Friday, September 02, 2011

$35 Linux PC with Ethernet?

Check out the Raspberry Pi, which for $25 will [when released "later in 2011"] get you:
  • 700MHz ARM11
  • 128MB or 256MB of SDRAM
  • OpenGL ES 2.0
  • 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
  • Composite and HDMI video output
  • USB 2.0
  • SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot
  • General-purpose I/O
  • Optional integrated 2-port USB hub and 10/100 Ethernet controller
  • Open software (Ubuntu, Iceweasel, KOffice, Python)
  • ...and for $35 a 10/100 wired Ethernet (though they claim you might be able to use a WiFi USB dongle on the $25 board).

    Regarding GPIO, they say:

    There are approximately 16 spare GPIOs, which are brought out to 1.27mm pin-strip. Voltage levels are 3v3. The connector choice is deliberately annoying to connect to directly; there is no over-voltage protection on the board so the intention is that people interested in serious interfacing will use an external board with buffers, level conversion and analog I/O rather than soldering directly onto the main board.

    We also bring 2x I2C (3v3), I2S and an SPI (3v3) interface out to the same connector. We support one slave interface for I2C and one for SPI.

    No comments: