Chief Delphi - Mini-ITX or Gumstix?

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Mini-ITX or Gumstix?

Has anyone experimented with building robots with mini-itx all-in-one boards? The cost for all that is packed on to them seems to make a mini, or even a nano-itx seem like a much better long term option then a gumstix. That said, this is for bigger robots I'll be building, not tiny crawlers, I've got 4 pic18f8520 for those.

From my information on mini-itx, I can power it by 12v motorcycle batteries, and they are a fully capable system, running windows or linux fully, and with monitor support and LAN. If so, what are the drawbacks? Also, all-in-one motherboard means that the main processor is already included and soldered in, correct?

And finally, what is the possible digital and analog I/O pins with these boards? If I choose to get one I'll build a simple robot to test the capabilities, and it would be nice to know how to interface something like a servo to the computer.

Edit: Links to those interested:
http://www.mini-itx.com/
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainboards/

Re: Mini-ITX or Gumstix?

Quote:

Originally Posted by lemoneasy

Has anyone experimented with building robots with mini-itx all-in-one boards?

Look at the Open Automation Project http://oap.sourceforge.net/ and http://www.openautomaton.org/community/. The first is a little old but gives the intro.

These boards are PCs. There isn't a lot of direct I/O. The OAP guys use I2C to talk to their own custom boards. There is also USB, serial, ethernet, ... If you want a lot of direct I/O you could probably find a PCI card to plug into the one slot.