[HH] Hacking Embedded Linux: More Hardware than You Require

[Federico Lucifredi]

On May 17, 2012, at 11:18 PM, Tom Metro wrote:
> Nice talk Federico. Some follow-up questions…
Thanks Tom!

> You've explained what you use the network printer for, and a bit about
> the WD NAS, but you've never really mentioned what you use all these
> other devices for. I presume at least some of these you aren't simply
> acquiring to show off in talks, and that you actually have projects in
> mind for them. What were you using them for?

I tend to default to the Plugs for projects. Thew new boards I have looked into to keep up with technology, but haven't scheduled new projects with them… too little time to be creative that way right now :)

> You made a comment that you ordered clear plastic enclosures for the
> Pandaboards (I think) for your "team." What team? My understanding is
> that this hardware was a hobby and not related to your day job.

It is not related.  But in my team we default to PandaBoards as a way to have access to cheap Cortex-9 hardware.  As I mentioned, Canonical considers ARM a full citizen for the platform…so we need hardware to poke at :)

> I think it is worth noting that the BeagleBoard started out as an eval
> board for the TI OMAP CPU, unlike say an Arduino, which was created
> independent of the CPU vendor. But it is interesting that they made the
> hardware open and this has potentially contributed to its popularity.
> 
> I assume the Freescale board is similarly created to show off a
> Freescale CPU. Is their board design open?

Not to my knowledge, and not to a quick googling pass. i.mx53 quickstart is the board designation, and the community site is at http://imxcommunity.org/

> Are there any 2nd sources for
> this design with a SATA port?

Not that I know of. 

> Do you know if the SATA port is compatible
> with port multiplexers?
That's worth looking into… I had the board for too little a time, sorry I sorry I don't have answers ready on this :(

> I'm not sure where Pandaboard fits in. I'm guessing this is driven by a
> board vendor rather than a CPU vendor. What CPU does it use? (You said
> it was comparable to the BeagleBoard, so I assume an ARM variation.)
It is a TI ARM, but a cortex 9. Same dynamics as the BeagleBoard project, but for some reason they started another community around the other chip.

> You said the Sheeva Plug and related computers were not open hardware.
> While technically true, the Sheeva Plug is a reference design to show
> off the Marvell system-on-a-chip, with the first Guru Plugs being
> derived from it. Presumably anyone who wants to make plug computers and
> is buying the chips from Marvell can probably get the design for little
> to no cost. The documentation (schematics) may even be freely available.

Yes, one of the attendees even found them on the FCC site. Not Open Hardware, but yes, you can get a peek.

> Also, on the topic of openness, you should note that the Raspberry Pi
> isn't an open design, and uses a proprietary CPU, possibly requiring
> proprietary binary-only kernel drivers.

What do you mean by proprietary CPU here? It is a Broadcom SoC, but I don't see what's more proprietary there than a Freescale or Ti chip...
> It would have been interesting to see something like a live demo of a
> "hello world" application on two platforms - one on the simple end, like
> an Arduino, and one running Linux, like the BeagleBone.

Ah, that's a cool idea - although running through that live would probably take 30 on its own. But I will work out something…
> 
> You asked about macro video capture. I could have sworn you had a
> working setup for that at the prior presentation you did for BLU. I
> thought you showed live images of items that appeared to be under a copy
> stand. I guess that was just your desk lamp I saw.

Right - you saw the same setup I used Wednesday. It works… but not well enough IMHO. It slows down the pace of the presentation, and the video quality is not as high as it should be these days.

> 
> I've seen modern day versions of the "copy stand" in computer catalogs.
> Googling turns up the name "Visual Presenter":

wow - thanks for all the reasearch Tom -- very helpful! I will have to try out some of these :)

 Best -Federico

_________________________________________
-- "'Problem' is a bleak word for challenge" - Richard Fish
(Federico L. Lucifredi) - flucifredi at acm.org - GnuPG 0x4A73884C