[Gumstix-users] Firewire sticks wanted

[Kjetil K. <kj...@kj...>]

Hi there!

I first directed my email to sales, but they directed me here. I was 
wondering if there are any plans to create Firewire sticks?

The background for the request is that we're a bunch of geeks teaming up 
to see if we can create a platform for really cheap amateur live TV 
productions. So, the plan is to use legacy DV cameras, grab the DV 
stream that is sent across Firewire, send it on over Ethernet or Wifi 
to a central computer that can do software mixing.

For the time being, we have a laptop by each DV camera, but that should 
be simplified greatly by having a Gumstix instead with just Firewire 
and Ethernet or Wifi. We just need the Firewire. 

And if you'd like to hear more of the background: I'm connecting the 
dots between two different communities: On one hand, there are some 
Debian folks who are documenting the proceedings of Debconf and similar 
events. They are developing a software mixer, but their requirements are 
quite simple, they are indoors and short distances, so they can use 
cables. 

They have found that it is not a lot easier to compress things to e.g. 
MPEG before mixing, so the bandwidth requirements are rather large, ~25 
MBits/s for each stream. That's not that hard with Ethernet, though.

The other community are some folks doing the sport of orienteering here 
in Norway. Nobody really cares what we do in the woods, so we're almost 
never on TV, consequently there is little money in the sport, and so if 
we're going to do anything, we got to do it ourselves. 

Our requirements are harder, since we're outdoors, things are moving 
more quickly, there are larger distances. The idea now is to create a 
kit that can pass between organizers of different events, so that 
organizers can just plug things together and it will work. Thus, a 
gumstix between the camera and the Ethernet is really desired. 

Now, we're also thinking about using directional Wifi antennas across 
open areas, where the cameras can be on one end of an open field, and 
projector under a roof or something, where people are watching on the 
other. Getting 25 MBits/s across that field will be harder, but we'll 
try. So, for this purpose, combining Wifi and Firewire is what we want.

Now, I don't know if there will be big sales of Firewire gumstix, but 
with YouTube and Joost and the like, perhaps cheap productions of this 
sort could be a big hit, so I hope it is worth looking into!

Cheers,

Kjetil
-- 
Kjetil Kjernsmo
Programmer / Astrophysicist / Ski-orienteer / Orienteer / Mountaineer
kj...@kj...
Homepage: http://www.kjetil.kjernsmo.net/     OpenPGP KeyID: 6A6A0BBC