4 R.PI boards = 140$ El-cheapo switch = $20 4 cheap ethernet cables = $20 4 USB cables (power) = …
I would buy a cheap (or bundled) motherboard and the best sub-150$ AMD cpu… getting multiple cores at 2+ GHz in the process. . This seems to beat the pants off a cluster of R.PIs speed wise… not to mention you don't have to parallelize as much. And it is a PC, not a cellphone. And it is x86. By the way, I am a fan of your project! Best -F On Apr 7, 2013, at 4:29 PM, [email protected] wrote: > As many of you know, I have a robot project. > > http://www.linuxpcrobot.org/ > > Over the years I have tried to keep the robot as a viable platform and > maintain development costs to the sub $500 range. > > The Raspberry PI is a weak desktop, to be honest. It lacks most of the I/O > goodness of the Arduino. It is a poor choice for a robot. Unless..... > > What about a functional cluster of PI systems on the robot? Tied together > with an ethernet switch? Use something like MPI for distributed processing > across multiple PI devices, and use each PI as a specialized I/O module. > > Right now, I use an Intel Atom CPU to do everything and it is loaded with > all the cameras and controls. 3 or 4 PIs may be able to handle the load > better. Given the cost of a DC ATX power supply, mother board, and RAM, I > may be able to get 3 or 4 PI systems running. > > Any comments? > > _______________________________________________ > Hardwarehacking mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking _________________________________________ -- "'Problem' is a bleak word for challenge" - Richard Fish (Federico L. Lucifredi) - flucifredi at acm.org - GnuPG 0x4A73884C _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
