Linksys NSLU2

[buchanan]

Has anyone used one of these aboard the robot?

It seems several teams have successfully used laptops or netbooks. This might be a lower budget (both cost and weight) way to do some of the same things, e.g. USB webcam connectivity or offloading some image processing. Not high horsepower, but they will run Linux off a USB stick.

[nathan_hui]

NSLU2? That's a Network Attached Storage Device, not a computing device.

Ok. so community hacking shows that it could be used for computing. Catch is, it will take a bit of modification to do. You do need to overclock the processor (if you want fast). You do need to reinstall the OS. Power requirements are not the same: NSLU2 runs on 5VDC, PDB supplies 12VDC.

Using this shouldn't be impossible. Fustrating? Possibly. Useful? Most likely. NSLU2 runs 256 MHz, 8(flash)+32(RAM) MB memory, cRIO runs c. 400 MHz, 256(non-volatile)+128(system) MB memory. You definitely could run a bit of processor intensive stuff off the cRIO.

Disclaimer: Our team has never used this.