[sdiy] How much is a Chameleon ?)

[Eric Brombaugh]

ASSI wrote:
> On Montag 21 Juli 2008, Eric Brombaugh wrote:
>> Main question I've got is what the battery life is like
> 
> Right on the homepage they say "around 10+ hours".

Indeed - I spotted that shortly after posting.

I dug around a bit more on the websites for the various OMAP projects 
and these look pretty cool. The main SOC has:
* a 600MHz ARM Cortex with MMU so it can run a full Linux distro 
(they've got Ubuntu going on it). It also has a vector math (SIMD) engine.
* a 430MHz TI DSP with 6 ALUs & 2 Multipliers that allows 8 simultaneous 
operations.
* 2D/3D Video engine
* About 512kB of total cache memory across the various processors.
* 128MB SDRAM, 256MB Flash stacked on top of the processor in a 
package-on-package configuration.
* plenty of I/O

While the OpenPandora project looks like a cool toy, the Beagle board 
seems ripe for embedding in SDIY projects. Imagine this: a synth module 
(could be Euro or Frac - the Beagle is tiny) with a few knobs, a few 
audio I/O jacks, USB & Video ports that runs a full chain of virtual 
synths. Hookup keyboard, video, mouse for studio work and tweaking, or 
pull them off and use knobs to select patches during a live gig. Or 
leave video connected during performance & pipe to projector for live 
visuals synced to the performance. You want blinky lights?

Linux has some fairly advanced audio processing applications including 
VST-workalikes with hosts, patch-bays, soft synths, effects, etc. all of 
which could be ported to this hardware with minimal effort (recompile 
for ARM). Digging deeper, porting the critical code to the on-chip DSP 
could expand the total number of simultaneous plugins possible.

The Beagle only has one each stereo in/out, but it appears there are 2 
more McBSP ports accessible via a header for a total of 6 audio ins and 
6 output channels possible. If someone were to make a custom board with 
emphasis on audio applications then that could be expanded to 10 each 
with ports that the Beagle board doesn't pin-out.

Just blue sky here, but this could be pretty cool...

Eric