seeking dev board with eth/wifi/serial

I'm looking for a development board to run a fairly simple bit of logic between a number of interfaces (10/100 Ethernet, wifi (802.11b is fine), and >=2 serial ports). The application itself won't need a huge amount of RAM or flash; driving the interfaces is going to be the biggest load. It's going to be plugged into the mains so power isn't an issue. Ideally, it will have the rare qualities of both rapid prototyping and ease of translation into a cheaply manufacturable board :) The latter is something I don't have much experience of, so any tips would be great ;)

My feeling is that the application won't require a full OS, but that a linux-on-arm solution (although heavyweight) might be best, as the network stacks etc will be there already and it'll be easy to bring up and extensible if we need it. If I went for a low end micro core, I'd still need to fit the network stacks in somewhere (FPGA? integrated modules like DIGI ME?).

I've seen Gumstix mentioned, and they do seem to have a nice set of little boards, although I guess the compact flash WIFI solution might take a bit of modification for our ultimate requirements. I've also looked at Cirrus's ARM9-based systems, which would mean USB -> wifi; again, I worry that this might be a pain when we are doing a slick transition to our own manufacture-grade board. On a non-ARM linux front, the Axis 82+ boards might do what I want, but I don't know anyone with experience of those - would anyone rec them or otherwise?

Any other suggestions of boards or manufacturers to try very gratefully received :)

Thanks in advance,

Laurie

Reply to
Laurie James
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Hi Laurie

At gumstix, we are working on a wifi expansion board. This may give you the solution that you need. The product is unnannounced at this time, so I cannot give you more details but this may suit your "ultimate requirements". You may contact me, don at gumstix.com, for more.

Don

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Laurie James wrote:

Reply to
donnay1234

I've been working with a TritonLP with a DPAC ethernet to wireless bridge with reasonably good results.

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A combination of these might work if you can't find a single board with all the required interfaces.

Mark Borgerson

Reply to
Mark Borgerson

. . .

Here's an idea that should appeal to the hacker and cheapskate in everyone: what about using a Linksys WRT54G wireless router as a cheap platform? It's not a really big PCB, or you could just use in the orignal case. 200MHz MIPS processor, some RAM and some Flash, wireless adapter, Ethernet if you ever needed it, plenty of documentation and examples online, and CHEAP compared to many other not-as-popular devices.

Oh, you needed serial ports? The WRT54G has those too. Here's a guide on how to access them. Soldering required.

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Reply to
cbm5

How would you use that though to load and run code onto the board? Is there info or an SDK for the router?

Reply to
x86asm

It runs Linux...

Regards, Mark

Reply to
Mark McDougall

Sorry, it was not mentioned in his post or on the website. Have you tried this modification yourself?

Reply to
x86asm

I have loaded custom Linux firmware on my router and done a little tweaking, but as it's currently sitting on my 6Mbps internet connection I don't want to take it down long enough to kill it permanently. ;-)

But I can SSH in and mess with the OS, certainly could drop a custom daemon or two for random things. Don't have the link handy but someone did put an LCD on one. Linksys released the source, you see, because someone figured out it was running Linux and Linksys didn't feel like stirring up a bunch of nerds.

Caveat: The WRT54G was downgraded to 16MB RAM and 2MB Flash as of Revision 5. It also runs VxWorks instead of Linux. I believe some very slimmed versions of Linux will work, but most firmware hackers are moving to the WRT54GS and the WRT54GL, both have enhanced flash and RAM, but carry a $20-ish higher pricetag.

On many of the Linksys firmware websites you will also see other routers mentioned. Apparently the guts of a lot of routers are almost identical, the wireless and CPU and Ethernet chipset being sold as a bundle to multiple manufacturers. Very similar to the way Nvidia and ATI card technology is used, they pretty much use the reference design and call it good.

That may also be good news if you plan to commercialize this product. Depends on how big you are planning to go.

Reply to
cbm5

Thanks for all the replies :)

I don't think the Linksys hack will work for our application, alas :)

For anyone else looking for similar systems, I'm currently looking at the following:

gumstix modules combination

Cirrus EVB9302 (offering 2 USB host + 10/100 eth + 2 uart)

Axis 82+ (not ARM-based; looks fine as a linux system except AFAICT the USB host might not work under a 2.6 kernel. 2 10/100 ports, 1 USB host)

simtec.co.uk EB2410ITX (Samsung, ARM9 SOC, going for the low spec Bronze system)

Technologic/embeddedarm.com TS-7250 or TS-2000 (same chip as the Cirrus)

Cheers,

Laurie

Reply to
Laurie James

Good suggestion, however beware that as of February 2006 many stores only have the new version 5 WRT54G and WRT54Gs which do not have enough flash and ram to run linux - they are using a smaller vxworks system. The 3rd party firmware websites tell you the serial numbers (all you can see without opening the box) that go with each version.

Reply to
cs_posting

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