[FZH] 有興趣搞嵌入式嗎？ Fwd: [beagleboard] ANNOUNCEMENT: Annual State of the Beagle Report 2011

[Caius 'kaio' Chance]

我買了一塊 xM，大家有沒有興趣搞這個？

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jason Kridner <jkridner於beagleboard.org>
Date: Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 10:22 PM
Subject: [beagleboard] ANNOUNCEMENT: Annual State of the Beagle Report 2011
To: Beagle Board <beagleboard於googlegroups.com>


My apologies for the tardiness of this report.  2010 was the busiest
year yet for BeagleBoard.org and the rest of 2011 looks to be even
busier with more people learning and teaching about low-power
open-source development with the BeagleBoard, more interesting
derivative hardware designs and add-ons that improve what you can
build with what you've learned, more software distributions supporting
the BeagleBoard in their mainline offerings and overall improved
experiences as the platform and community evolve.

*********************
Google Summer of Code
*********************
One of my highlights for 2010 was the BeagleBoard.org mentorship in
the Google Summer of Code.  We mentored 6 students to successfully
complete projects ranging from ARM assembly optimizations within the
XBMC media center project to building a USB packet sniffer you can use
with your own hardware.  There were also projects on optimizing
OpenCV, simplifying use of the C6x DSP, performing pulse width
modulation and providing an ARM-optimized FFT library.  Each of the
students was given $5,000 for their efforts by Google and have
provided their source code that you can use in your own projects.

Hunyue, Vladimir, Mans and I all visited Google for the mentor summit
and interacted with hundreds of developers helping to advance the
state of open source.  We learned that Google is planning to expand
the program in 2011, so it is time to get started, so please help
update the idea page and register yourself as a prospective mentor if
you'd like to participate.

For more information, visit http://beagleboard.org/gsoc.

**********************************
TI/UT BeagleBoard Design Challenge
**********************************
Texas Instruments challenged students at the University of Texas to
provide an open source design and present it for the world to vote
upon.  Several interesting designs were created, including one picked
up by PopSci.com.  For more information, visit
http://www.ti.com/beagleboardchallenge.

********
Projects
********
The sponsored projects program died off last year as very few updates
were being provided by the registered projects.  Lots of open source
software and cool hardware projects continued to be developed with
around 1,000 BeagleBoard-related blog posts in 2010 (a bit over 2,500
all-time by my count) that ended up in the BeagleBoard.org RSS feed,
but the board giveaways had very little to do with it.  If you are
someone who is very interested in that program or you have an update
regarding your project, there are still giveaways from Gumstix, Always
Innovating, Archos and others (including BeagleBoards) if you can show
that you've had some interesting progress and want to try putting your
code on one of those platforms.  If you give good feedback we can
update http://beagleboard.org/contest to reflect that feedback and
relaunch the program.

While significant progress has come from projects like Linaro, Ubuntu,
MeeGo and now Yocto providing direct support for the BeagleBoard, I
think the real progress in improving the project output will be in
improving the http://beagleboard.org/project page to include a
database of project build, functionality and test updates.  The idea
is to create scripts that can be included with project build and test
scripts to utilize OAuth to provide database entries that can be
browsed quickly to show project activity without ever needing to visit
the site.  Contact me on IRC for more details if you'd like to
contribute.  Project source will be part of the website source tree.
This will also be something I'll be talking about as part of
BeagleCast, something I'll be discussing at the bottom of this report.

***********************************
xM Launch, Availability and Pricing
***********************************
The big story for 2010 was the launch of the BeagleBoard-xM, which
brought the BeagleBoard to 1GHz and 512MB RAM, as well as adding
additional USB host ports and Ethernet.  The revision has been well
received and distributors have had trouble keeping stock on both this
revision as well as the pre-xM boards.  Digi-Key has been getting
hundreds of boards a week of both revisions and the typical wait on
back-orders has been under 2 weeks, but every time distributors start
to show stock additional orders have come in.  The moral of the story
is don't wait for the distributors to show stock if you want to get a
board--just place your order and you'll get a board pretty quick.
CircuitCo is working on increasing its capacity and with large
back-orders from distributors being placed ahead of orders from end
customers, we expect the situation not to get worse than a few weeks
wait and by mid-year to actually have some inventory.  Even TI has
started placing some orders to try to build up some inventory of xM
boards.

Gerald had initially built in some pad for purchasing 1GB RAMs after
the initial switch-over costs were covered, but we felt a price drop
was more in order, enabling us to drop the price of the xM boards
enough for some distributors to provide them for as low as $149--the
price of the pre-xM board.  Improvements in test yields and increased
volume purchases also enabled Gerald and CircuitCo to lower the price
of the pre-xM board allowing it to be sold at some distributors for
just $125.  We aren't yet to $99, but I am starting to feel like we
could get there at some point in the future.

We are still discouraging anyone using the board in production devices
without making a direct isolated deal with CircuitCo (or the
manufacturer of your choice) such that all our supply doesn't get
eaten up for new people getting the platform.  (Guys, make your own
spin, the TI component pricing is on the web and it can be done at a
reasonable cost around the same price for which we are selling the
boards today if you can get a fair price on the memories.)
Availability of production volume SOM/COMs using the TI
DaVinci/Sitara/OMAP devices that are providing migration support from
the BeagleBoard are increasing, including AM35x-based boards available
for as little as $45 and tiny boards that include WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS
and more.  Open source hardware reference designs like the AM3517
CraneBoard are meant to further enable such developments.  Please
support the growth of the BeagleBoard.org and embedded Linux ecosystem
by evaluating those solutions and encouraging these vendors to support
the mainline distribution projects.  Please help me update the
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OMAP3_Boards wiki page to
include these BeagleBoard alternatives and feel free to discuss them
on this mailing list, though you likely need to contact the
manufacturer to discover the proper support forum if you are having
issues related to the hardware or software they provide.

*************
What is next?
*************
Gerald has some minor modifications planned to the pre-xM and xM
boards to bring in the latest revision of power management device, but
that should not result in any software impact.  Where you are more
likely to see differences out-of-the-box on some future board revision
this year is in the software distributed on the board.  We are
encouraging CircuitCo to pull down a more complete copy of the
Angstrom Distribution aligned completely with what is being assembled
with Narcissus to ship with the boards to better show the
functionality.  This will in no way prevent you from running Android
(as from the Rowboat project), Ubuntu, Yocto, MeeGo, FreeBSD, QNX,
Windows Embedded or any other software on your BeagleBoard.  If you
care about what this software will look like, please review the
release candidate images Koen has been posting links on the mailing
list and provide feedback.

Part of what is motivating an in-the-box distribution release is the
need to provide students being educated using the BeagleBoard platform
a known starting point that helps them reach success early.  The
requirements for this effort are being discussed in the BeagleBoard
Linux Education Project and seek to improve the materials Mark Yoder
has been creating for his university course on embedded Linux.  If you
care to get involved with this project, introductory details can be
found at http://beagleboard.org/linux_education.  Be on the lookout
for a Google Summer of Code project targeting these requirements.

While not a BeagleBoard.org project, 2010 saw the launch of the
PandaBoard focused on enabling open source mobile application
framework developers access to the latest in mobile applications
processors.  This has spawned a lot of interest if there would be an
OMAP4 or multicore-A9 based BeagleBoard.  At this point it isn't
clear, but if TI were to provide access to OMAP4 to the broad market
(through TI distributors without any volume restrictions), then it
would make sense to upgrade the BeagleBoard platform once the end-user
experience can be ensured to meet or exceed the experience on the
current pre-xM and xM platforms.  I can tell you it isn't eminent and
that the release process would include the typical discussion of
features here on the mailing list before anything was frozen, sampling
of boards to active community members (which always results in
pictures up on Flickr and discussion on the IRC channel) and a public
launch plan.  There is certainly a chance that the BeagleBoard won't
get updated until Cortex-A15 devices come out, but be assured the
BeagleBoard.org effort is focused on longevity and education.

In my mind, the BeagleBoard is the premier platform for embedded open
source *software* hacking and education thanks to it being extremely
low-power, small and capable of running full Linux distributions while
having a rich hardware ecosystem.  If you are looking for something a
bit more modular, in a case, with a battery, it seems to me something
like the Bug Labs platform might be the way to go.  We even worked on
a BeagleBoard-BugAdapter, but never brought it to market as I got my
hands on a Bug2.0 and it is more fun just to play with it.  Still,
hardware hackers cannot be deterred and there are now several
registered companion boards [1] starting with our friends over at
TinCanTools.  While the Zippy combo boards that add Ethernet aren't
that popular now that the xM boards incorporated Ethernet on them,
their Trainer board might see a bit more life as it is getting picked
up for some educational projects on performing I2C and SPI
interactions under Linux.  The Liquidware BeagleTouch and BeagleJuice
add-ons also seem to be enjoying some public success.  Some SOM/COM
vendors are finding the BeagleBoardPinMux EEPROM ID useful for
maintaining a high degree of binary software compatibility with the
BeagleBoard.  I think the news is that CircuitCo, as part of its
BeagleBoardToys brand, is looking to partner with more individuals and
small entities looking to bring out more BeagleBoard extending
hardware and that might mean a few more options to extend your
BeagleBoard hardware in 2011.

[1] http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardPinMux#Vendor_and_Device_IDs

************************************
Open Source Shows and the BeagleWall
************************************
I won't even attempt to list all of the open source shows where the
BeagleBoard had a presence in 2010 or will have a presence in 2011,
but I highly encourage you to get on the mailing list and announce if
you are interested in showing off anything you've done at one of the
regional shows around the world.  My favorite of these show-off demos
recently *has* to be the BeagleWall.  Originally assembled by folks in
the FFmpeg project (notably Mans) and friends over at Archos
(Vladimir, the infamous av500), Koen got the TI team in Europe to put
together a stand that looks a bit more official (boards aren't lying
around on a nearby radiator any more).  You can find plenty of
pictures of the BeagleWall at FOSDEM 2011 by searching on Flickr and
YouTube.

Given the sheer number of events, I'm trying to get a bit more
organized by placing them in the BeagleBoard.org Google Calender that
is now featured on the home page of BeagleBoard.org.  I request for
you to notify me of any events that you don't see up there and to
suggest we discuss the upcoming event on BeagleCast...

**********
BeagleCast
**********
What the heck is BeagleCast?  Well, you can probably tell from the
name that Gerald and I are looking to hork in on (meaning to steal)
the action of the likes of TWiT (This Week in Tech) and The Amp Hour
by doing an audio webcast.  This will never get done unless we
publicly commit to it, like we are doing right here, right now.  Give
us a month or so to get the first one out, but this will give us a
forum for discussing the challenges being faced by community
developers, upcoming open source tradeshows, technology related to
high-performance, low-power open source software and hardware and why
26 + 26 = 54.  It will also force me to dedicate a set time for
tackling the top questions on the mailing list and IRC channel.

Of course, this won't take off without getting participation from the
community and getting some good guests to talk about the cooler
aspects of embedded Linux and DIY computing, so I strongly request for
you to submit ideas on guest/permanent hosts, topics, format, etc.
You can even call-in with pre-recorded questions.  If you couldn't
tell from visiting #beagle in the past, heavy doses of sarcasm are
encouraged.

Here's where to provide the inputs and call-ins:
http://bit.ly/bcsuggest
+1 (713) 234-0535
http://beagleboard.blogspot.com may have a Google Voice widget,
depending on your Flash settings and if the current sun flare
activity.

That's it!  See you on the intertubes!

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-- 
Regards ☺ Caius 'kaio' Chance
Fedora Project Contributor - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Kaio
[IRC] kaio @ freenode | [Twitter] @K410 | [Blog] kaio.net