[nycbug-talk] arm boards

[Charles Sprickman]

On Sep 24, 2012, at 8:46 PM, George Rosamond wrote:

> On 09/21/12 18:21, Sevan / Venture37 wrote:
>> On 21/09/2012 23:13, George Rosamond wrote:
>>> Raspberry PI is too much of an issue in acquiring.
>> 
>> I ordered mine from http://www.farnell.com on Tuesday, it was here on
>> Thursday.
> 
> The BeagleBoard www site says they will be at MakerFaire this weekend.
> It certainly is a good chance to discuss some sort of group discount for
> us, even if they don't sell them directly.
> 
> What if we structure some sort of 3 hour long workshop?
> 
> We could provide the useful documentation to enable the preliminary
> work.  For FreeBSD, there's stuff out there.  People should prep their
> SD cards at least.
> 
> A short introduction to get people started would probably be nice.

You know, I've been interested in this, but one thing I'm not clear
on (and what's most interesting to me) is what the differences
between all these units are as far as interfacing with the outside
world.  Specifically, if I want to control a small servo or
similar, or tie into a bank of small relays or some such thing,
what are the options?  Does that mean buying yet another device or
is there some basic analog I/O on these things?

To me, being able to break out of the whole "this is a computer,
and you will interface with stuff over the network" seems like it
would open up more possibilities for experimentation.  I can follow
basic schematics, I held a summer job where I was paid to solder,
and I can etch my own PCBs (the old fashioned way, never picked up
anything newer than the old rub-on decals, dunk board in etching
solution method).

Anyhow, that's my angle - re-energizing some long unused synapses. :)

Charles

> We should be dragging in people who are using NetBSD on it.  I don't see
> much recently from OpenBSD.
> 
> 
> g
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