If geeks love it, we’re on it
If geeks love it, we’re on it
You found the friendliest gaming & tech geeks around. Say hello!
Basil
Nubcaek, Supporter, Writer
Icrontic — Home of the Big Beef Burrito since 8-8-2000, fool. A Short-Media community © 2003–2013. Powered with <3 from Vanilla & WordPress.
Articles RSS
Comments
I'm all for small form factors. What's a real-world use for one of these?
Should make that area interesting though, $35 for a model B vs $89 for a BeagleBone.
- matt-gent
To give an example, Arduino provides a software serial port implementation using bit-banged GPIO in case you need more serial ports than what's available in hardware. You include the software serial library into your code, declare which GPIO pins to use, and compile/link/flash the firmware. Doing the same thing in Linux requires you to write a kernel device driver implementing the port (either from scratch or with a reference code block you found somewhere) using the GPIO libraries for the ARM SoC you're using, assuming these libraries exist and are available. If they aren't, you have to get a register map for the SoC and write them yourself. Realistically, you would figure out how to make do with the built-in ports. Repeat ad nauseum for whichever peripherals you need but aren't available on your ARM SoC.
Things look a lot better if you don't try to use these things in that kind of application. All the applications listed in this thread are good applications for this kind of hardware.
P.S. Gargoyle, the easy solution is to not buy those expansion boards. Just get whichever parts you think you need and breadboard it. The schematics and bill of materials for those boards are available 9 times out of 10.
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/495116896-Mini6410-ARM11-S3C6410-Board-4-3-LCD-Touch-Screen-wholesalers.html
Deal with it.