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The MinnowBoard is a Low-Cost, Open Hardware Single-Board Computer (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the open-source-software-is-followed-by-open-source-hardware-like-summer-follows-spring dept.

Out in the Northeast Texas town of Ft. Worth, a company called CircuitCo started making something they called the BeagleBoard -- an open source hardware single-board computer for educators and experimenters. Now, with help and support from Intel, they're making and supporting the Atom-based MinnowBoard, which is also open source, and comes with Angstrom Linux to help experimenters get started with it. David Anders is the Senior Embedded Systems Engineer at CircuitCo. Slashdot's Timothy Lord met David at LinuxCon North America 2013 in New Orleans and made this video of him talking about the recently-released MinnowBoard and the more mature BeagleBoard.

6 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Deja Vu by khellendros1984 · · Score: 4, Informative

    A little deja vu.

    --
    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
  2. Pricing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is what you want to know: the board costs $200 or £135.

    http://parts.arrow.com/item/detail/circuitco/minnowboard

    http://www.uk.farnell.com/circuitco/minnowboard/atom-e640t-platform-sbc/dp/2319581

    1. Re:Pricing! by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 3, Informative

      the board costs $200 or £135

      So it's really just an expensive Mini-ITX board? For an end-user, being open source is irrelevant. Having a few programmable I-O's won't help it. If that was all you needed, you'd buy an Arduino and save £100 on your design (plus the space and power savings, and no messy O/S to worry about).

      Or, if you want a modern x86-based mini system, buy something like a Zotac barebones for a little over half the price. I realise it's cool and tree-huggy to have an open-source board like this, but in practice if I want an embedded real-world interface device I'll get an Arduino, if I want a compact x86 I'll get any one of a range of SFF x86's, and if I want something about halfway I'll get a PCEngines Alix, also at half the price.

  3. MinnowBoard is weak sauce. by NoImNotNineVolt · · Score: 5, Informative
    The GizmoBoard is also an open source single board computer that you can purchase for $200.

    But it's a 64-bit dual-core AMD APU with an integrated Radeon HD 6250. Considerably more powerful than the Minnowboard, but still runs on 10W.

    Even an article about the MinnowBoard can't help shouting out the GizmoBoard:

    At the heart of the MinnowBoard is one of Intel’s less powerful processors: the Atom E640T. Running at 1GHz, the single-core chip offers a 32-bit x86 implementation – already putting it on the back foot compared to the dual-core 64-bit APU found on rival AMD’s Gizmo, the closest device for comparison – while generating a surprisingly small amount of heat, allowing for passive cooling through a compact heat sink.

    Source

    Basically, MinnowBoard has been outdated for some time now. Not sure why this spam is on the front page.

    Full disclosure: I almost got the GizmoBoard as an HTPC, but the 2GB RAM and lack of HDMI really turned me off. HDMI can be cobbled together (there's a high-speed connector that actually exposes HDMI lines, but you'd have to wire it to a female connector yourself), but swapping out four 96-FBGA surface-mount packages to upgrade the RAM to 4GB just seemed like more rework than I wanted to sign up for.

    --
    Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
  4. Not Fort Worth by metallurge · · Score: 3, Informative

    Richardson, a city of about 100,000 people where CircuitCo is located, is part of exurban Dallas, not exurban Fort Worth. The summary is incorrect.

  5. Personally, I like the folks at HardKernel. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    These are really, really nice.

    Cheap. Small. Good community. About the only bad thing I have to say about it is that I had to go to Radio Shack to get a converter for the power.