At last — a cheap lo-pow mobo with GRUNT
Posted July 29, 2008 by kym
15 Comments »
A $us150 3" sq mobo featuring TI’s OMAP3 has just been announced, and for once you can actually "buy it now".
While not aimed for controller-type applications, the OMAP3 features a 65 nm low-power 600 MHz ARM9 with graphics and DSP co-processors.
The board incl an LCD i/f, SD slot for digital cameras, USB 2 OTG (i.e. host+device), audio in/out, DVI and analog video out.
See: http://beagleboard.org/ .
Here’s a linux distro that seems to be focused towards running nicely on the Beagle and other small devices.
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/
I know, but after selling the PICO ITX due to its greedy power requirements I need a new high level controller for my robot. Will just have to bite the bullet on this one.
You’re right on the money there, Kym. Steering clear generally of anything coming out of Intel is the best policy, especially all processors/modules/what-have-you based on the x86 core.
Being an assembly programmer with experience of the x86 family, and being able to contrast that with my experiences of many other processors, the x86 is totally a-la-stinky-poo. I still rue the day that IBM purchased all those cheap ‘n nasty 8088 chips (for it’s new ‘personal computer’) from Intel, those very same chips that Intel couldn’t flog off to a dead horse for love nor money.
Oh, and I wouldn’t stress about not having an FPU. I have this hypothesis that one day all of the robotics researchers will come to the realization that all of the maths that is actually required can be done using integers – I mean, that’s how the atoms of the universe do it, and those same atoms make brains, don’t they? The roboticists are just approaching the problems from the wrong end – they are trying to calculate the starting points by working backwards from the end points. Take nature’s approach and build up to the end points using basic (integer) starting points. Well, that’s my general approach. (Yes I do use and rely on analytical maths, but that’s only done at design/compile-time, not at robot run-time.)
Yes.
If you can wait (say) 2 weeks I’m getting an order together with someone else.
I’ll wait to see if anyone else on AusRobotics is interested, but I’ll put you down for 1 board.
Put me down for 1, and I will confirm tomorrow but I am almost 100% sure one of the guys at work also wants one.
Just confirmed, you can add two boards next to my name.
Interesting! Over the last few days I have been having a look into a few options for a linux capable processor board. They all seem to have pros and cons, with power of course being the trade off. On the one end the pico-ITX boards and even mini-ITX boards with the Intel Atom (see this link for a new interesting cheapo mobo);
http://www.ozdirect.com.au/product_info.php?source=shopbot&products_id=53981
Of course the 4W CPU power claims for the atom seem to translate into a lot more total board power once you plug everything in and use the onboard peripherals.
On the other end the gumstix boards look pretty tops, and would definitely be total low power usage. Big plus there is the addition of the robostix AVR based board which would provide a easily configurable general purpose interface for encoders, other sensors or whatever. The negative would be the lack of a FPU, slowing down enormously any code requiring floating point. Also ease of connecting usb web cams and getting them going comes into it as well.
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http://robotsaustralia.googlepages.com
Sorry, Adi.
The order has been cancelled.
After dithering around for a couple of weeks, DigiKey finally seemed to relent (for a 2nd or 3rd time — I kinda lost count) and said they could ship all 5 boards in the 1 package, but by that time 2 of the original 5 orders had backed out .
At that point DigiKey indicate I could not NOW change the order from 5 boards to 3 boards and still get the “one postal charge” thing.
Cool, no problem, waiting for my replacement cc, should be here today or tomorrow, will place an order then.
I’m definitely looking at getting one.
It looks like a Digi-key only product at the moment.
Any here looking to do a bulk order to save on the ridiculous postage from Digi-key?
x86’s are nice for s/w compatibility, but even the “mobile” versions are power hogs from my view of the microcosm.
I’m trying to keep each processor board (so far just 2; but maybe needing another 1 for onboard vision/audio processing) to around 1/4 W for most of the time, so I’ve been concentrating on processors/modules designed for mobile phones — e.g. with reasonable power management.
So far I can arrange for “most” of the processing & sensors on truckbot to be in <100 mW (total) deep sleep mode “most” of the time (incl a 200 mW TX), with just a jerk awake every now and then to do something. Disregarding the motors, max power is meant to be under 2W.
Since Truckbot is not intended to be on the move all the time (more an ambush predator
I was aiming at 48 hrs of autonomy under optimum conditions. With something like that 5-10W camera onboard it’s looking closer to 4 even doubling batteries to 3 kg.
Actually, the OMAP3530 *does* have an FPU and a vector floating-point unit at that: http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/architecture.html. It has a VFPv3 co-processor. Remember, this is an ARMv7-A (Cortex-A8), not the run-of-the-mill ARM9/11.
What with the state of AUD these days, don’t be durprised at the 300 aud pricetag.
Non-Robotic expenses keep appearing in my life at the moment so maybe next time
Any updates on this order? I see digikey has three in stock.