Very interesting! The picture is kind of confusing though, it took me a minute to realize that the picture was of an "expansion board" with the module installed (in the lower left hand corner).
I like what I see though, they have packed quite a bit of processing power into the tiny package. Good amounts of memory too. And I really like the built in WiFi/bluetooth. Looks like it could be a good option for making connected devices with. The only problem is transitioning from prototype to production with Intels current business model.
Its definitely a lot better than the Galileo - Intel was pretty liberal giving them away for free, yet still nobody used them since they sucked.
Not sure what the strategy is though - are they afraid to loose developer mindshare to Atmel / TI? Are they hoping that their chips will power the next kickstarter success?
My 5 cents: at least they are a player now, and the CC3200 has a competitor.
Issues:
- for battery-powered projects, its a bit large
- 1.8V logic level is nice for energy consumption, but its really hard to source components for that, and level shifters are annoying
- price is a tad bit high, though adequate for its performance
Thank you for this- I have a handful of completely unmarked boards that appear to be this module. Who knew they might be so capable? I hope someone translates the instruction set document linked. This is definitely the direction that things are going, at least more than an odd $50 Intel mongrel.
Intel wants us to pay for something that industry won't buy with the Edison. Contrast to Arduino and rPi, which are providing affordable access to something only available otherwise to industry:
AVR: High volume microcontroller- let's make it accessible and useful outside of heavy industry == Arduino.
ARM: Exploding in popularity due to mobile devices- let's make it accessible outside of device manufacturers == rPi.
Atom: No one is using these in industry- let's palm it off on hobbyists and see if they can drive demand == Edison.
Hard to find the point of the Edison. Too anemic and dull next to true next-gen SoC solutions like the Zynq [http://zedboard.org/], and too overpowered for most microcontroller applications. Weird price point. No GPU or vidout. There's many SoMs and SoCs to try before this one.
Intel has had to give away Atoms to get them used in any volume, this HN comment on a contemporaneous article has links on the subject:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8294864
If Intel wants to hit the hobbyist embedded market running, they could sell Edisons for $10. By giving them away to heavy industry, yet selling them to hobbyists, they aren't garnering interest, they're patronizing.
Not sure if they will fail, depends on how big a niche there is for this kind of powerful hardware. Might have been different if it had H.264 accel. and HDMI out though.
You have to see that the ESP8266 is currently just a crappy wifi module with very low throughput (like below 100k) and limited range. I agree it will probably be very successful, never before has wifi been so cheap to add to a project, but I doubt you can transmit audio or video with it. I wonder if people will figure out how to run custom code on its MCU, that would be awesome.
I'm currently exploring the TI CC3200, it has a good price point (30$ via TI) and is quite capable (80Mhz M4 Cortex, 256k RAM) - for me its close to the sweet spot. If TI lowered the price even more, they'd own the market.
Its supposed to be >100MHz Xtensa. Should be enough for a lot of things if/when it gets hacked (as long as it has SPI for fast interconnect).
Then you have $10 modules based on 360MHz Ralink Mips soc, or $15 Qualcomm AR9331 400MHz (overclockable to ~500MHz) ones with 32/64MB ram. Those are very capable on their own.
Ah, I guess thats whats inside most Wifi routers.
Are people using those for hobbyist projects though? I've never seen prototyping boards anywhere, and soldering those packages yourself requires a reflow oven by the looks of it.
Didn't know those SOCs are so high-powered, thanks for the info!
Various companies have been selling modules with these chips and all the appropriate RAM, Flash, power regulators, etc - for example, the VoCore, the Carambola, the HLK-RM04 (officially a WiFi-to-serial module but is supported by OpenWRT and breaks out most of the pins), etc.
Minor nitpick about the voltage: How many chips at this level (at the border of micrcontroller to microprocessor) actually use more than 1.8V for internal logic? Other than a few chips that have on board power switching from 3.3V, I can't find any other CPUs, DDR3 RAM, or even CMOS cameras (720p+ chips) that don't require a 1.8V rail.
For prototyping a divider with 1% resistors would do just fine (although with some instability with a bad breadboard) and if you can't find 1.8V power parts for production you have much bigger problems. As for level translators, I've found they are almost inevitable on any design that uses enough chips and sensors.
I like what I see though, they have packed quite a bit of processing power into the tiny package. Good amounts of memory too. And I really like the built in WiFi/bluetooth. Looks like it could be a good option for making connected devices with. The only problem is transitioning from prototype to production with Intels current business model.
This video does a good job to show off the Edison on it's own, for anyone interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GY8k...