[Wylug-discuss] motherboard for embedded application

[Roger Leigh]

James Holden <wylug at jamesholden.net> writes:

> Will Newton wrote:
>> On Tuesday 08 November 2005 14:54, Mischa Oliver Altmann wrote:
>> 
>>>Some people have recommended the VIA EPIA range[1] but they almost look
>>>like an overkill. An e.g ARM board would probably work too, but I've had
>>>some rather bad experiences. We'd prefer an x86 compatible architecture
>>>for ease of code development but are open to abusing other platforms.
>> 
>> 
>> This ARM based board looks interesting:
>> 
>> http://www.k-team.com/boards/korebot/index.html
>> 
>> The power consumption of an EPIA board will be a few times higher than most 
>> ARM boards.
>
> Very nice. No pricing infomation on that page though. I wonder how much
> they are.

IIRC, about £150 for the EPIA.  Some of the ARM evalulation boards
(e.g. Balloon) are about £450, but AFAICT if you wanted to make a
product from it, you would get a custom board produced in volume,
which would cost a lot less.  The Balloon consumes 1 W (3.3 V)
maximum, and can be cut down further under software control.

http://balloonboard.org/hardware/buildoptions.html
http://www.aleph1.co.uk/armlinux/devboards/balloon/index.html

>From the EPIA boards I've used at work, I don't regard them as
"embedded" boards, whatever VIA claim.  Compared to an ARM board about
the size of a matchbox, they are huge at about half the area of a
typical PC mainboard.  They also run very hot--I burnt my fingers on
the passive heatsink while the system was just idle!

If you want a true embedded system, I would personally forget Intel
and go for an ARM (or even PowerPC) based board.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
Roger Leigh
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