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Fuzzing on Edison: field report
- StavrosK 12y agoHas anyone tried the Edison? Is it good? It seems to me that it's a Raspberry Pi with better specs, wifi, etc, plus Arduino compatibility, which sounds amazing, but I haven't figured out how it connects to stuff. How do I power the little die? Do I need breakout boards for everything?
- elecengin 12y agoThe Raspberry Pi is intended for a different use - it's comparing apples to oranges. The Edison is intended for embedded applications - it has no display support built in (like DVI/HDMI), less USB support, and less "plug-and-play" ports. SparkFun did a great write-up on unfair comparisons between the two platforms: https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1603 https://www.sparkfun.com/news/1603
- StavrosK 12y agoSure, but I (and most of the hackers I know) use the Raspberry Pi like an Edison (i.e. only Wifi connected to USB, headless/SSH only, GPIO pins), so the Edison would be a better fit for my projects, if I could figure out how it works. As the SparkFun article mentions, with the cost of the Wifi, powered hub, cables, SD card, and Bluetooth adapter add up. The Raspberry Pi is meant as a low-cost teaching computer, whereas what I want is a SoC to hack on. Maybe it's as simple as programming it with the board and then detaching it and powering it.
- joezydeco 12y agoSee, that's where I don't get what Edison is about. If I want a SoC capable of doing low cost user-interface type embedded tasks I need parallel LCD support (or at least LVDS). I'd get an NXP LPC18/40 or an STM32 at the low end or an i.MX5/6 at the high end. Way cheaper with way better application support. If I wanted to do IoT sensing/reporting, this whole thing is just overkill. Again, a low cost LPC or STM coupled with a GainSpan or TI radio module (that I can bake directly to my PCB). To me, and I could be wrong here, IoT isn't about putting 500 MHz computing resources at the nodes and certainly not for a $75 BOM adder. At least the LPC and STM are chips I can put directly down on my board and run out of the box. An SOM with a single-sourced connector (and Hirose is notorious for designing unique stuff nobody else wants to duplicate) is just commercial suicide.
- StavrosK 12y agoI want a low-power, Wifi-enabled computer for various projects. Arduino shield compatibility means that I can create things like my license-plate-reading garage door opener, or irrigation system, while combining a fast processor and lots of RAM with all the nice hardware Arduino has.
- joezydeco 12y agoAnd that's fine for that kind of application. You could also do just as much with a cheaper system (but you'd need a lot more software work so maybe that's Intel key point: you can shovel in all the X86 code you've been slogging around with you for decades). But, in my opinion, the examples you mentioned are not IoT. Unless you're planning to put one of these at every sprinkler head.
- StavrosK 12y agoThey aren't, but you said you don't get what the Edison is about, so I mentioned a few cases it's perfect for.
- unwind 12y agoI haven't tried it (not in the market for it). You typically need an "Edison Block" (like an Ardunino Shield) to connect to things, see e.g. SparkFun's portfolio at <https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/272/> https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/272/>. Not sure how power is applied, it's not as obvious as for the Arduino (since the Edison is more highly integrated and more designed to be built into products than to be directly fiddled with, I guess).
- illumen 12y agoCheckout the pcduino for a raspberrypi type board + arduino in one.
- StavrosK 12y agoThanks, that looks good, but it's more expensive than the Edison and doesn't have WiFi, as far as I can see.
- mrti 12y agopcduino3 has been available for a while now with wifi built in - I've found these boards quite useful for mobile applications. I've been using them to run a django app quite nicely where the raspi wasn't quite powerful enough!
- StavrosK 12y agoOh, that sounds great! Is it Arduino compatible? How do you use all those libraries? I don't understand how something that runs Linux can be Arduino compatible, since Linux isn't a RTOS.
- 13 12y agoIt's neat, but hard to come up with a use case that's not a part of a commercial product just yet. As a unit the 0.4mm pitch connector is absolutely impossible to solder in a DIY environment, you must buy a breakout board, and suddenly it's not a sub $50 device anymore. All of the use cases I could think of were better served by a device I could actually tinker with, so I hedged on a Minnowboard Max instead.
- rasz_pl 12y agohttp://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/intel-edison-36841/msg529268/#msg529268 http://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/intel-edison-3... its a gimmick, there is no clear market for it, no clear use scenario, no real documentation, a lot of design fails (230Hz GPIOs IF/when Intel lets you use buildin Quark, its TURNED OFF now)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- simpsond 12y agoIn terms of the specs, the Edison is great. After tinkering around with it for a bit I found I didn't really like the bundled software Intel released with it. At the end of the day I want something just like this, but with a net-installish base linux distro, and something with better temperature range than 0-40C! It's too complicated for tinkering, and the temperature range is too narrow for commercial products. It falls into the middle, where it's probably not great for anyone. I'm sure Intel can fix that.
- joosters 12y agoI wonder if the performance can be improved by adding a heat sink? The CPU might be throttling itself if running at 100% for a while.
- dharma1 12y agowould be nice if it ran Ubuntu
- 1o57 12y agoThe x86 compatibility is what is amazing here. I almost used the processor that the Edison uses on this year's Defcon badges for that very reason...
- X-Istence 12y agoShame you didn't. I like the propeller, but an x86 platform on a DEF CON badge would be awesome!
- tcas 12y agoWhy did you choose against it? I'm guessing the reason is cost (I think the quark chip alone is $9, + DDR3 memory + cost for BGA placements + 4 layer impedance controlled boards etc...)
- 1o57 12y agoIf you want to hear the real story, find me at a conference and ask- I hinted at it in the opening ceremonies this year...
- tcas 12y agoI was stuck waiting in line during the opening ceremony this year. I'll keep an eye out though, I would love to test making my own Quark board, but I imagine even with an external assembly service / high quality boards doing the bring up would be extremely difficult.
- rasz_pl 12y agoamazing why? so you can have that sweet sweet compatibility with Windows 3.11? or access to cutting edge BCD opcodes? maybe its the price point of 4x faster ARM SoCs? or 1Wat at idle when connected to a network?
- 1o57 12y agoAmazing because a bunch of already existing tools could be used immediately, that's why. Good to see you understand the purpose and design constraints oh so well...
- Narishma 12y agoI think the author is wrong about the CPU supporting HT. Merrifield is based on the Silvermont micro-architecture, which does away with HT and replaces it with OOE.
- xedarius 12y agoMaybe I could use the Edison as a foundation to build something I've been after for a while. I'd like a 'thing' that would attach to the back of a pair of bookshelf speakers and allow me to stream music through the speakers via Bluetooth. The 'thing' would also need to act as an amp. I had seen 'The Vamp' but this doesn't offer stereo.
- rasz_pl 12y agoyou mean like this $4 dongle ? http://www.ebay.com/itm/1PC-A2DP-3-5mm-Stereo-Bluetooth-Music-Receiver-Audio-Dongle-Adapter-Excellent-/321543100579 http://www.ebay.com/itm/1PC-A2DP-3-5mm-Stereo-Bluetooth-Musi...
- xedarius 12y agoNot quite no, I would be after something to turn passive speakers into active speakers.
- aidenn0 12y agoHow did I completely miss the Edison? I love the idea of a dual-core x86 for running something like linux with a moderately powered MCU as a RTP. Does anyone know what it means by "<1W of power consumption" which is the power I've seen? I assume it will peak at over 1W with all 3 cores running all out? I'd like to see separate idle/loaded values for that.
- bluelightning 12y agoFWIW, there's a patch out for the OpenSSH / systemd / screen issue mentioned in the blog post; KillMode=process was missed out in the service file.