BfMyPlatforms

SRV-1

The good folks at Surveyor Robotics have developed their 2nd generation robotic platform using the BF537. This is a really nice platform that is compact, sports a camera, expansion bus, and 802.11 card (wow). Its slick because the wireless card has UART0 hooked up to the wifi card so that you can telnet into the SRV-1 control board.

07 Dec 2007 - SrvOneNotes is a page I've started to keep random notes and impressions on the SRV-1 as I gain experience with it.
29 Nov 2007 - I have just started playing with this platform but expect to do some cool things with it.

BlackfinOne

I also work on the BF1 2.0.0. I have issues with SPI on it but other than that I love it. This is a great platform to work with but requires a lot of effort to build. There are a ton of spin-off projects as well including a mini version and a great deal of Asterisk VOIP PBX variants.

Minotaur

Made by CamSig in the UK, I was lucky enough to get this excellent kit. The minotaur itself is a 1" square OEM module with these really neat rubbery connectors so there is no soldering and no socket/header to deal with.

• MinotaurFirstGlance

FlexStack

The FlexStack is a modular blackfin based rapid prototyping system Boston Engineering came up with. Its really an impressive system and I have high hopes for it. Each board is 2.5" sq with two bus headers that mechanically and electrically connect it to the next module. Think PC104 but smaller, and much lower power.

I no longer work at Boston Engineering and therefore don't have access to the FlexStack anymore.

EZKIT

Note this is a BF537 STAMP, it's the same layout as the EZKIT but doesn't have all of the parts. Namely there is no onboard audio and doesn't have the ADI proprietary USB Jtag emulator. The latter is of little concern for me but the audio is very nice to have. That is why when I have to buy my own (given that I haven't designed a suitable board) I would buy the EZKIT for $370.

I do a lot of my work on an ADDS-BF537-EZKIT LITE. The EZKIT is a reference design/development system based on various blackfin processors. There is also an EZKIT for the BF533 that is supported byt the uClinux team. I do not have one of those though...

My EZKIT is really my companies. It was broken but I managed to fix the components that were smashed in an accident. I am working on developing a uClinux base of knowledge with hope that we will use it on a project in the future. That and it's something that I a interested in and will continue to use linux throughout my career.

-- ChristopherPepe - 17 Sep 2006