Video SparkFun Works to Build the Edison Ecosystem (Video) 75
Tim: We are here at the Sparkfun booth at the Intel Developer Forum, can you talk a little bit about why Sparkfun is here?
David: Sparkfun, we sort of partnered with Intel on the launch of the Edison. So what we are trying to do is develop sort of an ecosystem around developing for the Edison. Like how do you prototype with it? How do you Oh I want it to interface with Arduino—we are trying to support all of that. And make it essentially really easy to get into developing for the Edison.
Tim: Can you distinguish why would somebody use an Edison versus some of the other boards that are out there?
David: The Edison is really phenomenal mostly because of the form factor. It is very very tiny. It is this big. And inside of that, it is a dual cored CPU, it has got an Intel Atom chip in there. And the best thing, it has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on board.
Tim: And for the record, you do have a normal sized hand?
David: I do have a normal sized hand you know. So it is a very very tiny form factor. And it has got all of that stuff crammed in there. So comparing to something like a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone or one of those—none of those have Wi-Fi built in. So it is harder to get started with those. This is just kind of an all-in-one very very small factor piece of kit.
Tim: They have graphics built in?
David: They do have graphics built in, but this is more designed to be an embedded application instead of like as a desktop PC or a PC replacement. So this is sort of an embedded Linux device.
Tim: Now one thing that you are here specifically is because Sparkfun has made some extensions.
David: Yeah. So we’ve got these as yet to be named boards that snap into the Edison. The Edison on the bottom side has this 70 pin connector which is how you get to power in the GPIO and all of the UARTs and whatnot. So what we did is we did is we developed this line of kind of snappable electronic development breakout board. So you can see here this is a console board and it snaps in with the 70 pin connector right there and it holds it in place. And if I flip this over, it has a FTDI chip on it, and an USB connector, so you can plug this in over USB and essentially drop into a root Linux shell, and it will get power over USB. So this is the easiest way to get started with the Edison if you just want to turn on the Wi-Fi get it on your home network or your corporate network or whatnot. Take it on to the console board, plug it in, and away you go.
Tim: This is what, a Yocto Linux?
David: This is a Yocto Linux yeah.
Tim: What are some of the examples of the boards you’ve got and what do they do?
David: So this is a console board, this is the simplest. Another board here. Another cool thing about these boards is they do snap together and you can stack them. So this one, any _____ they will snap in there, and this is a motion sensor breakout, so this is a 9 degree of freedom inertial measurement, so it is a free axis accelerometer, gyro and magnetometer all in one. So with this, you could throw a battery on to here, power it over USB and you have a fully functioning 9 degree of freedom IMU. So I can throw this around and measure all the other forces involved in this stack. So from there, you can imagine a zillion applications for e-textiles, for wearables. I am just thinking about building a self-balancingrobot with an IMU. _____ someone was talking about putting one of these on a drone and using the processing power of the Edison to run open CV and doing vision recognition in addition to flying a quad copter. So the possibilities really are endless with Edison. And the form factor is really really excellent for putting it into just about anything.
Tim: A lot of people are using Arduino and other boards, I understand that there is some level of compatibility, you can connect these to that?
David: Definitely, definitely, one of the development boards that Intel came up with before the launch of Edison is the Arduino compatible board. So here I’ve just been playing around a little bit this afternoon trying to get this accelerometer to work. But this is going through a Sparkfun Protoshield so this is a shield compatible board but the Edison is hooked up to and you see the blinking light that I’ve been messing around with. I’ve been essentially writing Arduino code but it is now running on the Edison. It will cross compile and transfer over to the Edison and just be running it in one thread over and over and over again. So if you are familiar with Arduino, Edison is a really great way to kind of move that into embedded Linux from something like the Arduino IDE.
Tim: You are a web designer, but you are part time, so it shouldn’t be too surprising you do use the GUI.
David: Yes, a jack of all trades. I build all sorts of things. I am very excited. I just got my hands on an Edison for the first time, about two days ago. I spent all last night in the hotel till midnight or one or so, I was just learning how to look at the Linux that it has got. It was super simple to get started with though. My background is web development, so I know how the internet works I don’t necessarily know embedded Linux but you know, getting it all up and running and getting PWM on the GPIO. These are all things that there is excellent code for. Intel has done a tremendous job of opening the full-width support from the get go. Which is really terrific of them. At sparkfun.com we have a Github with a ton of code, they tell open source now as well. Just for getting this thing going. I don’t want to say it is super super simple, but if you have any Linux familiarity at all, you will have no problem.
Tim: Now you just mentioned the topic of openness, this is like the hardware, and how are you open on the hardware end?
David: I can’t speak for Intel I am sure they will have lawyers that will dispute me, but they have very open specs with regards to the Edison, I am sure all of the Atom processor, all of that is kind of open.
Tim: What about on the Sparkfun side?
David: On the Sparkfun side, all of our designs, we are a very open company, kind of by default. All of our designs are open source, both hardware, software, firmware, pretty much anything that we make right down to our logo is an open source a piece of kit that you can just use for your own self. If you ever see a red board with our logo on it, you can go online go to sparkfun.com and download the source files. Any firmware that we have uploaded to that board. And when I say source files, I mean the Gerber files, you know the board designs, the actual circuit schematic is available for download. We think that this is really really powerful. And it has come in handy even in my own life. Like I said, I am a web designer, a web developer, I don’t even know electronics most of the time. But it is really nice for me to be able to go online and download a Gerber file and extend it. Or hey I wish I did this. I wish this is for this one over here. Just to see the file for myself and modify it if I want to, send it to away to _____ and get my own circuit boards back. And having that starting point, of that open design is such a valuable resource.
Tim: How do you answer the argument you might hear about keeping something secret to hang on to some kind of profit? I am sure that people could rip off your designs.
David: Yeah, this is a question that our CEO Nathan has answered many many times over. That might sound to you like most of our designs, I don’t want to say are simple, but they are not exactly trivial but you can look at it, you can reverse engineer it.
Tim: Utilitarian.
David: Yeah, exactly. But our main time to knock off in China is about six weeks right now. So we will come out with a new board, we will do a breakup for a new chip, or something that’s really really cool to us. We will put the designs online and we will see a Chinese knockoff on eBay or wherever within a couple of weeks, six weeks or so. And it has been terrifying for us. But it is also kind of like that that kick in the ass that we need to keep innovating, to keep coming up with new ideas and really keep our quality up. Because we
Tim: And then it will happen anyway?
David: Yeah, that will. Naturally of course. We have caught ourselves in our quality, we test every single board that we make. We offer great technical support. You can call us up on the phone and talk to somebody about whichever board you are working with, or whichever product you are working with, whether it is a Raspberry Pi down to an Arduino down to an LED. And we will be there at Boulder, Colorado, answering the phones and answering your questions.
Tim: One more question. Availability? Can people get these by mail right now?
David: The Edison boards themselves, you can buy it right now.
Tim: I mean the Sparkfun.
David: The Sparkfun boards are being finalized. These are all engineering samples you see. These should be ready in a couple of weeks. You can already view them on the website at sparkfun.com. If you just do a search for Edison you will see the full gamut of all the development boards that we have now. But it is not available for sale right now. They will be in weeks, mere weeks.
Tim: Late September, October?
David: Yeah. I would probably say October, mid-October.
edison? (Score:2, Funny)
Edison? boooo everyone knows Tesla was much better! The man almost invented wireless power! It's Edison's fault we have to use power cords! I read that in a factoid image so it MUST BE TRUE!
Re: (Score:1)
Did you know, AC can actually kill people! Think of electric chair!
Thanks for the imagery... I'm now thinking of Anonymous Cowards running around killing people (and elephants) with electric chairs....
Re: (Score:2)
Elephants, too. Edison, you sadistic bastard!
RIP Topsy.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Edison is a good name for an Intel product :
Crushing competitors using dubious commercial methods, stealing other's ideas...
Power Consumption (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Exactly, rPi and BeagleBone are better comparisons to Edison and Galileo than Arduino (except the Yun).
Also, most Atmel-based Arduinos nowadays have the option for the 16 bit MCUs, which is a no-brainer.
Re:Power Consumption (Score:5, Informative)
It's not a 32-bit processor, it's 64-bit.
Well.. technically there is a 32-bit processor, but that's in addition to the dual core 64-bit processor.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hang on a minute, it uses about the same amount of power as a Raspberry Pi.
It's a crap load more powerful.
It's to be expected though, it's a power optimised 22nm CPU.
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks for the link. I knew power would not be a pretty issue, but the other one that came to mind was whether you could count on instruction timing. That article confirms that you can't. The WS2811 and other such chips expect pretty tight timing. Simple to do with Arduino, just use the asm macro to directly do a string of NOP and then bit operators directly on the port register you've connected your data line to.
Now if you're doing something that you need a beast like this for, you can hook up an Arduino o
Re: (Score:3)
That's why you run the OS (like linux) on the Atom CPU and do your real time interfacing on the Quark CPU that's designed to run an RTOS.
Just like how the BeagleBone Black has an ARM CPU and a little PRU
by the way, if you need to do precise timing, you should probably be using a hardware timer. That way you can sleep the device or change the clock to save power instead of burning up power at full speed in a NOP.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably because it's a 500MHz, dual core 64bit CPU with another 100MHz 32bit CPU along side it with 1GB of RAM, not an 8bit MCU?
Re: (Score:1)
plus a wifi radio and a Bluetooth radio
Re: (Score:2)
I'm really struggling to think of applications for this. There isn't much connectivity and it isn't very low power, so both micro server and low power node applications are out. For prototyping you will probably want an ARM board to ensure long term availability and low cost.
Ah yes, Intel (Score:2)
Why is it that I'm having qualms about Intel?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe most Americans aren't qualified and are just a little too stupid to work in their facilities?
How's that for PR?
Edison missing a lot (Score:5, Interesting)
From this video, it's clear the board is missing USB and any kind of normal power connector. Oh, and removable storage? And ethernet?
This device screams of a scheme to dump atom processors after the market disappeared for netbooks and intel was left with a few million chips on their hands. I'll stick with ARM and the larger ecosystem that has grown around the Beaglebone Black and Rpi, thank you.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
plus routing RF is not for the new at board routing, antenna, and component selection.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Here's a start:
The Diamondville and Pineview Atom is used in the HP Mini Series, aigo MID Asus N10, Lenovo IdeaPad S10, Acer Aspire One & Packard Bell's "dot" (ZG5), recent ASUS Eee PC systems, Sony VAIO M-series, AMtek Elego, Dell Inspiron Mini Series, Gigabyte M912, LG X Series, Samsung NC10, Sylvania g Netbook Meso, Toshiba NB series (100, 200, 205, 255, 300, 500, 505), MSI Wind PC netbooks, RedFox Wizbook 1020i, Sony Vaio X Series, Zenith Z-Book, a range of Aleutia desktops, Magic W3 and the Archos.The Pineview line is also used in multiple AAC devices for the disabled individual who is unable to speak and the AAC device assists the user in everyday communication with dedicated speech software.
No need to get all whiny about it. No-one's going to take away your precious ARM.
Re: (Score:2)
It's also missing video output. For all its bells and whistles, it should at least have some kind of video output, even if it's via a header.
Re: (Score:2)
This is one thing I disagree with. For a small embedded chip targeting arduino et al. settling for a specific form of video output is something I do NOT want. I greatly prefer having a chip that can interface with a video driver of some description. For 99% of the uses for this tiny thing there will not be a display with a standard video input. It will be run via a parallel interface, or SPI, or I2C, or god forbid UART, all of which the chip supports.
Even popular displays for the Beaglebone, and RPi don't u
Re: (Score:1)
Not everything needs video out. Especially in embedded applications. For example, does you router have video out? how about your toaster?
Re: (Score:2)
[Places head in hands, moaning] Not this shit again. This product is not a toy for snotty-nose video game zombies. It is a serious embedded building block. My biggest gripe with the Beaglebone is that it wastes all those transistors and current drain on the video coprocessor and HDMI connector.
Why would a remote sensor or drone component, for example, need a freaking VIDEO OUTPUT?
Re: (Score:2)
The Edison is a system on a chip designed to go on a board. The chip itself naively supports a wide votlage range, SD cards. The official breakout board supports USB and USB OTG, and has a DC input jack for power.
Re: (Score:2)
I too was bummed that there was no ethernet (I freaking HATE WiFi), but I understand why.
There could, and I'm sure there will, be a stackable ethernet block, and damned if I can see why that is an inelegant solution. There already is a dot-matrix OLED block. Just the R
Re: (Score:1)
I think Intel really missed the boat with this thing. Originally it was just "look guise we put a x86 computer in an SD card" but now they actually want to try to sell it to people. They got too wrapped up in keeping it small when they should've made it BB/RPi sized, with equivalent features. The tiny connectors are totally hobbyist unfriendly, you will be forced to buy 3rd party boards to do anything at all with this platform.
Re: (Score:2)
It must suck to be utterly unimaginative. Instead of just making nothing more tha
Weight? (Score:1)
Anyone know the weight? The BT comm is SUPER nice, I could have used this earlier this summer for a project.
Re: (Score:2)
That is a peculiarly dour way of looking at it. For my own part, I am impressed as hell that Sparkfun landed this coup. I happen to think Edison will be one of the standout innovations of the decade.
Re: (Score:2)
Not ARM? (Score:2)
AFAIK, Edison isn't an ARM architecture. Not sure if that's going to be a long-term problem but what they do have going for them is the integrated wireless functionality. This has been a personal beef of mine for embedded single-board computers. Wifi was always an afterthought. You had to use a goofy USB dongle which doesn't lend itself well to a rough-service product. Technologic Systems TS-4900 addresses this in spades. I do want to know how long the Edison takes to boot because anything more than 1
Re: (Score:1)
since there is no bios, I doubt this will take very long to boot at all. In fact boot time will mostly be determined by how many services you are starting at bootup. Yocto linux. I imagine most applications of this device will start ssh, maybe a web server, or an otherwise custom developed service for the specific application. The bootloader may have a few seconds delay to allow you to interrupt it and change params.
How long doe it take to load a kernel and initrd from flash, unpack and execute?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, having used a few different Technologic products, they can boot in around 2 seconds. In practice though, once you incorporate services such as USB, boot time increases quite a bit. Their 7350 board will boot to a shell with USB in around 6 seconds. If you want full Debian, that takes well over 30 seconds. The 4900 board which uses Yocto will come up with USB and Wifi connected to a network in about 10 seconds. They're using a Freescale processor on that one. Pretty nice product.
Of course, anothe
Re: (Score:2)
How long it takes to boot depends on what software it runs. If you choose to code in straight C or C++, it will "boot" in the blink of an eye. If you boot suitably pared-down embedded linux, I suppose it might take a second or so. There is no BIOS, which is the usual time-waster.