Society of Robots - Robot Forum

Electronics => Electronics => Topic started by: dunk on July 27, 2007, 07:48:49 AM

Title: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX Review
Post by: dunk on July 27, 2007, 07:48:49 AM
http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/pico-itx/ (http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/pico-itx/)

Quote
When idle the PX drew around 14W. Even after extreme CPU load (running Prime95 for an hour) we couldn't get this figure above 16W. The temperature of the board throughout was surpisingly cool - barely warm to the touch under normal operation and only slightly warm under stress.

hrmm. still too power hungry for any of my bots but far lower power consumption than last time i looked at putting a PC on board.
definitely an option for someone who wasn't too fussy about battery life.

dunk.
Title: Re: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX Review
Post by: JesseWelling on July 27, 2007, 09:46:35 PM
x86 every where? Yay Geode!
http://www.fit-pc.com/specifications.htm
It's pc104 so you can expand upon it pretty well... if you are into that kind of thing

If you like PPC I suggest you go with a MPC5200... it's got PWM's and I2C (for easy A2D hookup)
This one is expensive but has low power requirements:
http://www.embeddedplanet.com/products/ep5200.asp

This one is cheep but looks less small robot friendly...
It would be fine for a car or robotic arm... or a robotic armed car...or an armed robotic car garage...
http://www.genesippc.com/efika.php
Title: Re: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX Review
Post by: Tsukubadaisei on July 27, 2007, 11:56:12 PM
A linux powered robot... my dream will finally come true.
Title: Re: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX Review
Post by: JesseWelling on July 28, 2007, 12:07:39 PM
I've been using Gumstix... if you don't need floating point they work out well...
Title: Re: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX Review
Post by: Bajanick on July 28, 2007, 05:35:21 PM
I've been using Gumstix... if you don't need floating point they work out well...

Those look pretty cool. How are you using them. Can they be used to control an H bridge and a couple motors?
Title: Re: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX Review
Post by: JesseWelling on July 28, 2007, 08:54:35 PM
The Robostix can. It's an ATmega128. I developed a dual system where the Atmega128 does most of the IO like servos, pwm, a2d and gpio and the Gumstix (32bit ARM) does all the heavy lifting for communication/AI/localization.

Generally when you want to use Linux to make a robot you better have some reason for it though.
Title: Re: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX Review
Post by: Tsukubadaisei on July 29, 2007, 09:32:20 AM
Generally when you want to use Linux to make a robot you better have some reason for it though.

Run multiple tasks.
I do that using my umpc with windows.
Title: Re: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX Review
Post by: Bajanick on July 29, 2007, 09:34:22 AM
The Robostix can. It's an ATmega128. I developed a dual system where the Atmega128 does most of the IO like servos, pwm, a2d and gpio and the Gumstix (32bit ARM) does all the heavy lifting for communication/AI/localization.

Generally when you want to use Linux to make a robot you better have some reason for it though.

To avoid using windows, that would be the main reason for me.
Title: Re: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX Review
Post by: JesseWelling on August 23, 2007, 06:56:55 AM
I was reffering to the complexity of your robot. Do you need TCP/IP and USB devices an mass storage? Well you probably want to use Linux. Do you just need 2 Analog conversions, a serial port, and 2 PWM signals? Well you can probably do without (unless you need Uber processing ...)