[Wlug] Balloon board

Jamie Guinan guinan at bluebutton.com
Fri Dec 15 15:31:14 EST 2006


On Thu, 14 Dec 2006, Andy Stewart wrote:

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> 
> Andre Lehovich wrote:
> > After the meeting a few of us chatted about embeded hardware projects.  The
> > Balloon Board, based on the Strongarm CPU, has all open specs.  Unfortunately
> > it looks like a sample board is about $700.  http://balloonboard.org/
> > 
> > An example product built using the board:
> > http://www.toby-churchill.com/english/product_info/index.html
> > 
> > --Andre
> 
> Other possibilities for Linux friendly embedded projects:
> 
> I made a firewall with Linux software with the Routerboard:
> 	http://www.routerboard.com
> 
> The USB development board looks interesting, but I haven't actually
> tried it:
> 	http://www.delcom-eng.com/
> 
> These look rather neat, but seem to be a little expensive IMHO, but not
> unreachable:
> 	http://www.gumstix.com
> 
> The embedded development kits look interesting as well, but the prices
> are exceedingly high.  Two examples:
> 	http://www.arcom.com/devkit-linux-apollo.htm
> 	http://www.arcom.com/devkit-linux-pxa270-zeus.htm
> 
> I don't think this vendor offers Linux support, but Linux does work with
> these products:
> 	http://www.hobbyengineering.com/SectionBS.html

Here's a few more...

1) pickit1/pickit2, very reasonably priced,

http://www.microchipdirect.com/ProductDetails.aspx?Catalog=BuyMicrochip&Category=Getting%20Started%20Programmers&mid=13

2) NSLU2, $99 at many retailers, and I've seen quite a few on eBay.  
   XScale (ARM), USB 2.0, Ethernet,

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2


One of my "someday" projects is to make my own computer-controlled 
alt-azimuth mount for amateur telescopes.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altazimuth_mount

Or even just a replacement controller for the existing motorized 
mount.

-Jamie  


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