Intel's Edison hobby board

[aphexcoil]

On a whim to play with some new toys, I purchased an Intel Edison along with the mini-breakout board. (It's on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Edison-...8&qid=1419150790&sr=8-2&keywords=intel+edison)

This board has built-in wireless and bluetooth and has an Intel Atom 22nm processor underclocked to 500Mhz. It has 4 gigabytes onboard flash (eMMC) and 1 gigabyte of RAM. It comes with a version of linux called Yocto, however I removed that and installed Ubilinux which is a Debian based Linux OS.

I'm very impressed with the board. I ran benchmarks and it was slightly north of 700 MMIPS. The board was very snappy and easily ran Nginx with MySQL / PHP. I was also able to hook up a SDR dongle and use it to track planes without any issues.

For $50, there is a lot you could do with this thing. It uses about 1 watt of power when it is number crunching. The power draw when idle is very low.

My next purchase will be the larger breakout board where I can play with the digital and analog inputs / outputs.

If you like to tinker with technology, I'd highly recommend getting this thing. If anyone needs help installing Ubilinux or install RTL_TCP (using software defined radio and a compatible dongle), I'd be more than happy to assist.

This thing is really cool! It's about 200% faster than Raspberry Pi and 50% faster than Beaglebone Black. The 386 instruction set also opens the door to a lot of possibilities compared with ARM solutions.

 

[HeavensCloud]

Sounds neat, keep us updated.

 

[Trimlock]

If anyone is getting into this the Arduino boards are highly recommended. The mini boards are very specific in nature and really should be used by those looking to save space.

These are a ton of fun and I can't wait to get my kid involved with this.

 

[aphexcoil]

If anyone is getting into this the Arduino boards are highly recommended. The mini boards are very specific in nature and really should be used by those looking to save space.

These are a ton of fun and I can't wait to get my kid involved with this.

Yes, get the Arduino style breakout board if you're getting the Edison. It makes accessing the the GPIO input/outputs much easier. That being said even the mini-breakout board offers access to them, although you would have to break out the soldering iron and flip the board around. They are arranged neatly on the underside of the board.

If you have a specific application in mind, you can save space by getting the mini-breakout board and doing a little soldering.

I also purchased a small lithium battery for the board (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FFXBCV8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1). This battery is rated at 370mAh. Amazingly, the Edison mini-breakout board has an on-board charging circuit that will automatically charge the battery for you. I've gotten two hours of use from this tiny battery.

Honestly, the possibilities here are endless. I'm thinking about starting a project to have this board collect data from my electric meter while also controlling a solar array ground station. I'm going to build a motor to have the solar panels automatically track the sun. I'll also have each panel go into a GPIO input so I can wirelessly track the output for each panel and have the unit act as a webserver that I can access from the house.

If anyone is interested in this, I'll start a blog with detailed pictures and setup information. I'm really starting to have too much fun with this little guy.

EDIT: Here is a direct link to a PDF for the Edison mini-breakout board. https://communities.intel.com/servl...102-8-27632/edison-breakout_HG_331190-004.pdf

 

[Chris_Lonardo]

Do you have an idea of what the current draw is on this? The Galileo (1st gen) was a thirsty biotch, but the 2nd-gen was supposed to be much better.

 

[Trimlock]

Well, I never tested full draw but its supposed to be a 1watt part, although I doubt it has ever pulled that much.

 

[aphexcoil]

From my testing, the board usually consumes less than 1 watt (.75 watts approximately). It's extremely power efficient. However, heavy wifi use can drive the board a bit north of 1 watt. The 22nm Atom CPU is already power efficient but since they underclocked it to 500Mhz, it barely uses any power.