Electrical engineers continue to adopt single-board computers as a critical component

RE: Electrical engineers continue to adopt single-board computers as a critical component

Former Member — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 22:25:04 GMT

Cabe,

The iMX223-OLinuXino-MAXI description refers to a "Java Script" interpreter.

I think you mean "JavaScript". Java and JavaScript are two different languages

with a confusingly similar name. See for example

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/javascript/article.php/3470971/Java-vs-JavaScript.htm

RE: Electrical engineers continue to adopt single-board computers as a critical component

alababaju — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 18:19:34 GMT

Nice article!

I just want to point out that under the OlinuXino’s iMX223-OLinuXino-MAXI description, you wrote it has 64GB(instead of MB) of RAM! I wish! [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-d65750e3-4b7c-4b03-8847-e625f66db030/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]

RE: Electrical engineers continue to adopt single-board computers as a critical component

Former Member — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 19:13:31 GMT

Cabe,

Under the photo of the BBB, you wrote:

It does have some downfalls when it comes to some other boards, such as it doesn’t ship with any cables

Did you actually intend this to appear under the RPi photo instead? I believe the BBB comes with a USB cable,

which also serves as a power cable, but the RPi for $25/$35 comes completely unbundled without any USB, Ethernet, HDMI, or power cables.

RE: Electrical engineers continue to adopt single-board computers as a critical component

Former Member — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 19:09:06 GMT

Cabe,

Under the photo of the RPi, you wrote:

They have been used for a myriad of projects as well as a test-bed for manufacturing, quality control and certainly all facets of the product design phase. The reason they have become increasingly popular can be attributed to their compact stature, ease of use and adaptability, such as the ability to incorporate almost any OS (although Linux-based OS’s are the most popular) depending on the project.

I think this is intended to refer to all SBCs, not specifically the RPi, and if so, perhaps it would be better if moved ahead of the RPi photo, along with the other general SBC comments.

RE: Electrical engineers continue to adopt single-board computers as a critical component

Former Member — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 21:26:17 GMT

Hi Cabe,

Since the introduction of the Raspberry Pi (model A) back in 2011

The Model B came first (Feb 2012), and the Model A was introduced a year later,

in Feb 2013. http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-52938/l/raspberry-pi-model-a--now-available-in-eu

The BeagleBone was the SBC that was introduced in 2011.

Raspberry Pi, which has been used as a platform for everything from robotics to cost-effective satellites.

Do you have a reference for the satellite application? RPi isn't rad hardened, so generally not thought to be suitable for satellites.

Professor Simon Cox from the University of Southampton used 63 of the boards (housed in a LEGO rack) to build a supercomputer, known as Iridis-Pi to teach his students about parallel computing.

I think you really ought to put "supercomputer" in quotes, or say "cluster", since "supercomputer" has connotations of being fast, which this was not.

Do you have a reference on how it was used for teaching? I haven't seen any mention of it since the original photo-op, so I assume it probably didn't get much actual use.

RE: Electrical engineers continue to adopt single-board computers as a critical component

Former Member — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 20:13:11 GMT

Hi Cabe,

These are all great boards across a range of abilities that are great for anyone looking to start a variety of projects.

I'd also like to mention the Gumstix Pepper SBC. The board itself has a TI OMAP 3359 processor, support for 4.3" resisitive LCDs, 802.11 b/g/n wifi, bluetooth and gigabit ethernet. The kit includes the required power adapter, 8GB Yocto-installed SD card, and compatible 4.3" display to get things rolling.

RE: Electrical engineers continue to adopt single-board computers as a critical component

DAB — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 21:32:50 GMT

Hi Cabe,

Having lived through the microprocess evolution I can give you some perspective on these early kits.

One fun kit featured the 1802 8-bit processor, which was radiation hardened for aerospace use. Though not powerful, it gave engineers an introduction on how you can setup small control circuits for about 100 USD in the mid 1970's.

Another early single board computer was the Big Board, which sported a nice 2 Mhz Z-80 processor with full 64 Kbytes, video, keyboard and a floppy disk controller for 8 inch floppies. It ran CPM and was a very powerful system for the early 1980's. I used mine for software development and writing documents. Sent the fear of god into the secretaries. The thought of engineers doing their own documents and printing them without admin support made them extremely nervous.

In the early days, memory pricess were unbelievably high. An 8 Kword memory board costs about 8,000 USD.

For my Big Board computer, I spent about 100 USD for a black and white TV monitor, about 50 USD for a keyboard, about 1,000 USD for a dual floppy disk system and about 2500 USD for a good dot matrix printer.

So you can see why I get amazed when I see boards like the BBB running 1 Ghz clock cycles.

As the old TV ad said "We have come a long way baby!"

DAB