Not a microcontroller per se, but seems relevant to a lot of the Arduino community. I have seen some newbies ask "Can I run linux on an arduino?????", etc.
Mainly, we're going to see more and more of these sorts of chips come out, and their functionality will blend well with arduino's. I know a lot of people here like the simplicity/efficiency currently offered by Arduino, and are staunch supporters of its great combination of its dual digital/analog processing capabilities. That's not going anywhere, but I bet we'll start seeing projects use chips like this in the near future.
As well as looking at Arduino for a project, I looked at a System-on-a-Chip. This was a board made by Vortex, processor, 64Mbyte ram, Flash card, USB ports, GPIO port. Its much too complicated for a student/starter. Very rapidly you have to compile kernels, write drivers, debug drivers, start services, write shell scripts to transfer files.... I've got a set of notes on how to put the kernel on, and its about 16 complicated steps.
The beauty of Arduino is that you get Blink working in an install and about 3 clicks. Then you go on from there, and its very incremental. You can do all sorts of things (in my case serial protocols and signalling with interrupt handling) but you don't have to and you can get there in steps. And of course, all the libraries available that makes so may interfaces so simple. So I think Arduino will be around for a while yet.
I don't see this as something amazing or revolutionary
It's a piece of shit computer that you run via USB, they mention it has everything you need to run a modern OS.... can't run Win7, nor OS X, so I assume they're only referring to Linux environments (which is fine, of course, but you can't make the claim that it's for the average person)
It's a proof of concept... it works, it's not practical and I don't see expansion connectors to interface it with low level devices. So, it's pretty, geeky, but that's about it. :\
With new mainstream technologies like Virtual Desktops that little linux keychain will fit like a charm.
The only thing that it needs to do is to get a read only image starting X and some client (RDP, VMware VIew, etc).
bubulindo:
It's a proof of concept... it works, it's not practical and I don't see expansion connectors to interface it with low level devices. So, it's pretty, geeky, but that's about it. :\
It has a microSD card slot so... SPI peripherals?
The pictures also show a 12 MP (Megapixel?) camera connected to a port on the top of the board. Of course it's not clear if that port is dedicated to the camera or not.
Yes... but it could be a bit more hackable-friendly. Something more BeagleBoard-like. But, it's still good enough for plenty of applications.
What I find most interesting about this, is the comments. In Engadget.com, everyone was dicing this... here everyone is thinking out to get their hands in one of them. LOL
