From: Sherman, Alana Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 2:32 PM To: Cline, Danelle Cc: McGill, Paul; Hobson, Brett Subject: RE: Uxpro Power consumption and blackfin dev board option Danelle, Regarding the Ux-Pro, I am not tied to the emerald 8-port board so that is not an issue, but even with this lower power board we would still need to turn it off (it would still be 30% of power budget if we left it on in all the time). Using this board rather than the TS-7200 would save us an estimated 100-500 W-Hours over the 6 month deployment (the total power budget is around 13 kW-H). The exact number depends on how low power you can run the PC104 stack. For me, the cons I see about this board are that we can't take advantage of any PC104 expansion cards in the future and we can't leverage off of any development done by the ESP team who is using the other board and needs to put it to sleep (and has already built a microcontroller board to do that task). Regarding the blackfin, I think we need to get an estimate from Wayne about how much power his board with all the peripherals uses. If the power is so low we never need to turn it off, then I agree that is a big plus. If not, then I still see it as a Cadillac when we need a Volkswagon but as long as we can develop it quickly that is fine with me. I also agree that it permits future development of more complex applications. As a side note, I went over your initial document which estimated the controller power for different options and I realized the calculations were made under the assumption that the main vehicle controller was not controlling the scanning (which is how it was proposed). I changed the numbers in the budget to reflect that the mvc is on during the scanning, and also changed the scan time to be more realistic (4 hrs rather than 2). While this might seem like a small change it more than doubles the impact of the controller on the power budget. Alana -----Original Message----- From: Cline, Danelle Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 11:37 AM To: Sherman, Alana; Subject: Uxpro Power consumption and blackfin dev board option Alana, See info below and attached on the ox-pro SBC. This is 400-500 mW versus the TS-7200 at 2W. It is not PC-104 however and if you are sold on the Emerald 8-port board this is not an option. Another option to consider is deploying a blackfin development board : http://www.tinyboards.com/rainbow/portal/alias__tinyboards/lang__en-US/tabID__39/DesktopDefault.aspx This requires a plug-in processor module: http://www.tinyboards.com/rainbow/portal/alias__tinyboards/lang__de/tabID__32/DesktopDefault.aspx Since we will have power in the beginning deployment, we could deployed something like this and it would be an incremental step towards a non-tethered lower powered autonomous system. Schematics are available for the development board. Building a custom base board could be pushed to 2007 and by that time Wayne Radochonski will have wringed out the details of bringing up a custom board. As far as serial expansion ports. The blackfin dev board has a USB port. A usb hub and usb-to-serial converters would provide expansion ports. I really like this idea - it's incremental and allows room for future applications that require the CPU for longer durations because it has better power management than the other options. It also allows room for more demanding computational applications. The tools are good, but not great (hey that's what you get for free). Here is a good EDN article on embedded Linux that discusses what's involved in getting a development system up - scroll down to the section "LOW-COST DEVELOPMENT SYSTEMS". http://www.edn.com/article/CA605681.html After reading this, I'm less concerned about the tools than I was originally. I think any of us IE group software types who has worked with Linux before could figure this out. Let me know what you think. Danelle -----Original Message----- From: Axotec Technologies GmbH [mailto:sales@axotec.de] Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 11:06 PM To: Cline, Danelle Subject: Re: Power consumption of uxpro? Dear Danelle Cline, Thank you very much for your product inquiry. Please find attached your requested informations. Our embedded linux server computers are also available with integrated GSM/GPRS and GPS functionality. They do have a very low power consumption thanks to a powerful ARM/RISC processor technology. The power requirement of uX-Pro is about 400-500 mW in full operation. It varies somewhat depending on connected peripherals. Our products do optimally support rapid application development for mobile applications. The AlphaX server products are driven by an open and powerful linux system with full C / C++ and Java support available. Please take a look at AlphaX-ES/ES-500 products. If you could tell us your special requirements we can advise you the best fitting product for your application. If you have further questions please don't hesitate to contact us. Best regards, Heinrich Reinecke _______________________________________________________________ Axotec Technologies GmbH, Sudetenstrasse 88, 82538 Geretsried Tel. 08171 921920, Fax. 08171 9219240 email: info@axotec.de, web: http://www.axotec.de _______________________________________________________________ Friday, June 3, 2005, 1:25:12 AM, you wrote: CD> What is the power consumption on your uX-PRO ? CD> I didn't see this info on your web site. CD> Thank you, CD> ====================================== CD> Danelle E. Cline, Software Engineer R&D Division CD> Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute http://www.mbari.org CD> (831) 775-1947 voice CD> (831) 775-1652 fax CD> ======================================