Some
Experience Gained is Directly Proportional to the Amount of Equipment Destroyed.
What Have You Busted Today?
ARM9 - Feed your Dweeb! Don't settle for less when you can have twice as much for half the price!
Sept 1st: Your back ordered Mini6410s are alllllmost here. I think I can see the FedEx plane heading for US Customs in Alaska. Meanwhile, the 1GByte Micro2440 for the price of 128M is still good. As a bonus, here is a Mini6410 program that manipulates the LEDs in Qt. Brought to you by the cool cat of electronics at electronics.cat of course! http://qt.electronics.cat/mini6410/mini6410_003.html
Some of our systems have been shipping without a stylus (not on purpose!). The standard is a telescoping chromed metal stylus with a plastic tip. If you didn't get one or you want something better, get a pack of Nintendo DS plastic styli anywhere the games are sold. The Nintendo is easier to use, has a better plastic tip, and if you drop it into a bunch of circuitry it wont cause the magic smoke to escape.
Aug 26th. Mini6410s will be here soon. Meanwhile, there are plenty of Mini35 with 128 or 256 MBytes of NAND and also Micro2440-SDK/35/70 --- all with 1GByte NAND. If you order any Micro2440 variant now, you will get a 1GByte system for the price of the 128M. Someone asked why our shopping cart does not show how much of an item is in stock. Great question Someone! It is pretty simple. Our system tracks inventory and could do this. However, our ARM9 products can all be mixed and matched. As an example, if you want a Mini35 and we are out of assembled mini35s, we can take the Mini2440 for a Mini70 and the 3.5" LCD from a Micro2440-SDK35, load the 3.5" kernel and ship. That leaves us with one less Mini2440-SDK35 and one less Mini70 and an extra Micro2440-SDK and an extra Innolux 7" LCD (we could put them together for a Micro2440-SDK70).This happens all the time, so showing stock will require a much smarter inventory system - and we are working on it.
Aug 23. There is a new torrent for downloading the FriendlyARM 8/15 DVD for the Mini6410 http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5782732 . It is a little slow as this is written. As more people get on it, the speed should become --- a torrent!
Mini2440 with 1G Byte NAND and Mini6410-43 are on backorder for 3 to 10 days. There are plenty of Mini2440 and Mini35 and Mini70 with 128M and 255M NAND. Also Micro2440 with 1G is in stock in either 3.5 or 7".
Aug 17th. We have been shipping like crazy and are now in backorder for the Mini6410! A new batch is coming and we will see if we can get some more memory options like maybe more RAM and 1G NAND. There is a new iso of the 6410 DVD that is only a few days old (and takes a few days to download) so please don't flood the server in China and in exchange we will make a torrent available in the next 48 hours.
How many people would like a CF-II interface for these ARM9 and ARM11 boards (or the Coridium ARM7)? Why? If you do something with a lot of mass storage access, like a database application, you will wear out an SD card long before you will wear out a CF-II hard drive. You can get 6 GByte HD for $12 on the auction sites and I'm sure we can find a source of known new drives in the same range. -- CTO Charlie
Aug 4th: Good news everyone! The Sun is acting up and it is almost like summer in the Pacific Northwest. One of our people is on an extended trip to Guangzhou and Shenzhen. There is so much cool stuff we don't know where to start. Look for new products in a few weeks. Oh, a customer has WindowsCE6.0r3 running on the Mini6410 with the VFP (Vector Floating Point) hardware doing ALL the floating point math for VB and VC++, etc. Even better, he is sharing it with us and we will fix up the BSP and compile for licensing.
July 21st: Good news everyone! The Mini6410 is shipping and only available at the moment in one form, the 4.3" LCD, 128M RAM, and 256M NAND
We are outgrowing our space and will have to move for the second time in a year. Charlie thinks he found the perfect new location. We think it was the price that got him. Lets see how it looks with a nice ARMWorks sign.
July 19: CE news: We are on the cusp! Licensing of WinCE6.0r3 may be done this week. The distribution includes GPIO, SPI, and I2C drivers. You can write apps in VB, C#, C++ with the right setup of Visual Studio. The coolest part is that when you plug the Mini into your Windows PC by USB, the Windows Mobiule Device pops open and you can drag and drop apps and data to foilders in the Mini as it appears on your desktop. You can even choose the startup image and customize without recompiling anything. I know Linux is awesomly versatile. However, I'm warming to the CE due to the convenience, plus we see great graphics speed and vastly improved touch pad response on the larger displays. Licensed and installed on delivery will be $5 or less (not sure yet) and include backup media and unlimited updates. - CTO Charlie
July 15th: Did you know there are serious parts shortages in China (and elsewhere)? Some parts, like Atmel micros and the ones in Arduinos, have 12 week or greater lead times! Well, we have a small shortage here ourselves. If you are waiting for backordered CAM130's, we expect them in 3 days or less. Likewise if your order included a 1GByte Mini2440, three more days (unless you get a ship notice this afternoon). If you have ordered a new Mini6410, also three days. The first samples went quickly. If your order includes a Micro2440SDK70, guess what? Right! Three days. On the good news front - not that three days is bad news when others are waiting 12 weeks for parts - we have a new batch of the ARMMite Pro SDK, and plenty of everything else. We got caught short on some inventory when we had a large number of orders for 10 or 25 complete SDKs at a time. Some are just people working on products who can throw a bunch of engineers at their problem, and others are teachers getting ready for fall embedded classes. -- CTO Chariie
July 8th: New products day: We have added a nice complete GPS that includes a magnetic rooftop type antenna and all the connection hardware. SiRF III with DGPS input. The module communicates standard NMEA as a TTL UART. Also, there is a new page of spares and OEM parts. They will all get linked to the shopping cart in the next few days. And as you may have noticed, an ARM11 Cortex with 4.3" LCD has been added to the FriendlyARM line!
June 27th: Good news everyone! Shipping was completely caught up last week. Everything is in stock with exception of the CAM130 CMOS Camera. They will be here sometime next week. Backorders are OK and will not hold up your order. The CAM130 is small and very tough. We can safely ship in a padded envelope the day they arrive.
June 10th: Congratulations to Stephen Furber on winning a 2010 Millennium Technology Prize! Don't know who he is? Shame! Google him right now!
June 9th: Good news everyone! We have the full software download for the O-Link USB Debugger on it's page. Note: over 450MByte download. Why so big? There is a lot of stuff, like a fully configured Eclipse for debugging the S3C2440. The O-Link is 150 times faster than a Wiggler style JTAG interface.
June 7th: Good news everyone! We have read enough Linux and ARM and Windows CE stuff now to be confident in recomending truly useful material on a References page. The page - tab at the top - will eventually also contain references like schematics and mechanical drawings and docs.
May 1st: Check out these cool RS232 adapters. They convert the COM ports ont he Mini2440 to RS232 and include the cable. They can even be used with the main COM0 port to get to a configure other than DCE.
April 11: The Free Thing is back! Yes, we have a couple hundred of the USB-RS232 converters. They actually cost us twice as much this time. Does that make them twice as free? Or is freeness nonlinear? Could they be Free*Free, free squared? Please ask for one only if you need it. Wow! More good news everyone! We have hundreds and hundreds of cable kits. Not only will the backorders be filled, but there is a price drop. Plus, an inspection shows higher quality than our old source.
Still the top seller at $109.95: Mini35 Developers Kit.
We are sheduling a web site makeover sometime soon. Meanwhile, the list on the left is confusing so here is a quick and dirty description for each item and how they relate. The bold names are not linked. Use the left hand list. Product names will be adapted to match this list. For now, the shopping cart will show the names as in the selections in the left sidebar. The usual updates are below the list.
Chameleon1 3.5: A metal enclosure for the Mini2440 + 3.5" LCD we call the Mini35.
Mini2440-128: 10x10cm ARM9 System with development tools and cables and power supply. 128M NAND and 64M RAM standard. Also available -- Mini2440-256, Mini2440-1G
Mini2440-OEM: A Mini2440 board without any extras.
Mini35-128: A Mini2440 with 3.5" LCD and touch screen mounted. Developer's kit. Also Mini35-256 and Mini35-1G.
Mini35-OEM128: Mini35 without dev tools. Also Mini35-OEM256 and Mini35-OEM1G.
Mini70-128: A Mini2440 with 7" LCD and touch pad. Developer's kit. Also Mini70-256 and Mini70-1G.
Mini2440 Cable Kit: All the cables for all the connectors on the Mini2440 excluding USB, Ethernet, and DB-9 which are included in the developer's kits.
Micro2440-SDK128: A Micro2440 "stamp" and carrier board with developer's kit. Email for other memory options.
Micro2440-SDK35/128: Micro2440-SDK with 3.5" LCD and touch panel.
Micro2440-SDK70/128: Micro2440-SDK wtih 7" LCD and touch panel mounted. A very solid combination with lots of I/O.
Micro2440-OEM128: The Micro2440 "stamp" module.
FriendlyARM VGA: A VGA adapter for Mini or Micro. Same size and mounting as the 3.5" LCD.
CAM130: CMOS camera on small board with header to fit Mini2440/Micro2440 camera connector. Does not require USB.
USB Wifi: A VIA chipset based flexible wifi. Originally only for WinCE, now works with Linux 2.6.31+.
ARMMite Pro SDK: A 60 MHz ARM7 in Arduino format and compatible I/O. Has compiled BASIC and C. Very cool. Powered over USB during development.
ARMMite Pro: No developers kit. Just the board. Very affordable ARM7.
PoE 12V supply: For DIY Power over Ethernet.
PoE 24V supply: For DIY Power over Ethernet.
PoE injector/splitter: A pair of PoE splitters. One to inject power, one for a powered device.
PoE Mounted Injector: A solid part with mounting ears for injecting power over Eternet.
Tools Antex: Antex butane soldering iron with hot air head for surface mount. Great item for doing surface mount work and portable iron for those robot competitions.
News and Updates
Feb 3: Good news everyone! Michel Pollet (the guy who did the whole Mini2440 Linux and u-boot that is part of the mainstream now, and who does the continuous releases of updates) is running one of his 128M NAND Mini2440's at 505 MHz and stable so far, plus some tightening on the RAM bus timing for faster access. More as testing continues. We are changing our shipping policy. Due to the way our shopping cart works, buyers in the US got free shipping on 2440 systems unless they add other items. Shipping outside the US had no shipping discount. The easiest and fairest way to handle this now seems rather simple. We will lower the price of the free shipped items by the basic $4.95 Priority Mail rate. Then, nearly everyone will pay SOME shipping, and everyone will get the equivalent to the shipping discount, inside and outside the US and on all shipping options. If you have any feedback on this, please email. Alert readers will notice that this means multiple 2440's in a single shipment have the possibility of lower total cost than with the free shipping option. At the same time, small price increases due to the much larger NAND memory are included.
We got some cool Sparkfun Arduino shield boards and parts to use with the ARMmite Pro boards. We will be making a video and blog for using GPS, SD cards, joystick and buttons, and accelerometer+gyro intertial nav stuff. It should be pretty cool. If an 8 or 12 MHz Atmega can do it, a 60 MHz ARM should allow some extra bells and whistles. Charlie will be doing it. He says he needs to feed his dweeb. If he likes the results, we will add the various parts to inventory.
Good news everyone! The Enclosures are here. eSawdust has produced a Chameleon 1 just for the Mini2440+3.5" LCD or Mini35 in our part numbering scheme. It is drilled for mounting the Mini2440.
Note: Good news everyone! is the standard Professor Farnsworth greating.
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