Another thought what bout using arm based embedded systems? On Apr 15, 2013 7:20 PM, "Jonathan Aquilina" eagles051387@gmail.com wrote:
Wookey I'm trying to weigh all my options before going down the line of developing my own board On Apr 15, 2013 7:05 PM, "Wookey" wookey@wookware.org wrote:
+++ Renato Golin [2013-04-15 16:24 +0100]:
On 15 April 2013 15:36, Jonathan Aquilina <[1]eagles051387@gmail.com
wrote:
It seems you won't be using fancy 3D graphics, so the video card
is near
irrelevant, here. You should be able to get accelerated 2D
graphics with
most SoCs, even if not using open source drivers. Wookie might
know some
boards that have decent OSS video drivers, but if you don't care
(most
people don't), you should be fine. There are a number of v7 that you might consider. I would go for
anything
that is equal or higher than a dual/quad-core A9 (Pandaboard ES,
Odroid,
Tegra3), but there are also newer dual-core A15 (which is at least
2x
faster than dual-A9), on several flavours (Arndale, Chromebook,
Odroid,
Tegra4). You might also try the very cheap "AllWinner A10" which is
essentially a
Beagleboard (dual-core A8).
My goal is to provide affordable point of sales systems. I was also considering some of the linaro dev boards that are available.I just updated the Debian RPi wiki page to point people at some alternatives:
https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi
The Cubieboard is a nice option. mk802's are nice and cheap. The above page and the freedombox hardware list (linked from there) is a good place to start to see what boards might suit your purposes.
For anyone looking to make hardware which a linux COM (Computer on module) plugs into, the EOMA68 spec produced by Rhombus Tech is something to keep an eye on. That provides standard IO for various comuter modules (the first is an Allwinner A10-based one, of which first hardware arrived 3 days ago apparently). So you make your bit of hardware with a PCMCIA socket on for the COM to go in. You will hopefully get second-sourcing this way.
http://rhombus-tech.net/ http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/news/
Most of the boards linaro is supporting directly are a bit high-end for running a POS system, and I'm not aware of any of them being aimed at low-volume manufacturers who aren't wanting to lay out their own boards (which sounds like where you are coming from).
Wookey
Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM http://wookware.org/
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