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Imagination Technologies has launched a Kickstarter campaign for what it calls "the ultimate IoT-in-a-box development kit". The full $106-122 kit includes a Ci40 dev board, two Clicker expansion boards, and three Click sensor boards. Tom's Hardware reports:
Imagination is far from a brand new startup that needs its own Kickstarter campaign, but we've seen other large companies before, such as Sony or Canonical, try to launch their own crowdfunding campaigns as a way to safely prototype certain products (and simultaneously gauge interest in the product). They can also use the campaigns as a marketing tool.
The Creator Ci40 board, which acts as the "hub" that connects other pieces from the IoT package, has a dual-core and dual-threaded 550 MHz MIPS InterAptiv CPU and an Ensigma connectivity engine that supports 802.11ac 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1 (Smart and Classic).
The developer board also comes with 256 MB of DDR3 RAM, 512 MB of NAND flash, one microSD card, and a dedicated TPM chip for storing encryption keys securely. The Creator Ci40, as well as the Clicker expansion boards, also support 6LoWPAN low-power wireless communication, which they use to communicate with each other through standards such as Thread.
The IoT in a box package can include two MikroElektronika Clicker expansion boards as well, which come with a 32-bit Microchip microcontroller, a USB connector, two LEDs and push buttons, a reset button, a mikroProg connector, and the headers for interfacing with external electronics. The expansion boards are AAA battery-powered so they can function as standalone devices, too.
Imagination also offers three types of MikroElektronika Click sensor boards in its complete IoT kit: one board for measuring temperature, one for detecting motion, and another for controlling a relay.
(Score: 2) by novak on Thursday November 26 2015, @12:26AM
And by the same company that brought you the PowerVR GPU series, renowned as having zero open source drivers whatsoever! Just because they advertise "openness" doesn't mean that they will deliver in the least.
That said it looks like the Ci20, this thing's little brother, does have u-boot (https://github.com/MIPS/CI20_u-boot). I guess we'll see once they deign to release more info to us.
novak
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Thursday November 26 2015, @07:24AM
Yes it does [elinux.org]
For all the info the elinux page [elinux.org] has fairly complete resources on the hardware & software, and it's pretty open.
I have one of the ci20's and have hacked around a bit with the board [blogspot.co.uk] and using the peripheral IO [blogspot.co.uk]
However - the large missing piece (IMO) is the binary-only GPU driver stuff [elinux.org], which is a real shame; without the GPU source then the imagination board is nothing particularly special when compared to other embedded 32 bit boards, which tend to have larger ecosystems around them and comparable performance & peripheral mixes.
(Score: 2) by novak on Sunday November 29 2015, @12:20AM
About the GPU being a big loss- agreed. But then, it's PowerVR.
Cool projects, though.
novak
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 26 2015, @08:39PM
They're a pretty rotten company, but then so may of them are.