Snowball Board

Simon, you know how to find me if you need help :-)
Also you will need USB-OTG cables with them and be sure to use powered USB hubs.

A bit embarassing, this, but I ordered the wrong ones!

SKY-S9500-ULP-C12: “the SDK model, which is similar to the PDK, but has 4GB of e-MMC flash instead of 8GB, and lacks the PDK’s standalone serial port and three expansion ports.”

Still, if anyone wants one, let me know (but bear in mind, they’ll be coming from Germany, so P&P will be a little higher than domestically). I’d just put the boxes they come in in a jiffy bag and send it as a small packet, I expect.

Out of interest, could these things (including the BB and Pi) be powered (with suitable connectors attached) from a computer hard drive power lead? They all seem to push the limits of “normal” USB ports/chargers, and I have plenty of spare HD slots. I wouldn’t make my own USB cables, but +5V/0V, I can get right nearly half the time.

A quick search finds power requirements of 6W for idle hard discs, which suggests a fair amount of leeway.

Out of interest, could these things (including the BB and Pi) be powered (with suitable connectors attached) from a computer hard drive power lead? They all seem to push the limits of “normal” USB ports/chargers, and I have plenty of spare HD slots. I wouldn’t make my own USB cables, but +5V/0V, I can get right nearly half the time.

I don’t see why not. At the risk of sounding like Chris (have I been working at CJE too long?), we have the right leads in stock:

Hard Drive to microUSB
Hard Drive to 2.1mm Jack

They all seem to push the limits of “normal” USB ports/chargers

What about one of those two-port-to-one-cable cables? Like you sometimes find with USB CD-ROM drives.

I’m still interested in one.

What’s the price, anyway?

The concern I have is the lack of a serial port. The 4/8Gb thing is a nonissue for RISC OS, but I think bringing up the kernel might be more difficult without a serial port to spit debugging info out of…

The serial port will be available over USB from one of the micro USB connectors.
But do remember that the OTG port won’t be able to power devices. you really need a powered hub connected to the OTG port. So a mini-A to mini-B cable would allow you to hook up a hub to the OTG port. Those cables usually only can be found on internet shops..

Out of interest, could these things (including the BB and Pi) be powered (with suitable connectors attached) from a computer hard drive power lead?

Absolutely! I’ve recently built myself a Cerberus machine, which is a PC in a standard case, but the case also contains a Pandaboard, Beagleboard, and Pi. These (and a 5v network switch) are all powered from the molex plugs from the PSU and run through a switch to turn each one on and off individually.

They have all been on at the same time, alongside the PC’s optical drive and hard drive.

There’s a bundle of pictures here

The internal cables one here is particularly frightening!

And there’s a screenshot here of all three running over VNC onto the main PC (running Elementary OS – very nice!) shows that the 450w PSU has enough oomph to go around! As can be seen, the Pi doesn’t do well over VNC!

I’m halfway through a website detailing the build and kitlist.

I like the sunset/planet backdrop – where did you get it? (link?)

I like the sunset/planet backdrop – where did you get it? (link?)

It’s from Digital Blasphemy and it’s called The End

Not sure, but I think it came with my PandaLand SD Card. Could be wrong though.

What’s the price, anyway?

Like I said, 412 pounds for 10. :)

For one, about 42pounds, plus postage and a jiffy bag, if you’re not worried about insurance.

The concern I have is the lack of a serial port. The 4/8Gb thing is a nonissue for RISC OS, but I think bringing up the kernel might be more difficult without a serial port to spit debugging info out of…

That’s true.

Jan, I don’t understand what you mean by “The serial port will be available over USB…”

andym, I feel the need to dust of the RPC’s second slice, and populate it with many GHz of processing power!

Hello Simon!
There is RS232 over USB at the snowboall board. You could find some documentation here

I had saved some of the pages from the igloocommunity-site. If you need some information maybe I could help you.

Where in Germany do you live? I live in Frankfurt a.M. and have a PDK.

andym, I feel the need to dust of the RPC’s second slice, and populate it with many GHz of processing power!

Here’s an early prototype of an idea I’m working on!

Mattias: I’m in Witten, near Dortmund. The documentation looks very useful, thanks.

andym: that looks much neater than anything I’m likely to come up with! I have had my BeagleBoard literally screwed to a plank of wood, in the past (and the lego it’s in now is far from protective)!

Ronald May: I’ll use it for linux and try to use it at a lower level, too. As for RO support for Mali, from a very quick glance at the documentation, it doesn’t look like you have to use it at all, the video output is from a framebuffer that anyone can write to, including the Mali GPU. That might be doable?

andym: that looks much neater than anything I’m likely to come up with! I have had my BeagleBoard literally screwed to a plank of wood, in the past (and the lego it’s in now is far from protective)!

Blag an LTO3 or LTO4 tape case. Drill a few holes at the right places and trim outward with a modelling knife. Acquire a few nylon pillars to fix in position. If you’re worried about heat build up buy a small video processor fan and mount on the lid with vent holes as appropriate.

They arrived today.

Actually ten PDKs arrived today! Someone must have taken pity on me.

I’m willing to part with six of them. They weigh about 90g, and are quite small (in the box), so postage shouldn’t be too much. How does one usually go about arranging payment with this sort of thing?

Simon,
I’m still interested and can be contacted at
ron/dot/briscoe/at/blueyonder/dot/co/dot/uk

Regards Ron

Jan, Matthias, (or anyone else)

Should I expect to be able to boot the device with only power and an HDMI cable attached?

Sourcing Mini-A <→ USB B cables, to connect from the Snowball to a powered hub seems not to be as easy as I’d expected, even with Jan’s warning. Do you know of any sources, or product numbers that are known to work?

Simon: try looking for OTG cable with Google :-)
If you are lucky to have a USB miniB cable with 5 wires connected and are a bit handy with a soldering iron you can make them yourself too..
How much for 1 board in euro’s? :-)

Jan: So, something like http://shop.adaptare.de/USB-USB-Typ-A-Adapter-Adapter-Mini-USB-Stecker—-USB-Kupplung/a9117746_u526_z95e0cf90-1bfa-4855-846a-293d729c8d3d/ should work with the board? I’ve been looking for Mini-A plugs, thinking that’s the host end.

42ukp is about 50eur, plus postage. Up to you if you want insurance, receipts, etc. in that.

Simon: I wouldn’t recommend solid adaptors that fit into small sockets, the socket can easily get damaged. An adaptor cable or best where possible is a single direct cable.

@Simon,

yes, Linux is stored in the eMMC. You only should need power and a display connected. If you would like to use a DVI display instead HDMI you have to enable DVI manually (see the bottom of this page )

@Simon: that adapter costs very little so you should give it a go. It may not work .. (it does not say OTG in the description)
I do agree that this type of adapter will put strain on the socket. So just for testing would be ok.