NANO54415

Discussion to talk about hardware related topics only.
seulater
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Re: NANO54415

Post by seulater »

proving to be expensive to build as the pins need to be hand soldered
you talking about the mini pci connector ?
fanat9
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Re: NANO54415

Post by fanat9 »

Today I ordered MOD54415 module. Still have a lot of questions thou.

microSD - what is the limit? type of supported cards?

MMU support? Can we dynamically allocate memory now?
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pbreed
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Re: NANO54415

Post by pbreed »

The Mini PCI is easy, just re flow in the SMT oven.
the problem with the adapter board that converts a NANO into module format is that its basically double sided with through hole connectors.
So one side needs to be masked and hand soldered.

Not sure how to answer the "can we use dynamic memory now?" question...
Dynamic memory IE things allocated with new or malloc have always been available.

I Generally think this is a bad idea in an embedded system as they tend to run for long periods of time
and what one does when such allocation fails because of a memory leak is a hard problem.

MMU's are not for dynamic memory so much as protecting one threads memory pool from another.
We currently have no plans for the MMU. (Other than a possible Linux port in the future)
fanat9
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Re: NANO54415

Post by fanat9 »

Thanks for reply Paul. I probably should add word "safely" in dynamic memory allocation sentence.

And... I will love to see MMU support - I think it will make our embedded systems even more stable and code simpler.

It is considered an embedded system, but really, compare that embedded MOD54415 at 250MHz/64M and desktop(and sometimes server!!!) i386DX 40MHz/4M ram we all use to program!
seulater
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Re: NANO54415

Post by seulater »

The Mini PCI is easy, just re flow in the SMT oven.
the problem with the adapter board that converts a NANO into module format is that its basically double sided with through hole connectors.
So one side needs to be masked and hand soldered.
I was told long ago that one of the main reasons why the other modules are not smaller is because it costs to much to have a board with double sided SM parts.

I gotta say that you should consider looking into other production facility's. We are a tiny tiny company and have no problem with getting out boards done using both sides. In fact most of our boards are double sided components with through hole parts.

Talk to this place and get a quote.

Tim Kostelancik
General Manager
Andrew Technologies, Inc.
ISO 9001:2008 Certified
305 Alderman Ave.
Wheeling, IL 60090
P.847.520.5770
F.847.520.5370
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pbreed
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Re: NANO54415

Post by pbreed »

We have no problem building anything.
Our production facility works very closely with us and we have a good relationship.
We understand their costs and processes and they understand ours.

We are trying to make it so we can sell NANO dev kits through distribution for $99
I can't say if we will meet that goal or not, so if we don't, don't shoot the messenger.

If we ship three assemblies in the dev kit... nano board, normal Module carrier board and adapter from nano to carrier then
we can't meet the cost target. In reality if humans have to touch the board at all we have failed, the 100 pins of header on the adapter board shown at the
beginning of this thread have to be hand soldered as you can't wave solder with SMT components on the side the wave goes on.
The combination of three assemblies and a 100 pin hand solder step make it impossible to meet that price goal.
We really did not want to create and stock yet another dev board, but we think the NANO is a cool part and deserves the best launch we can give it.
We have good pricing for the nano, and we have good pricing for the SBL2E dev board, so if I can take the SBL2E dev board as a model and put a NANO module
connectors on it we should be able to meet our pricing goal.

P.S.
Once I hit send I expect to get a number of people in my office telling me I can't quote prices that aren't final...
Que the Paul "Don't do that" discussion in 3..2..1...
seulater
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Re: NANO54415

Post by seulater »

Paul, i hope you did not take my words wrong. Not intended that way at all.

Does NB have any problem with other companies making a new carrier board to house the new module ?
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pbreed
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Re: NANO54415

Post by pbreed »

>Does NB have any problem with other companies making a new carrier board to house the new module ?

I'm not sure I understand your question... exactly...

One way to read it is "do you mind if we use your nano boards in projects of our own design..."
Of course not...

Another way to read it is do you mind if we take the nano board develop our own stuff and market that as a dev board...
As long as our dev tools intellectual property is respected you can do anything you want with our modules.

So for instance... You want to develop a robot board (or autopilot, or 3D printer controller or...) using Netburner's xxx board and resell that.
As long as you are not redistributing our software tools we have no issue with that. If that is the sort of thing you want to do we can
probably even help as our goal is to sell lots of modules. Development tools and support are necessary, but not our primary revenue stream.

One of the things that I think makes NetBurner work as a company is that the interests of Netburner and our customers are aligned...
NetBurner doesn't make $ unless the customer ships product and makes $. If we can't turn dev kit sales into working customer designs that
then drive module sales we BOTH fail.
seulater
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Re: NANO54415

Post by seulater »

sorry, that question poorly worded.

We are thinking of coming out with development kits, with plug in modules to along with them.
Such as 4.3" color TFT touch screen, 2.8" touch screen, relay boards, temp boards, CAN bus boards and so on.
They can purchase the main board, and then the modules add on's they want. We feel this may be better than for them to buy some jumbo motherload of a kit with every light bell and whistle on it that also costs an arm and a leg.

Of course we would not redistributing you software tools, there will be plenty of links back to your site.
seulater
Posts: 445
Joined: Fri Apr 25, 2008 5:26 am

Re: NANO54415

Post by seulater »

when will the NANO54415 be listed for pre-orders ?
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