Slashdot Mirror
PC/104 Consortium Announces Design Contest Winners
An anonymous reader writes "The PC/104 Consortium announced the winners of its annual design contest today at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco. One winner was an autonomous model helicopter developed by a team from the University of Southern California (USC). From the writeup: 'Not only can AVATAR fly without human intervention, it can also perform GPS waypoint navigation, autonomous vision-based landing and autonomous sensor-based take-off, and image processing from three Firewire cameras.' Check out the cool photos and other details!"
pc104? Maybe they meant pc2004?
Second thought: what is the difference between 104 and 105 key keyboards, anyway? Whenever I do a Linux install, I never have the energy to count them (and which ones do you count?). I just go with 105, figuring it must be better.
Third thought: here's a link to the PC/104 site. I still don't understand what it is, exactly, but then I'm just another person holding forth here on computing despite knowing nothing about non-desktop systems.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
PC/104 is a standard for embedded computers, based on ISA (and now PCI with PC/104 Plus). There are many companies that offer PC/104 compatible products, both single board computers (SBCs) and add-on modules for GPS, wireless networking, all kinds of digital or analog I/O, motor control, DSPs, etc. etc. The boards are a little over 3.5" square and vary in price, typically $200-$600, with processors from a 386 to a Pentium III. They are typically industrial-temperature qualified and shock-hardened, and used in many applications in robotics, avionics, factory automation and other places where small, harsh-environment computers are needed.
Skynet beta is here *now*!
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
helicopter coolness