Iteaduino plus Indiegogo campaign and a few questions to be answered!

Community General Discussion
1

I found this cool Indiegogo campaign by Iteadstudio. Its a linux development board with a lot more features than Raspberry Pi. However another feature which arduino users will find very useful is that it has an easy programming environment with pre written libraries, for example making a call would be as easy as Call("18002456633"). Here is the link http://igg.me/at/iteaduinoplus/x/4442622

However I have a few doubts myself about the board (or linux and elecronics in general, but related to the board). Please answer them.

  1. Does software have to be seperately written for the board. Or will all linux software run on the board ? (If it has to be written seperately it's useless!)
  2. Will software that works in Raspberry Pi work for this board?
  3. They said that the final product will be in black. They look ugly but Iteadstudio makes many products in black PCbs. Do black PCBs cost less?
2

They posted a demo video and it's really cool. Same programming syntax as arduino. Wow. It's kind of like Wiring Pi, I guess.

http://blog.iteadstudio.com/itead-os-gpio-and-uart-operation-demo/

3

A wiring-like library for the small HW-oriented linux systems seems like a good idea, but I'm not quite sure how it will be "simpler" than a rasberry Pi. You pretty much still need to do all that "unix system administration" stuff :frowning:

  1. No, of course all linux software won't run on it. "all linux software" won't go from Ubuntu to DSL without some care. Since the board is an ARM board, presumably its linux is somewhat different from x86 linux systems, and you'll at least need to recompile. Which can be hell, as I know just from trying to get x86 linux software to compile on my x86 Mac.

  2. Maybe. It's got more and different IO than a RPi, a different core cpu, and presumably a different video setup.

  3. In quantity, board color is probably an insignificant modifier to price. Some vendors seem to have settled on particular color schemes as their personal standard. Blue for Arduino, Red for Sparkfun, Purple for OSHPark, etc. Anything but the old "industry standard" of "green." A color that hides the traces can make the silkscreen labels more visible, which is good. But of course it hides the traces, which is bad.

All these small unix boards are pretty neat. It sure beats converting some consumer device (chumby) that stops being sold :frowning:
I do wish that I had more confidence that which ever board I pick will actually be successful enough to continue to be sold, rather than becoming one of the "well, we tried that, but RPi was too tough a competitor" might-have-beens.