New Hardware - BeagleBoard-xM
Posted by Tijs | Posted in Beagleboard, Hardware | Posted on 08-11-2011
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I bought a BeagleBoard-xM! It is currently being shipped by DigiKey from the US. I will be using this for testing/research purposes to on this platform. Neat little embedded linux platform with some punch!
It will probably take a while to arrive, to test it and to get to know the platform. But if it all workes out as hoped this might be a new embedded computer platform for WeegNet B.V. Eventually I will probably move to the BeagleBone, but that one will become available at the of end of November (at Mouser). The first step with the -xM board is to get my GM862 GPRS module working with it to get a remote accessible embedded computer. After that there is a long road to go to get to a final workable product, but it will be interesting!
More updates on this will follow, so I've made this the first 'project' post!
BeagleBoard-xM Featurelist
The upcoming BeagleBone
GM862 Quad-Band GPRS Module
http://www.gizmag.com/fxi-cotton-candy/20548/ even smaller!
Ha! Indeed.
But the size was definitely not a major factor in choosing the BeagleBoard/ne. These are reasons why the Beagle is interesting to me:
* Openhardware: By chosing an open-hardware project I'm sure that nothing remains behind the curtain for me. At first this means that I can get a lot of insight into how this thing works. But later it might mean that if I need some feature and nobody else implements it, I should, atleast in theory be able to do it myself.
* Connectivity: The Beagle family is design from ground up to allow for any kind of daughterboard. Most of the CPU signals (be it straight data, PWM outputs, SPI, or whatever) is exported on several headers. This means that whatever I wish to connect to it, atleast I already started with the pins available for it.
* Availability: There are several open-hardware boards available (FriendlyARM to name one, of which I have two here). The problems with open-hardware is that it is a community-effort; Normally when some company wants to develop product X, agreements are made with the parts manufactures to make sure that each part is A. available in quantities needed to sustain the product demand and B. that those parts will be available for a certain time, the product's expected life-span. The community, up till now has not tried to make or were not able to make this agreement. Subsequently, getting vast amounts of boards or having in any kind of certainty that the boards will be available in the far (or worse, near!) future can prove to be hard. These boards are therefor very good for some hacker-home-use. But trying to build on them when running a company is certainly a bad idea. You simply can't make true what your users want you to promise. Beagle has overcome this problem by developing this board in cooperation with Texas Instruments. What they've done is make an agreement that they'd use TI parts and that TI will deliver those parts for at least 10 years to come (See beagleboard.org/bone, What does this mean for the future of the BeagleBoard and the BeagleBoard-xM?). This makes things a lot more promising for semi-serious usage.
* Size-of-userbase: Because of the above mentioned benefits and because of the high 'hackability' the group of people using this part if fairly large. This means that a lot of problems have already been solved for you and that future problems won't leave you standing on your own.
* Price: Not such a big factor in the end product. But never-the-less its nice to have a board available at USD 79.
* And at last, Size: for obvious reasons.
Hope that answers your comment. There will be several alternatives available, now and in the future. But specs alone just don't always decide the whole thing. This is something I almost learned the hard way.
http://www.gizmag.com/raspberry-pi-production-confirmed/21370/