BeagleBone Blue Board is Designed for Robots and UAVs

Beagleboard.org organization already tried to go Blue with BeagleBone BlueSteel-Basic that was supposed to a the single board computer to be used by OEM to integrate into their design instead of BeagleBone Black development board. For some unknown reasons this never happened, but they’ve now reused the color to introduce BeagleBone Blue board designed for robotics and UAVs. BeagleBone Blue specifications: SoC – Texas Instruments Sitara AM3358 Cortex A8 @ 1 GHz + PowerVR SGX530 GPU System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 Storage – 4 GB 8-bit on-board flash storage Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 LE USB – USB 2.0 client and host Motor Control – 8x 6V servo out, 4x DC motor out, 4x quad enc in Sensors – 9 axis IMU, barometer “Easy connect Interfaces” – GPS, DSM2 radio, UARTs, SPI, I2C, analog, buttons, LEDs Power / Battery – 2-cell LiPo support with balancing, 6-16V charger input […]

Gumstix Announces Solution Kits for their CPU Modules and Boards

Gumstix has recently unveiled several solution kits featuring their Overo and DuoVero Computer-on-Modules (CoMs), Pepper single board computer, and several expansions boards, together with required accessories, and software packages, in order to help their customers getting started more easily. All these solutions are based on Texas Instruments OMAP3, OMAP4, and/or Sitara processors, and run Linux (Ubuntu or Yocto), and sometimes Android for the kits with displays. The solutions kits target 6 different types of applications and/or markets: Robotics Robotic Development Kit (Pictured above) with one Overo AirSTORM CoM (OMAP3703), and RoboVero expansion board. The kit is better suited for motor control applications. Mobile Robotic Development Kit with one Overo AirSTORM CoM, and Turtlecore expansion board to be used with iRobot Create. The kits ship with a Linaro (Ubuntu for Overo) system card and Robot Operating System (ROS) pre-installed. Handhelds 3.5″ Handheld Development Kit featuring Overo AirSTORM CoM with Alto35 cutomizable […]

Gumstix Alto35 Customizable Touchscreen Board

A few months ago, Gumstix introduced Geppeto, a web platform that allows you to design and order your own baseboard for Gumstix Overo systems-on-module within minutes. The company has just announced Alto35, an expansion board built entirely with Geppetto. The Alto35 replaces Palo35 Overo-series expansion board with the same features, but adding the possibility of customizing the board via Geppetto. Alto34 expansions board features the following: 3.5″ LCD resistive touch screen Stereo audio in/out jacks 3D accelerometer (STMicro LIS33DE) RC servo USB – 2x USB mini-B ports, including console port (FT232RQ USB UART) LEDs in 4 different colors, 2 tactile switches. 2×70-pin AVX Headers compatible with Overo COMs. Power – 3.5V-5V All Overo computers-on-module are compatible with Alto35 board, so you can just use existing software solutions such as Linaro Ubuntu, Robot Operating System, and the Yocto Project. Alto35 is available for $89 including the display (not the Overo module), […]

A Selection of FOSDEM 2013 Events

FOSDEM is a 2-day (or 3 if you include Friday beer event) event where over 5,000 members of open source communities meet, share ideas and collaborate. It’s free to attend, and there’s no registration, so you just show up to attend. FOSDEM 2013 takes place on Feb 2-3 (yep, this week-end) in Brussels There are 7 main tracks where sessions are organized: Operating systems Open source challenges Security Janson Beyond operating systems Web development Miscellaneous Robotics There are also keynotes and devroom for a total of 488 sessions. Developers rooms that may particularly be of interest to readers of this blog are: Cross Desktop devroom – e.g. Wayland, gstreamer, razor-qt, Qt Project, Plasma Active, etc… Cross Distro devroom – e.g. Linux on Android, suse on ARM, ARMv8, systemd, etc… Embedded and mobile devroom – e.g. Baserock Embedded Linux, Guacamayo (Yocto), Nemo Mobile/ Mer project, arduino… All in all that’s a […]

Gumstix TurtleCore Expansion Board for iRobot Create

Last month, Gumstix announced the TurtleCore expansion board for iRobot Create Programmable Robot, featuring 3 USB ports, several male-header pins with GPIO access, as well as standoffs and screws to support the TurtleCore in the Create cargo bay.. The TurtleCore is a baseboard for TI OMAP3 and Sitara based Overo COMs or Overo STORM series of COMs that replaces the Command Module on iRobot Create to provide a more flexible and powerful solution. Overo COMs have very good Linux support (OpenEmbedded) with source code, tools and documentation available, including support for the Robot Operating System (GumROS) for high level programming. They released the hardware early so that the community could work on the software, and there have been some good progress as you can see from the video below. You can already download the schematics and PCB layout file, but the software and instructions do not appear to be available […]

Willow Garage Launches The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF)

Willow Garage announces the formation of the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), an independent, non-profit organization founded by members of the global robotics community whose goal is to support the development, distribution, and adoption of open source software for use in robotics research, education, and product development. The OSRF Board of Directors is composed of the following members: Wolfram Burgard. Dr. Burgard, a professor at the University of Freiburg,  heading the Laboratory for Autonomous Intelligent Systems. His major research interests lie in mobile robotics, state estimation and control, as well as artificial intelligence. Ryan Gariepy, co-founder and CTO of Clearpath Robotics. Clearpath Robotics is a company specializing in the design and manufacture of unmanned vehicle solutions for industrial R&D. Brian Gerkey,  Director of Open Source Development at Willow Garage who has worked on the open source Robot Operating System (ROS) since 2008. Dr. Gerkey will be CEO of the OSRF. Helen […]