think it's battery powered, is it??Doesn't look like it is... and I was just about to post.. I left outthe implicit requirement that it needs a screen :),ortheyy addpayingt beOk, but this at least fits the bill a little more.... USB port isn't aproblem, that's a good way to augment the serial ports. Do you knowanything about SW dev. on this platform though??

Hardware to prototype on?

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