Archive for the ‘OMAP Series’ category

Hawkboard

April 3rd, 2010

Hawkboard, similar to Beagleboard is open hardware platform for developer community. It uses OMAP L138 SoC, which contains ARM9 processor core along with floating point DSP. AM1808 is similar chip-set but with only ARM9 core.

Hawkboard logo

The board has direct serial console connector for debugging.  Board has VGA, USB Host & Gadget, SATA, Audio IO peripheral options, making it useful for various home & industrial application.

Pros:

- Angstrom Linux distribution supports hawkboard. Besides that, users have successfully used Android on hawkboard.

- Both cores, ARM9 & Floating point DSP of Hawkboard can execute upto 456 MHz, which is fairly good processing power.

- VGA video output makes easy to connect to low end display device (e.g. CRT monitor).

- Fairly good price of 110 USD.

Update: Hawkboard’s recent batch has some hardware problem. Although solution is published, some users are still reporting problem. So do take this into account.

Beagleboard

January 1st, 2010

Beagleboard is one of the most successful project in terms of community support & activity. It uses OMAP3530 soc, which belongs to OMAP35# series from TI. Many recently launched smart phones (such as Droid, N900, Palm Pre ) use similar kind of soc.

beagle-hd-logo

Besides having strong hardware, Beagleboard project also comes with all required data-sheets, schematics, layout & it is supported well by various Linux distribution, making it ideal plateform for embedded researchers & hackers.  Lot of other hardware boards are available which are modified version of beagleboard.

Although, first impression of  Beagle board hardware suggest that it is targeted to Mobile / Multimedia or entertainment device, It is practically very useful for many kind of application.

Quick Pros:

- ARM Cortex – A8 Core

- Standard interfaces such as USB, DVI-D, Serial console for debug, SD card slot

- USB Host & Gadget mode support, making it ideal for usb device driver development / testing and validation

- Supported by various linux distribution, in particular Angstrom includes various debugging tools, making beagleboard as strong reference platform of ARM Cortex-A8 for Application testing & debugging.

- Although (as of now) Open GLES driver is available in binary only format, it is fairly usable.

I would also suggest beagleboard to any one who is beginner in embedded Linux or college student for their academic project as platform.