I started off looking for a hardware platform that would suit my particular needs, of which there weren't many, but from out of nowhere came the RaspberryPI. Before that I had considered several differen microcontrollers, homing in on a 32-bit microcontroller from either Atmel or Microchip. But that has all changed! I've pre-ordered my first board, and it doesn't look like this is just another piece of Vaporware: The organisation behind the board has teamed up with both RS and Farnell.
The Raspberry fulfill several criteria as a hardware platform for my thesis:
- Powerfull CPU
- Hardware FPU
- I2C
- Other low-level stuff, like GPIO, SPI, etc...
- Low(ish) power: 200-300 mA
- Small
- Cheap: 25 USD or 35 USD
- Several USARTs
- Ethernet
- Linux based (stable, secure, advanced, etc...)
- Choice of compilers: Python, C/C++, Ruby, + many more.
Can't wait to get mine. Shame my order was pushed back several weeks :(
