Embedded software/hardware

[jonathan at jonmasters.org (Jon Masters)]

David Kramer wrote:

> I know there's a couple of people here doing embedded development; I'm 
> hoping one can give me some advice.

Indeed. Hi everyone, I'm one of the two Brits that turned up to the LUG 
meeting over at MIT - that was quite interesting.

> So http://www.agilerules.com is developing a workshop on doing embedded 
> software development using agile/extreme programming with open source 
> tools.  We have this ARM-based development board (ARM 7T).  Only now 
> they're not making them anymore, and we need to find another board to 
> use instead.

There are tonnes (or tons) of ARM7 boards kicking around, but I would 
suggest going with ARM9 if you'd like an easy ride with full Linux.

> In a perfect world, we would be able to use Linux on the board, but 
> that's not critical, as long as we can use Linux/GCC on the PC to 
> develop for it. It's gotta have a couple of LEDs and switches to 
> interact with too,

The guys at Faebhas do a similar course, I've given the RHD248 course 
for RedHat (which covers similar ground), there are a bunch of European 
guys I can point you towards if you're interested. There are several low 
cost ARM boards on the market and a new one is due out pretty soon that 
targets the hobbyist and developer community (I'll be using it in a 
design for one of the magazines).

> I was very surprised to see only one embedded vendor at LinuxWorld.

I wasn't. It's not their market, LW is about corporate types who want 
stuff from IBM, Novell, et al. You'd have seen a few of us walking the 
stands but there's little incentive in having a stand to show off cool 
hardware running Linux if nobody is going to be buying it :-)

> Recommendations?

Do you want a list of board recommendations? Have you checked out the 
guides over on http://www.linuxdevices.com/ already?

Jon.