Difference between revisions of "FAQ"

Revision as of 20:35, 18 May 2007

General Questions

What is the "Armadeus Project" intended for ?

The goal of this project is to allow everyone to easily develop embedded Open Source systems. When all the embedded systems in the world will run open source software, life will be better ;-)

What does "Armadeus" mean ?

"Armadeus" is the contraction of "ARM" and "Amadeus". Indeed we choosed ARM architecture for its symplicity and efficiency and our boards are as gifted to run embedded systems as Mozart was for composing music. Moreover, Armadeus project is born in 2006, year of the 250th Mozart's Birthday.

How do I get help ?

First take a look at the whole Wiki. If you can't find help contact us directly: Help:Contents. If you are located in France, we have members in Besançon, Montbéliard & Mulhouse who can provide you help. For Swiss members, we can provide help in Basel, Lausanne & Zürich.

Why are there http://armadeus.org and http://armadeus.com ? Is there a company backing/hiding behind the association?

<http://armadeus.com> is a more 'professionnal' webpage built to help founders find backing for the project (like device samples, board manufacturing). It is easier to obtain those with a this professionnal-looking webpage.

We have founded (litteraly) the association for our own pleasure and also to help universities and enthousiasts. Association bylaw protect members' intellectual property by forbidding any commercial use of the work done for the association.

The association works mostly on founders free time (we all work in embedded systems industry), which partly offsets the price of boards bought by members:

• Initial costs were entirely founded by the founders, and are not matched in the boards selling price.
  
• Tests, FPGA assembly and dispatching are made for no cost by volunteers.
  
• Warranty and dead boards are not accounted for in the association until break-even.
  

Those costs are not accounted for in boards selling price, mostly because the price would have been prohibitive and the project could not have started with such a high selling price. We do not want however to give all these for free to a 'for profit' project.

We have been quite surprised by the board success - and therefore believe that a company could have an interest in the design. Many alternatives could then be found then - even if it would be unlikely to occur in the short term: partnering with the association, separate (yet to create) licensing company...

Hardware Questions

What does an Armadeus APF9328 board contain ?

The heart of the APF9328 board is a i.MXL processor from Freescale (ex Motorola) with an ARM920T core running at 200MHz. It has the following integrated peripherals:

• LCD controller (TFT, CSTN, STN)
• USB 1.1 device
• 2 x SPI
• I2C
• 2 x Serial
• MMC/SD controller
• Serial bootstrap mode (removing the need of JTAG interface)
• a lot of General Purpose Input/Output, depending on the configured peripherals

Around this processor, the board is equipped with:

• 16MBytes of high speed SDRAM
• 8MBytes of NOR Flash
• 10/100Mbits Ethernet controller
• Xilinx Spartan3 FPGA (optional)
• an ADC and a DAC (optional)
• level converters for serial, USB and Ethernet
• 2 connectors for accessing main signals

Have a look at this link for more informations: [1]

What is the DevLight board ?

APF9328 boards were designed to be as small as possible and ready to be embedded on any systems. So an APF9328 is not usable alone. You should see it much more like a module you can plug in everywhere. To develop for APF9328 boards you can either develop your own "motherboard" and plug the APF9328 into it or use the one we develop for our needs. Currently only the DevLight board is available. It contains:

• a serial connector
• an USB connector
• an Ethernet connector
• a prototype zone to test your developments
• a DC power regulator

For more informations look at here: [2]

A DevFull board is currently in production and will contain:

• an AC97 + touchscreen chip
• a CAN bus controller
• an USB 2.0 Fullspeed Host
• a video (PAL/NTSC) output
• a MMC connector
• external SRAM for the FPGA
• any other idea ??

Are the Armadeus boards RoHS compliant ?

Yes

Software Questions

Where are the sources ?

We have a project on SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/armadeus/ with a SVN repository

What are the performances of your board ?

Performances

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