Re: Embedded Dev System suggestions/reccomendations please


"Tom Lucas" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message news:1184757656.72629.0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"dathome" <dave@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Hi Group,

I've worked in the past quite a lot with uC's such as PIC & C164 but now
I have an application where I want to include a small PDA like touch
screen display, USB connection, some basic I/O, some internal flash
memory, maybe up to 1Gig so nothing too unusual I don't think. Possible
extra maybe a webcam for related but different application, reason for
webcam type of camera is that they are dirt cheap.

I also need the necessary development tools and I'm not sure that writing
all code from scratch to support all these things is going to be the
easiest/quickest route so I assume something built on an embedded linux
or CE or similar platform is the way to go.

I've looked through the groups postings and there were a couple of
suggestions like building on a pre-existing PDA or even a phone based
system, I really prefer to build the hardware up from a base system as I
would ultimately like to take this forward as a product so it probably
wouldn't be very cost effective built on an existing PDA.

Finally as this is a self financed project the tools need to be cheap, or
best of all free. There seem to be a lot of linux info. about but I've
found it difficult to get to the bottom of what I really require and
whether it is obtainable free or not. I don't mind spending a few
£hundred on hardware but with past experience tools have tended to be in
the £k's if you need a good IDE such as Keil/Tasking/IAR etc.

Any comments would be most appreciated.

I would say that you'd have to be planning to ship a lot of units before
it becomes more cost effective to design your own system rather than
building on an existing PDA. The amount of development time (and time is
money) saved will be huge.

For a development IDE then Rowley's CrossStudio is cost effective and
their support is first class. It will run on Linux too, if that is your
thing.


Hi Tom,

Potentially the quantities are in the 100's/yr but you're right it may still
not be cost effective with time etc. I think until I have enough
information on potential ways forward I can't complete a rough cost analysis
to determine the best way. It may be best to start with a PDA and then if
the concept is sound, find the real sales quantities and then determine the
production solution which may be a completely custom system to my own design
but built from the concept. These are all normal product development
questions though.

Thanks for the CrossStudio link. I don't know yet if Linux is my thing as
I've never used it, but it does seem popular and well supported these days.



.

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