Slashdot Mirror

There are many little ARM boards, some of which are priced as low as $39 in quantity 1. These are useful for applications where the ATMega in an Arduno is too limiting.

The choice of peripherals these guys made is unusual. With a USB port and an HDMI port, you can build a game machine, which is probably what they had in mind. Most such boards are more suited to embedded applications, and have I/O - digital TTL ports, Ethernet, LCD drive, etc.

A problem with these minimal machines is deciding what to put on them. The lowest-price devices tend to have too little of some resource and too much of something you don't need. This leads to a proliferation of little embedded boards with slightly different options, which runs the cost back up.

For hobbyists, the Leaflands Maple may be interesting. It's an ARM board in the Arduno form factor. It's compatible with Arduno daughter boards ("shields"), and has some commonality with the Arduno development environment. Not enough memory to run Linux, though.

The $25 price is a vaporware price - they're not actually shipping. NXP is shipping LPCExpresso for "under $30", and that includes the entire tool chain (Eclipse, GCC, JTAG debugger, etc.)

The Mini2440 is $109.95 with screen, $89.95 without screen.

Boots with Linux/busybox/Qtopia. You can also add Emdebian to it.

The Mini2440 is $109.95 with screen, $89.95 without screen.

Boots with Linux/busybox/Qtopia. You can also add Emdebian to it.

I'd be happiest if they had video out.

You can get a Mini2440 with a VGA out card.

I'd be happiest if they had video out.

You can get a Mini2440 with a VGA out card.

Mini2440 is $100 in quantity 50+, comes with Linux / Qtopia, 405 MHz ARM9 with a 3.5" LCD 240x320, 128MB NAND FLASH, Ethernet, USB (could put a thumb drive on here for more space), serial, microphone, headphone out audio, $15 webcam (quantity 50+).

$5 including shipping for something that sells locally for $35 is worth the two week wait. $85 for an ARM9 development platform with LCD touch screen - gimme!

Or you could buy it directly for only $5 more... $105 ($85+20 shipping) on ebay, versus $110+free shipping.

All those cheap bits and bobs you can also buy directly from places like dealextreme.com There's really not all that many good deals on ebay these days.

I don't know why these mini2440 boards aren't more popular with hobbyists.. You can get one with a 7" touch screen for about $150. They're even cheaper on ebay.

There seems to be a very helpful community willing to help, and it seems to be a fantastic product to learn with.