Hey!
Let me introduce myself first, I'm Bernhard and I graduated from the
HTL-Salzburg (Austria =) ) a year ago, meaning I'm 20 now.
I work with the gumstix modules for 6 months now and did some projects
with Atmel's AP7000 before, so I'm into the whole embedded system thing
for almost 2 1/2 years now.
The power of the embedded Linux modules is nearly endless, but it's also
a bit different from all the standard, 8 and 16 bit micros.
If you get on a Linux system for the first time everything is quite
overwhelming, no point where to start or where to end.
The problem is, that so much can go wrong and, at least if you don't
have years of experience, you don't know where to start debugging.
Q1:
The documentation of the gumstix is not really the best you can think of
and I don't think your student's like to read 3000 page manuals of the CPU.
But you can take a look aside on your own people at the ETH Zürich, they
created a project called PIXhawk, that uses the overo.
http://pixhawk.ethz.ch/
Q2:
A simple task in a Linux system is not always comparable to a simple
task in a 8 bit system.
8 bit: Wiring the 8bit display to the micro -> Add driver to firmware ->
print hello world
embedded linux - overo: Wiring the display to a level converter ->
wiring the level converter to the overo -> setup linux development
environment -> download kernel -> reconfigure kernel -> edit board setup
-> create user space application to write hello world.
The main advantage with such embedded system is if you use them for more
complex tasks.
It's for example almost the same amount of work to wire a 24bit 800x480
graphic lcd to a overo, than to wire it to a hd44780 based one.
From my opinion, and I don't know how deep you want to dive into the
whole thing, and how much time you have in lab with your students, the
overo will be a bit of an overkill.
If you want to go to a 32bit linux based embedded system you should
start with something less powerfull, but also less complicated.
I'm thinking about something like a ARM9 or ARM7, there are lot's of
good devkit out there.
They use 3.3V IO's, a much simpler powermanagment, have better
documentation and are in most cases more robust (thinking about students
playing around with it)
That would be my opinon.
I, for example started out with a NGW100 - a small network gateway from
Atmel, although i wouldn't recommend it four you (because the AP
processorseries of atmel is currently on hold) a board like that,
with loads of 3.3V GPIO's, a rock solid power management (so you can
attach extension boards to it) would be a better choice.
Regards
*Bernhard Wörndl-Aichriedler*
Am 12.05.2010 19:18, schrieb Paolo Ceppi:
> Dear Gumstix community,
> we http://www.supsi.ch
> http://www.dti.supsi.ch
> are actually offering embedded systems labs with microcontroller
> programming, using 8 and 16 bit uC, ASM, C, without and with
> RTOS (uC/OS, Salvo, etc.).
> We are looking to revamp our lab activity and were wondering about
> going Gumstix.
> Q1: can anyone point us to teachware concerning hw/sw in
> undergrad and graduate student's labs with gumstix prods?
> Q2: We actually can manage with our students programming like
> - (simple) math algorithms
> - interfacing to
> 7 segments, LCD line/graphical displays,
> terminal emulators (point to point serial),
> sensors/peripherals via I2C, SPI, CAN,
> stepper motors and encoders,
> wireless transceivers (optical and RF),
> connection to ethernet via a serial over an industrial
> com server (the uC board is reachable via IP), etc.
> > Can you make a statement on suitability of gumstix products
> for our purpose?
> "Just for profis, need much time to get into matters,
> not for short courses, ...."
> Thank you.
> Paolo
>
>
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