For a long while I thought that I would end up with some form of embedded ARM board running Linux. I bought a number of ARM based systems to run field tests.
However as I started to develop software it soon turned out that the criteria list contained three items, not two:
- Power usage - as low as possible IN REAL LIFE.
- Connectivity - USB 2.0 Host, Ethernet, Wifi.
- Up-to-date Linux kernel with distribution that provides lots of packages.
I was surprised to find that in practice a small x86 server based on the AMD Geode ran with almost as little power as an ARM board. Unlike the ARM boards it had all the I/O that I wanted. Furthermore it was cheap and reliable to procure. You can get cheap ARM boards based on commercial items such as routers but these usually have a very short lifetime as manufacturers continuously drive down prices by bringing out new hardware. Embedded systems are usually a lot more expensive.
The clincher was that most ARM board manufacturers have a hard time keeping up with the Linux distributions, so they usually run out-of-date kernels and weak distributions. Support for FTDI serial converters was not a given, and these are used in many devices such as the Actisense NGT-1. I had to backport many fixes for the FTDI serial converters to the older Linux kernels to get reliable serial USB connections. Not Good.
So in the end I decided on low power x86. The PC Engines ALIX 2d.13 has exactly the interfaces I needed, but is available in a range of different systems. They run about € 100 / $ 140 which is still very reasonable. It runs a very nice mini Debian release named Voyage Linux with a kernel that is new enough to run stuff like the FTDI interfaces reliably. As it is just a pruned Debian release getting an additional package is just an apt-get away. The processor is a 500 MHz AMD LX800 which is plenty fast for Linux server needs.
