Hawkboard Review / Part-1
By Gregory M Brettell
I was stoked when I found out that I had won a Hawkboard on the element-14 website! I also received some element-14 ‘swag’ (slang for freebees) including pens, post-it pads, T-shirt, and a USB hub … thanks! That was totally unexpected but much appreciated.
This board is loaded with the 14th element (Silicon). I’ll be spending countless hours exploring and learning about all of the functions and capabilities of this unit.
For starters, I have been reading anything I can about this board in order to familiarize myself with it. Below, is a block diagram from the schematics which I found useful as an overview of the Hawkboard. As you can see, it includes just about every interface under the sun … tons of I/O!
Hawkboard is an open-hardware project which uses Texas Instrument's (TI) OMAP(open multimedia application platform) Processor(OMAPL-L138). It has both a DSP and an ARM Processor … reference: http://elinux.org/Hawkboard
First impressions, I am very excited to experiment with the Hawkboard. This board is well constructed and is very densely populated with a plethora of electronics.
Part 2 of my review will include some screen-shots of the Hawkboard in action and a more in-depth look at what it can do. It is going to take quite a bit of time to thoroughly explore this unit. Thankyou element-14 for giving me this opportunity to review the Hawkboard.
