Bearfruit

I firmly believe that mobile devices are the future and many people will forgo a regular PC because their mobile hand-held thingy does everything they need. Embedded Linux is one of the major platforms enabling such devices, but how is a person supposed to experiment with it when the slick development boards are so expensive or, for most of us, literally impossible to legally get into our hands?

I asked David Mandala, who is the project manager of the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded team and a good old fashioned tinkerer, for a suggested platform. It was an IRC conversation so I can’t be certain of his attitude, but I’m pretty confident he was excited to tell me about the tool he likes to play with - the Tin Can Tools Hammer - an Arm9 based embedded Linux development board that is the same size as a 40pin dip. Just drop it into your breadboard and away you go! Or better yet, pick up the Nail Board kit (see the same page linked above) which includes the hammer board and adds a built in jtag, usb ports and serial interface and only increases the board size and cost a little bit.

When plugged into your PC it will be detected as a USB ethernet card and you can ssh right into your new embedded linux computer. Because the nail board has onboard jtag you don’t have to worry about bricking your device (corrupting the firmware rendering the device unbootable until reflashed) so in theory you should have full reign to fiddle with the settings. It can be powered right from the USB port so no external power is needed! And my favourite part is that all of the connections are 0.1” spaced headers so it will work on a breadboard and its no problem to solder on.

It’s still about twice the cost of the AVR32 based NGW100 which goes for $80 - $90. Like the hammer, the ngw100 allows you to solder on the board making it hacker friendly. It can also appear as a usb ethernet, mass storage or HID device. Unlike the hammer it has two ethernet ports, an SD card slot, an onboard serial connection but does not have a USB host port. It’s also quite a bit bigger (but still quite small).

The real problem with the ngw100 though is that it’s a new platform (AVR32). Arm9 is so popular and so mature, it’s hard to resist. Intel’s atom platform has a lot of muscle behind it so I have no doubt it will get a foothold in the market (and I’d love a $150 eval board!) but is there room for avr32? Jury is out. I’m going to save up my money for the hammer + nail board.