Open Pandora (was Re: [sdiy] How much is a Chameleon ?)

[Eric Brombaugh]

np wrote:

> Have you taken a look at this one? http://www.openpandora.org/
> 
> It's not a rack-unit as the Chameleon. It looks just like a toy (well - 
> it is) but It's incredibly capable. The built-in DSP is the gem. (e.g.  
> the ARM and the Video-Core are nice for user-interface things).  I work 
> on the same DSP  two years now, and you can do incredible things with 
> them. I always have much more processing power than I need or the 
> memory-bandwidth can sustain.
> 
> For 44100Khz 16 bit signals, you can do 4500 multiplies for each 
> sample,  including dot-products, complex multiplies  and everything 
> you'll need for even the most weird shit you want to do with your signals.
> 
> That thing will be much cheaper than the chameleon as well.
> 
> I don't know about the quality of the Audio In/Out, but one high-speed 
> codec is built-in. The Chip has lots of GPIO-Pins, and you can hook up 
> everything you want to them if you don't mind hacking around a bit. You 
> can also use any USB audio device as well.
> 
> Worth a look for sure.. Just for the kicks of sitting there, watching 
> the code and saying to yourself: "Hmkay - I got what I want - Now what 
> do  I do with the other 90% of the cycles that I have on my hand...  ".

Hey - that's pretty cool!

I was recently visiting with some younger relatives and was exposed to 
the DS for the first time. I was thinking how cool it would be to have 
something that small running an open-source OS that I could develop on. 
Lo and behold, here it is, with lots of I/O and a decent DSP to boot.

Let's hope this thing actually makes it to production. I'd pop for one 
at the $330 price they quoted. Main question I've got is what the 
battery life is like - all the hardware they're stuffing into it has to 
burn some watts.

Eric