Vaporware Electronics
TS-7500 Summary
A nice, compact board with pretty much exactly what we need and no extras that we don't. A good cost and pretty well powered board that should meet our needs well. Its also small and compact. It claims to be un-brickable and looks to be fairly rugged.
Price point: around $80/board at our quantities. Features
* Great documentation * 250MHz ARM9 CPU * 64 MB DDR-RAM * 4 MB NOR Flash * Customizable 5K LUT OpenCore FPGA * 1 micro SDHC Card slot * USB2 480Mbit/s Host(2) / Slave(1) * 1 10/100 Ethernet * 8 TTL UART * 33 DIO, SPI and I2C interfaces * Watchdog Timer * Optional BB-RTC, CAN bus, WiFi * Power-over-Ethernet Ready * Fanless Operation from -20°C to 70°C * Small size (67mm x 75mm) * Low power (400mA @ 5V) * Unbrickable, boots from SD or Flash * DevKit includes base-board+enclosure * Boots Linux 2.6 in less than 3 seconds
Chumby board Summary
Good mix of low price and stripped-down feature set. On-board LCD and touchscreen support. Good relationship with Bunny is a plus. New boards don't have chumbilical connector populated; we could get this added for peanuts.
Price point: Fully assembled chumby one w/ all the toppings runs $119, so I'm guessing we can get the board at ~$50-$60. Features
* Open-source * 454 MHz ARM * 64 MB RAM * WiFi * boots off MicroSD * backlit 3.5" LCD, touchscreen * Breakout header: "Chumbilical" o +5V o 1 SPI interface o audio output o video output o 2 USB channels o 1 GPIO * Est. cost ~$50
Bug Labs bugbase Summary
Tricked-out DeLorean of ARM modules. Nice feature set, way too pricey. May be worth talking to them to see if they're considering a stripped-down version, but a long shot.
Price point: Fully assembled retails at $450; probably could get a raw board for closer to $200 in quantity. Features
* Open source * 532Mhz ARM 11 microprocessor * 128 MB SDRAM * 32 MB on-board flash storage * MicroSD card interface (support up to 16GB) * Integrated 802.11b/g WLAN * Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR * USB 2.0 OTG High Speed host interface * Breakout: 4 BUGmodule interfaces o + Four UART serial links + 4-channel SPI interface + I2C (400 kbits) interface/4 channels + I2S interface/ 2 channels * 10/100 Ethernet MAC * JTAG/ICE support * Serial debug port * Smart power management support * Battery-backed real-time clock * Way too expensive: retails for ~$450, could probably negotiate a clean board wholesale down to $125
Leaf Labs Maple Summary
Arduino clone. Not sufficient pinnage or muscle. Open-source; could potentially be modified to work for us. Features
* Open-source * STM32 ARM Cortex-M3 @ 72MHz * 20 KB SRAM * 128 KB Flash * Breakout header: arduino-compatible o Arduino pins * Retails ~$50, could probably wholesale down to ~$30
Coridium ARMmite PRO Summary
Another underpowered arduino-like board, but the price point is nice— $30 retail. Features
* ARM7 CPU running at 60 Mhz * 32K Flash memory and 8K SRAM memory * 24 TTL compatible digital I/O * 7 10-bit A/D converters, 100 KHz sample rate * 8 Hardware PWM channels * internal supplies of 5V, 3.3V and 1.8V
Expansion Board
2 x MCP3208 - 8 channel, 12 bit ADC, SPI, $2.64/chip 4 x MCP23S17 - 16 channel GPIO, SPI, $0.95/chip 1 x TLC5940 - 16 channel PWM, $1.30/chip
ADC: 16 GPIO: 64 PWM: 16 TOTAL: 92
Cost: 2.64*2+0.95*4+1.30*1+0.50*8 Operating System RTAI Realtime linux extension, pretty standard eCos
* Includes TCP/IP stack * Includes USB stack * Active dev community * Supports just about every embedded platform you can think of
FreeRTOS
* Pretty much the same as eCos, shares some of the same modules * Reputedly smaller than eCos * Two parallel projects: a GPL version and a licensed support version