6 Mar
2016
6 Mar
'16
3:30 p.m.
Another contributor to the difficulty of making a
successful keyboard/DAW
hardware solution is the amount of effort/time required to build and run
the system. It's a good couple of man years of effort to wrap it all up
into a simple UI. Add the cost of manufacturing hardware and it quickly
become very difficult to compete on price with the established players.
It's a minefield to build a simple system that just works. Realistically
it requires building out a complete stand alone distribution.
My 2cents here:
On the hardware part, I might be wrong but a powerful ARM platform is more interesting
than any of the Intel NUCs.
If we are talking multiple cores we have the Cubie8, the Optimus and others based on the
AllWinner A80 which is an 8 core, 2MHz, ARM v7 + ARM v15 (BIG.little) CPU
If we’re talking performance per core, the Pine64, the DragonBoard 410 and even the
Raspberry 3 (though I would not recommend the later) are a great option for the new 64bit
ARM cpus.
And of course, there are at least a handful of companies offering these SBCs already with
a Board Support Package for the Industry: Toradex, Eurotech and Variscite are some.
On the software part, I’d divide it into the OS + BSP and your actual software (the actual
application)
If you're making a business, then outsource all the OS + BSP and focus on your
application.
The specification of OS + BSP are defined by the application, so I would do it at least in
two rounds, doing a first round of prototypes using as much readily available elements as
possible (and caring very little to aesthetics, ergonomy and actual performance), build a
preliminary/pilot application over this prototype and then, if you decide you’re game on,
you can then precisely specify the outsource job to be done. I can assure you it will
pay off in the long run :-)
if you are using AllWinner CPUs, companies like Free Electrons can do all OS and necessary
drivers. Even better, they do it in mainline vanilla kernel, which not only keeps your
Open Source assumption but also gives you a much longer life cycle.
If you’re doing for fun, try to find the board that offers the smallest effort on the OS +
BSP. Magic word here for the tool is Buildroot ;-)
hope I have helped
Gianfranco Ceccolini
MOD Devices
+49 160 646 9313
gianfranco(a)moddevices.com <mailto:gianfranco@moddevices.com>