[Noisebridge-discuss] Pandora box? (+ BeagleBoard, ARM)

[John Magolske]

* Al Billings <albill at arcanology.com> [090205 14:22]:
> Does anything know anything about this hardware project?
>
> http://openpandora.org/index.php

I don't know much about OpenPandora other that what's on their
website, looks like they're hoping to have a product available by
early this year for ~$330. Sounds interesting!

Another project that uses much of the same hardware (ARM Cortex-A8
600Mhz CPU, 430-MHz TMS320C64x DSP Core) is the BeagleBoard [1], a
community-oriented project sponsored by TI to promote their OMAP
platform. It's a 3" x 3" motherboard with:

* DVI out, flat panel display res. up to XGA @ 65MHz w/ 24-bit color,
up to 2048x2048 resolution at lower refresh rates
* S-Video out
* Stereo audio in & out for microphone & headphones
* MMC+/SD/SDIO slot
* USB 2.0
* Low power consumption, less than 2.5W (optionally USB powered)
* Current availability (DigiKey, $150)

The word from TI is that Rev C of the BeagleBoard will be available
soon, around March/April. Improvements over the current Rev B include:

* 256MB of ram (vs the current 128MB)
* A hardware fix making available a second USB port. Current rev has one
USB port supporting high (60 MB/s), full (1.5 MB/s) and low (187.5 kB/s)
speed devices. The new additional port will only support high speed.
* An additional header providing raw LCD signals for use by expansion
cards, making for easier LCD panel integration.

The BeagleBoard has only one SD slot rather than Pandora's two, and of
course it's just a motherboard, not a complete device with display,
keyboard, battery, built-in Wifi, etc. But it could be fun for hacking
together low powered portables. Hopefully Pandora gets off the ground
soon, that would be a fun thing to hack as well.

Especially since it looks as though some of the Netbook/Linux space
may be expanding into ARM territory, e.g. EmbeddedUbuntu [2], rumors
of the OLPC XO moving to the ARM architecture.

Not too sure what distro Pandora is using... Debian has been ported to
the BeagleBoard, but my understanding is that Angstrom is much better
optimized for the Cortex-A8. I'm curious to know how EmbeddedUbuntu
compares.

John


[1] http://beagleboard.org/
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EmbeddedUbuntu


-- 
John Magolske
http://B79.net/contact