the raspberry PI at the core of a future machine?

[Aziz]

Grow up moodz, the Arduino platform is the most established platform for learning microprocessors. It's not meant to be cutting edge, the platform was conceived for learning. How about comparing the chip found on the Uno32 with Atmel's Cortex 9M line, the one with the integrated LCD controller, which also has a dedicated hardware HD video decoder (http://www.atmel.com/devices/SAM9M10.aspx). At 400Mhz, the Atmel SAM9M10 ...absolutely creams the Microchip DSP parts...

Pin Count: 324
Ouch!

I'm using the 1.6 GHz Atom CPU with the in-built 64-bit floating point unit. It absolutely creams all of them. Next time, I'll use the 2x1.6 GHz dual-core Atom CPU.


Hey, all the stuff is waste of time & money. You can do it much cheaper and faster.

Aziz

[jon-ecm]

XMos XS1-L1

Honestly you guys really make me laugh. Interesting discussion though,
$25 seems very cheap for a complete board. I've thought of using the gumstick board for my machine (similar to the rasberry pi) but decided that starting from scratch would be faster and lend itself to a better end product.

Anyways after that's said I thought I'd add 1 more to the growing list.

XMOS XS1-L1, I've been using it very successfully in my home brew pi machine (xpi) after moving from an FPGA.
The device is plenty powerful, it dose over 4 32 bit threads at 100 mips each and will support up to 8 threads at 50 mips each.
I have it averaging 24, 16 bit samples during the flyback decay and doing all the math on them + sound synth and user interface with no trouble at all!
but the real selling point of this processor is how EASY it is to program for, everything is easily programmed in c with no performance draw backs whatsoever and no bloated kernel overhead, it is a totally new approach to mcu's and the architecture is very different from conventional mcu's. You guys should really look into them a bit.

here's a link to there site http://www.xmos.com/products/silicon+devices


P.S. I am not biased against linux, all of my computers run it and I've used it extensively in embedded design projects but it adds allot of unneeded overhead and I am not biased against avr's or pic's but from my experience they just arn't on the same level of performance although the pic32 and avr32 are getting close

[simonbaker]

Honestly you guys really make me laugh. Interesting discussion though,
$25 seems very cheap for a complete board. I've thought of using the gumstick board for my machine (similar to the rasberry pi) but decided that starting from scratch would be faster and lend itself to a better end product.

Anyways after that's said I thought I'd add 1 more to the growing list.

XMOS XS1-L1, I've been using it very successfully in my home brew pi machine (xpi) after moving from an FPGA.
The device is plenty powerful, it dose over 4 32 bit threads at 100 mips each and will support up to 8 threads at 50 mips each.
I have it averaging 24, 16 bit samples during the flyback decay and doing all the math on them + sound synth and user interface with no trouble at all!
but the real selling point of this processor is how EASY it is to program for, everything is easily programmed in c with no performance draw backs whatsoever and no bloated kernel overhead, it is a totally new approach to mcu's and the architecture is very different from conventional mcu's. You guys should really look into them a bit.

here's a link to there site http://www.xmos.com/products/silicon+devices


P.S. I am not biased against linux, all of my computers run it and I've used it extensively in embedded design projects but it adds allot of unneeded overhead and I am not biased against avr's or pic's but from my experience they just arn't on the same level of performance although the pic32 and avr32 are getting close

Thanks for the reference -- another good one for a sticky "parts bin" page I wish we had and could add to.

-SB

[moodz]

moodz, you're killing me.

If you depend on using true Arduino sketches, your board will continue to "litter your workbench." Indeed, even if you are able to compile them, your board would not be able to drive the "blinking LEDs" programs you make so fun off (here's a hint: the uno32 can't drive the current -ironic that you should even bring that up!).

I will not get into a platform war with you considering that the Arduino platform is an established platform dating back several years now with more users and support than anything you can counter.

It's not fair to compare the newer chips found on the Uno32 with the ones used in the Arduino. Five years ago Microchip was making crap, and if you really want to be fair, how about finding a board from the same time period to challenge the hardware.

There will be a successor to the original Uno, and it's looking like it's going to bring an end to your comparisons considering that the likely hardware used in the successor will likely make anything from Microchip's DSP line like yesterday's hardware. Of course support from the Arduino's install base will follow, And this continue support will likely further enrage people like yourself (Microchip's aggressive PR machine is cut throat).

Anyway, according to your misconceptions about Arduino hardware, I would not be able to do what I would be doing in regards to DSP with the processor I currently use in my online projects, which incidentally is used in Arduino platform. Yes I will be using FFT, and no, the processor is not 24bit. However, it's certainly more than enough to tackle the difficult, processor-intensive calculations that will be required to do what needs to be done.

Grow up moodz, the Arduino platform is the most established platform for learning microprocessors. It's not meant to be cutting edge, the platform was conceived for learning. How about comparing the chip found on the Uno32 with Atmel's Cortex 9M line, the one with the integrated LCD controller, which also has a dedicated hardware HD video decoder (http://www.atmel.com/devices/SAM9M10.aspx). At 400Mhz, the Atmel SAM9M10 ...absolutely creams the Microchip DSP parts...

Mario ... get over it .... the thread starter was asking for an opinion on a board for PI use at a price point of around $25. I offered my ***opinion*** .... a alternative 32 bit chip on a board with some software dev tools that is suitable for PI use and it is in production....no more no less.

I think most people will agree that the technical forums on this site are not the place for trading personal insults.

moodz

[moodz]

Honestly you guys really make me laugh. Interesting discussion though,
$25 seems very cheap for a complete board. I've thought of using the gumstick board for my machine (similar to the rasberry pi) but decided that starting from scratch would be faster and lend itself to a better end product.

Anyways after that's said I thought I'd add 1 more to the growing list.

XMOS XS1-L1, I've been using it very successfully in my home brew pi machine (xpi) after moving from an FPGA.
The device is plenty powerful, it dose over 4 32 bit threads at 100 mips each and will support up to 8 threads at 50 mips each.
I have it averaging 24, 16 bit samples during the flyback decay and doing all the math on them + sound synth and user interface with no trouble at all!
but the real selling point of this processor is how EASY it is to program for, everything is easily programmed in c with no performance draw backs whatsoever and no bloated kernel overhead, it is a totally new approach to mcu's and the architecture is very different from conventional mcu's. You guys should really look into them a bit.

here's a link to there site http://www.xmos.com/products/silicon+devices


P.S. I am not biased against linux, all of my computers run it and I've used it extensively in embedded design projects but it adds allot of unneeded overhead and I am not biased against avr's or pic's but from my experience they just arn't on the same level of performance although the pic32 and avr32 are getting close

LOL ....its all fun toasting your marshmellows next to the fire ( or should I say flame ).

That is a cool device you have picked out there and the price is right ...$7.50 at digikey .. Like Simon says it is one for the nice parts list. It would be a killer as the backing DSP processor to an FPGA ... with a 24 bit front end ADC direct sampling PI at 4 MSPS which I have in mind. Though what you have done is excellent .. make no mistake... it is always interesting to see the application of the newer devices.

cheers moodz.

[moodz]

Pin Count: 324
Ouch!

I'm using the 1.6 GHz Atom CPU with the in-built 64-bit floating point unit. It absolutely creams all of them. Next time, I'll use the 2x1.6 GHz dual-core Atom CPU.


Hey, all the stuff is waste of time & money. You can do it much cheaper and faster.

Aziz

Hey Aziz .. what model board are you using..

moodz.

[Aziz]

Hey Aziz .. what model board are you using..

moodz.

The ASUS Eee PC 901 (Netbook).
On-board LC display (color)
On-board blue-tooth
On-board WiFi
On-board keyboard
On-board SSD
On-board sound
On-board O/S (Win-XP)
On-board Li-Ion + Charger
...

Aziz

[target]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...ng-hiccup.html

[apaulsalerno]

49.00 O-scope w/ micro-controller,signal generator and logic analyzer

Has anyone seen the Gabotronics line-up?

The Xprotolab is the first mixed signal oscilloscope with an arbitrary waveform generator in a DIP module. It measures only 1 x 1.6 inches, and can be mounted directly on a breadboard. The Xprotolab can also be used as a development board for the AVR XMEGA microcontroller. The Xprotolab uses an ATXMEGA32A4 microcontroller, it uses the internal ADC with up to 2MS/s and the internal DAC for the arbitrary waveform generator of 1MS/s.

This might be worth looking at as a development platform.

http://www.gabotronics.com/developme...-xprotolab.htm

• Mixed Signal Oscilloscope: Simultenaous sampling of analog and digital signals.
• Advanced Trigger: Normal / Single / Auto, with rising or falling edge and adjustable trigger level.
• Meter Mode: Average, Peak to peak and Frequency readout.
• XY Mode (Plot Lissajous patterns or see the phase difference between two waveforms). 200Khz scope bandwidth.
• Spectrum Analyzer with different windowing options and selectable vertical log.
• Horizontal and Vertical Cursors with automatic waveform measurements.
• Arbitrary Waveform Generator with Frequency Sweep.
• Display options: Persistence, Different grid options, and more.

Even as an add on meter to an existing MD it would make a nice display and could provide a ton of usefull information like Rx, Tx, audio, output power to the coil, consumed power, battery level. I dont know enough about these machines to know what information would be valuable in determining a target ID, but maybe this would help?

[jon-ecm]

Has anyone seen the Gabotronics line-up?

The Xprotolab is the first mixed signal oscilloscope with an arbitrary waveform generator in a DIP module. It measures only 1 x 1.6 inches, and can be mounted directly on a breadboard. The Xprotolab can also be used as a development board for the AVR XMEGA microcontroller. The Xprotolab uses an ATXMEGA32A4 microcontroller, it uses the internal ADC with up to 2MS/s and the internal DAC for the arbitrary waveform generator of 1MS/s.

This might be worth looking at as a development platform.

http://www.gabotronics.com/developme...-xprotolab.htm

• Mixed Signal Oscilloscope: Simultenaous sampling of analog and digital signals.
• Advanced Trigger: Normal / Single / Auto, with rising or falling edge and adjustable trigger level.
• Meter Mode: Average, Peak to peak and Frequency readout.
• XY Mode (Plot Lissajous patterns or see the phase difference between two waveforms). 200Khz scope bandwidth.
• Spectrum Analyzer with different windowing options and selectable vertical log.
• Horizontal and Vertical Cursors with automatic waveform measurements.
• Arbitrary Waveform Generator with Frequency Sweep.
• Display options: Persistence, Different grid options, and more.

Even as an add on meter to an existing MD it would make a nice display and could provide a ton of usefull information like Rx, Tx, audio, output power to the coil, consumed power, battery level. I dont know enough about these machines to know what information would be valuable in determining a target ID, but maybe this would help?

Yeah I purchased one of those when they were first released. The display is awesome!
Things might have changed since I bought it but when I got mine only part of the code was made available.
Also from personal experience getting 2Msps from the onboard ADC's at full 12bit resolution is a big pain. It has onboard DMA and memory mapping is complex on them. There are several tweaks that you have to do to get the full throughput which is only available when programming in ASM and not possible in C.
I don't remember all the details because it's been too long since I've used these chips but there was some performance degradation when using the ADC's in single shot mode.
I've heard that some of the issues with the ADC and DMA were fixed in the new 'u' series of the chip but I haven't used them to know.

If you were going to use them on a PI MD some substantial changes would have to be made to the analog part of things.

Again the display is simply awesome!

Just my 2c

Jon - http://www.miymd.com

[Davor]

Wonders never stop
I'll surely try to iron everything in analogue stages and have only a slow and easy signal out, so that my WinCE GPS can use it. Platform this - platform that ... at best they survived in magazine ads for a year or two. (I'm being sarcastic)

[der_fisherman]

I agree.

This Raspberry Pi board is awesome for video/audio projects, but could never replace a full feature microprocessor. It is essentially lacking basic features that we have taken for granted like ADC and timers.

Although it does have a timer, it only has one, so your options of implementing multiple feature support for something useful (like quadrature decoding) is extremely limited to just one.

Also, if you are interested in getting started with microprocessors, and using the Arduino platform, I would never recommend the Uno32.

The Arduino platform is a closed system, so the "sketches" written for the true "Uno " will always have issues running on other platforms.

The bit banged Arduino IDE (development software) used in the UNO32 will always have compatibility issues with Arduino written programs - even more so now that the final Arduino IDE 1 has been released.

My advice, stick to the original Uno if you want Arduino. Otherwise, use the development tools that were written for your platform. Microchip development software is good enough to stand on its own.

I would be interested in your opinion of this:-
http://www.microchip.com/pagehandler...-Platform.html
It appears to be 100% Arduino compatible but 32 bit, therefore more power and still reasonably priced.....
---------------------------
Later.
Moodz got there first!!!

[Mustafa]

A few more options:

PIC32-PINGUINO-MICRO https://www.olimex.com/dev/pic32-pinguino-micro.html


iMX233-OLinuXino-Micro http://www.olimex.com/dev/imx233-olinuxino-micro.html


PIC32-PINGUINO-OTG https://www.olimex.com/dev/pic32-pinguino-otg.html


NXP's LPC USB ARM Cortex M0/M3 Microcontroller Breakout Board http://squonk42.github.com/USBug/

[mario]

How time has passed.

Here 's a list of 39(!!) low cost development boards.

Most are ARM based boards running at no less than 800Mhz, making the chips from Microchip/Atmel irrelevant for computing tasks.

You want a board that runs the Android SDK or Linux.

My personal favorite : the BeagleBone. This board features a core from Ti, running at 800Mhz, with traditional peripherals like timers and ADC.

Don't forget to bookmark!

http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/06/...-and-products/

[target]

http://www.itpro.co.uk/643555/raspbe...memory-upgrade

raspberry now has more memory for the same price

A new version of the Raspberry Pi has been unveiled, featuring double the amount of memory but for the same £29.95 price tag.

The Model B variety will now come with 512MB instead of 256MB. The extra memory will allow the computer to run Android 4.0 as an operating system.

“The extra memory also enables higher performance applications and services - there is real potential to do things like add a touch screen, then a power back and suddenly the Pi becomes mobile,” said Mike Buffham, global head of EDE for Premier Farnell, one of the companies who manufacture the hobbyist PC.

Foundation founder and trustee Eben Upton made the announcement about the upgrade on the Raspberry Pi blog this week.

He said that one of the most common suggestions since the launch was for the foundation to produce a more expensive “Model C” version of the Raspberry Pi.

"This would be useful for people who want to use the Pi as a general-purpose computer, with multiple large applications running concurrently," he wrote. "[It] would enable some interesting embedded use cases (particularly using Java) which are slightly too heavyweight to fit comfortably in 256MB,” he said.

He said that the foundation wanted to maintain the low price tag, so worked with RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell to upgrade the memory on the Model B computer. He added that all pending orders for the Model B are being filled with the upgrade.

“If you have an outstanding order with either distributor, you will receive the upgraded device in place of the 256MB version you ordered,” he said.

People who receive the new upgraded version of the Raspberry Pi can download the updated firmware from Raspberry Pi.

The new Raspberry Pi 512MB board along with a range of exclusive new Raspberry Pi accessories will be demonstrated by element14 at Electronica in Munich from 13-16 November.