Rugged, Reliable, Low Power Linux Hardware?

Jesper asks: "OK, so I'm about to spend two years on a sailboat. The GUIs of all commercially available instrumentation electronics are ugly and outdated at best. But to develop my own I need a Linux based system that runs on 12V, uses very little power (preferably &lt 25W including monitor), has a sunlight readable waterproof SVGA display with min 16 colors and a waterproof input device (mouse, trackball or touchscreen. Keyboard not needed), and a rugged CPU with minimum footprint, preferably with a solid state harddrive. All this is perfectly possible to build, but I want to spend my energy developing the GUI, not building the hardware. I'm looking for tips on available H/W products."

Comments

Why get that complex?

[scotpurl]

Palm Pilot + GPS = most of what you want. Get a waterproofing kit for your Palm at http://www.aquapac.net/homeframe.html. You can buy AAA size batteries anywhere in the world, or even recharge them quickly off of a solar cell charger.

Write a hack that keeps your Palm on all the time, and instead draw power directly from something other than AAA's, like one of those rugged marine-duty batteries.

For sailing you need, what, speed and heading? GPS gives both. Or buy a magnetic compass (http://www.precisionnavigation.com/palmnavigator3 rd.html) for your Palm as well. Bet you could write an interface to your depth gauge via the serial input.