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Mac mini as Embedded Development Platform

Posted by timothy on from the one-for-each-passenger-in-my-car dept.

Ohreally_factor writes "Peter Seebach has written a paper over at IBM developerWorks on the potential use of the Mac mini as a high-end embedded development board. Quote from the article: 'Comparing it to other embedded systems, you'll find that it's not much bigger, and it's smaller than some. It has a broader array of connectors, a faster processor, support for a very large amount of memory, and comes with self-hosted development tools. In short, if you look at it as an embedded development platform, it's a competitive one.'"

6 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Re:BRIQ by Frequency+Domain · · Score: 5, Informative
    What happened to the briQ or whatever from YellowDog?
    They priced themselves right out of the market. They were asking about $1300, if memory serves, for a 400Mhz G3, and about $500 more to upgrade it to a G4. And that was after their "big price drop." It reminded me of the old joke about trying to make a profit from each of your customers, as opposed to from all of them.
  2. OSX == OSX Lite by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Informative

    OSX is built on Darwin, the BSD/Mach core.

    But drop to a shell and look around - everything is Unix, you can tweak the text-based config files, specify which extensions load, which daemons start, whatever you want.

    There's no voodoo here - so no need for Win98Lite style utilities.

    If you want a simple GUI use X11. If you want Aqua, set autologin and remove all the apps that shouldn't be there.

    For embedded, the cost of Aqua over X11 (OSX over Darwin) may be too high, especially if you can source Mini motherboards directly.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  3. Re:Not to rain on the parade, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ummm... PIC, AVR, dude, those are pee shooters, of course they are going to be cheaper, they aren't even in the same league. You cannot find a single board computer that runs at 1.25 Ghz, has 256 MB DDR, 32MB Graphics, firewire, USB, 100BaseT, etc. for the same price as the mini. Freescale has their MPC5200 Lite board with a 400 Mhz PowerPC processor for $1000.

  4. Re:When I first saw the Mac Mini by argent · · Score: 4, Informative

    Name one; I'm using my iBook as of current, and I can see almost anything I would need to use a second click for in a menu somewhere.

    You need control-click to bring up contextual manus in many situations. Click-and-hold doesn't work.

    You need command-click or shift-click for multiple selections.

    You need command-click to move or remove menu-bar objects.

    You need control, shift, and option-click all over the place in Photoshop... long one of the "killer apps" for the Mac. In other apps I've run into as much as 2-keys-chorded-plus-double-click.

    In OS 9, which was more consistent about this than OS X, you needed option-click to move the control strip.

    That's just off the top of my head.

  5. Re:Not to rain on the parade, but... by Space+cowboy · · Score: 2, Informative

    And a huge percentage of the embedded market is done with those 'pea shooters' . My point is that in the embedded market, speed/RAM size, whatever isn't anywhere near as important. Cost is.

    If you wanted a consumer-grade device, there may be an argument, but embedded is (very!) rarely such a resource hog. There is also always a mini-itx type for $100->$200 depending on what you want. Ok, add $40 for 256 MB RAM, and it runs a little slower at (up to) 1GHz but you do get firewire, USB, 100-BASET (up to 4 of them IIRC), TV out, MPEG hardware decoding, LVDS i/o, general purpose i/o (important in embedded), FIR, CIR, audio jacks, and access to more disks...

    Or you could pay 2-5 times the price and get a mini (with a DVD-ROM bundled).

    Simon

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
  6. I have to authorize purchases, and... by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 3, Informative
    The only problem with using an Apple box as an embedded platform is this: By the time you release your product, based on the Mini, Apple will discontinue it and start developing something else.

    The iMac got replaced. The Mac Cube is long gone. The lampshade is on its way out. Apple constantly innovates and comes out with something new. In embedded systems, you need something that probably isn't as exciting as an Apple system, but that will remain stable and available for years to come, with no or minimal changes. Otherwise, you are asking for trouble.

    As NASA said, test what you fly and fly what you test. You can't design something, change the computer at the last minute, and expect it to be fine, even if all the software still works. There are electrical noises, temperature considerations, EMI, RFI, and all kinds of other fun things that will keep you chasing shadows for months. Embedded projects fail over this kind of thing.

    I would LOVE to use some Apple box in an embedded system... but Apple would have to release such a box as one that is INTENDED for embedded applications, and they would need to promise continued production for a number of years.