FAQ

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 is the legal status of the project ?

The Armadeus Project is a french "non-profit" association (loi 1901) held in Mulhouse, France (68). We accept members from everywhere. Board production is done by a privatly held company.

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 become a member ?

You have to pay a small fee. You will receive an Armadeus board, userid and password to participate to this Wiki and project activities. Everyone is welcome.

What is the price for becoming a member ?

You will have to pay 150 euros. You will get an APF9328 board (iMX 200Mhz, 16Mbytes RAL, 8Mbytes Flash, FPGA), a "DevLight" development board and all you need to start developping.

How do I get help ?

First take a look at the whole Wiki. If you can't find help contact us directly. 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.

Hardware Questions

What does an Armadeus APF9328 board contains ?

This board is build around an i.MXl processor from Freescale (ex Motorola). This 32bits processor is an ARM920T core running at 200Mhz and has the following integrated peripherals:

• LCD controller (TFT, CSTN, STN)
• USB 1.1 device
• 2xSPI
• I2C
• 2xserial
• MMC/SD controller
• Serial bootstrap mode (removing the need of JTAG interface)

See http://www.freescale.com/ for more informations

On our board it is associated with:

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

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 plugin everywhere. To develop for APF9328 boards you can either develop your own "daughter" board or use the one we develop for our needs. Currently only DevLight board is available. It contains:

• a serial connector
• a USB connector
• an Ethernet connector
• a prototype zone to test your devt

A DevFull board is currently in production and will contains:

• an AC97 + touchscreen chip
• 4 more serial ports
• a MMC connector
• ...