IGEP Module: + than Beagleboard but little now 119€

[siempre.aprendiendo]

[Title edited] Now (26/3/2011) the price is 119€

IGEP Modules are here



IGEP Module OMAP3530 - 720Mhz
* OMAP3530@720Mhz
* 512 Mbytes Mobile DDR @ 200Mhz
* 512 Mbytes OneNand Flash
* IEEE 802.11b/g 2,4GHz, BLUETOOTH 2.0
* On board microSD slot
* On board USB 2.0 OTG miniAB socket for power and data
* On board USB 2.0 Host interface

Here the previous IGEP v2 thread

[limor]

I've bought one today.
It is great value for money compared to a gumstix.
100% compatible with gumstix overo extension boards BUT with added bonuses:
- twice the memory
- USB power

not sure how USB can power CPU and the wifi chip but lets wait and see once it arrives.

[siempre.aprendiendo]

Wow, you are very fast!

It seems very interesting to me too, but as my knowledge about electronics is very basic I usually have a lot of doubts before buying a board like this.

Do you want to test/use it with AX-12+ servos?

It will be very interesting to know the results of your tests

[limor]

We have an urgent project to put together a bunch of KHR3 robots with gumstix, wifi and webcams. this board looks like it can save a lot of space occupied by gumstix daughter board. so i'll get to play with it and the KHR3.
http://robosavvy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=28687


However, generally speaking the role of such an embedded linux is to control the robot via the USB. so any humanoid can connect to the gumstix one way or another via USB/FTDI. In the case of bioloid you can either use the usb2dynamixel (+ SMPS2Dynamixel) or use the CM5 as a buffer between the USB and the dynamixel bus.

[siempre.aprendiendo]

Yes, I know that usb with usb2dynamixel is "the standard" connection.

But it will interesting to know which speed could be reached with it.

By the way, which language/compiler do you use or plan to use? C, C++,...?

[limor]

Yes, I know that usb with usb2dynamixel is "the standard" connection.

But it will interesting to know which speed could be reached with it.

By the way, which language/compiler do you use or plan to use? C, C++,...?

probably C/C++ because the openCV library has been ported to the Omap A8 cpu

[siempre.aprendiendo]

I just saw the new price 119€

And now are open source and open hardware under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 unported license. , read it here

[PedroR]

FYI the main difficulty we've been having with these IGEP modules is powering them when they're acting as USB host.

When they're USB device connected to the PC they take power from the computer USB port;
However when they're on the Robot acting as USB host there is no simple way on the IGEP to supply the 5V to power it.
Even if you try to supply the +5V though the USB connector, the minute you connect a USB client device the board shuts down and rejects the power coming from the USB.

We've contacted them over and over again to no successful solution so far.

The KHR project as you can see on the thread was completed by using Gumstix + Pinto which is a small breakout board that breaks out the the necessary Power and GND pins and also a USB connector (using an FTDI I think). It also breaks out some other interesting pins such as COMM (although not being used now).

The IGEP unfortunately will not fit onto the Pinto. Also the IGEP already includes the USB port onboard and there's no similiar equivalent to a Pinto for IGEP.

[siempre.aprendiendo]

Yes, it's a pity. I hope they will fix this problem

[siempre.aprendiendo]

It seems that IGEP have fix the problem...

You can power the board from your 5VDC prefered power supply and use it as OTG Host for your gadgets ...

By the way, I'm not associated neither connected with IGEP in any way. Just IGEP Module seems very interesting to me.

Still I'm trying to choose between IGEP Module or Roboard 110/050 to replace the HP Ipaq as the brain of my creations

P.S.: It's very agreeable to program and debug Bioloid creations using Visual Studio, C# and the .Net platform for the HP Ipaq. I'm not usually an advocate of Microsoft (I suffered MFC several years) but .Net platform is really nice (probably thanks to ex-Borland and original author of Turbo Pascal, Anders Hejlsberg).

[i-Bot]

I too am still looking at both IGEP Module and Roboard 050 options as DARwin lite controllers.

For IGEP, I will do a board with hub, sub controller, IMU, etc. Though your update is valuable, thx.. IGEP tell me they will release module data as open source too. My whole DARwin linux controller + sub controller fits in CM510 space

Roboard has more USB ports, so may be easier, but a bit larger.

[PedroR]

Hi all

I've opened a thread about designing a Duaghter/Breakout board for the IGEP module to make a more direct fir for Robotics apps here http://robosavvy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7136

I invite you all to kindly contribute with your thoughts. The IGEP and Roboard are very distinct and I believe non competing.

The Roboard has in its favour more USB ports and Windows Support, nice libraries, great Power Regulation and direct power output on the COMM ports and PWM ports which makes for great ease of use. On the other hand it lacks onboard WiFi or BT and the instruction set is limited to that of a 486 (no MMX or SSE).

The IGEP on the other hand has a much smaller size and footprint, onboard WiFi, BT and an optimized instruction set. It's not compatible with Windows but runs Linux and it has shown it has very good potential.
However it's lacking Robotics features that a breakout board could unleash. Everything is there (the 70pin connectors expose everything but they're not broken out); we may just need to connect the little dots (a breakout board) to make it into a full robotics product.

We'll be looking forward for your thoughts.

Pedro