[GreenKeys] OT more single board tty controller possibilities

[Chris Elmquist]

FWIW, I spend my days (I can only dream about retirement) working
on embedded systems and develop with most of these processors.  In
particular, with ARM stuff, I do both TI OMAP and Freescale i.MX projects.

I recently did a design based on the i.MX6solo, which is the processor
on that RIoT board (as well as the Wandboard, another Open Source
hardware effort).

Hands down, far and away, the Open Source community support for TI's
OMAP processors, which you will find on the BeagleBone boards, eg,

http://beagleboard.org/black

is much, much better.

Freescale, IMO, are open-source hostile and have basically missed
the boat on supporting the community with good documentation, working
example code and other things that help an open-source eco system thrive.
Their application engineers have almost no knowledge or experience with
Linux and so big issues with device drivers and full functionality of
their peripherals never seems to materialize.  That's a sad story for me,
since I have used Freescale (nee Motorola) processors since the M6800
in 1975.

If you use a BeagleBone, you will encounter the term "cape".  We used
to call these daughterboards but apparently that is no longer proper.
In any case, there are LOTS of them to plug into the base BeagleBone
and expand it with all sorts of I/O--  and especially prototype boards
where you can wire your own circuit and do cool stuff,

http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBone_Capes

So, I am guilty of being a TI OMAP "fanboy" but that's only because
things are so, so much easier and so widely documented there.

Chris N0JCF

On Wednesday (07/16/2014 at 02:40PM -0500), Jeffrey D Angus wrote:
> On 7/16/2014 1:52 PM, Ed Sharpe Archivist for SMECC via GreenKeys wrote:
> >The RIoT board.
> Aw man, I'm still using my Parallex BASIC Postage Stamp stuff.
> Wow, that that really 20 years old now?
> 
> -- 
> Jeff-1.0
> wa6fwi
> http://www.foxsmercantile.com
 
-- 
Chris Elmquist