Ok, I know this isn't at all related to web coding, but I don't care. I went out and ordered myself a Pandaboard for a couple of different reasons. First, let me gush about the technical side of this thing because it looks like a dynamite device. It has a dual core ARM Cortex A9 CPU clocking in at 1.2ghz, 1gb of RAM, and more expansion ports (including USB host!) than many laptops. It costs less than $200. It has no moving parts and draws 1 amp of power. It can play 1080p video.
With such admirable qualities there are already a couple of things I want to try...
The first and most obvious use is probably to turn this thing into a low-power always-on server. Such a role would be perfect. I could see it doing a fine job hosting files, streaming video to my TV, and finishing downloads overnight. It would be a quieter, lower-power PC for doing simple things like writing this blog. My PC is fairly hefty and has a nearly 1000 watt power supply, 3 hard drives and almost a half dozen fans. If I were to power it with a generator under my desk it would honestly not add much to the din this thing makes.
The other possibility is more interesting to me. Call me crazy, but I kinda want to build a tablet. This board is very self-contained (it's a complete system on a chip, after all) and all it needs to become a tablet is a touch screen and batteries. Um, an enclosure would be customary, but I might just go for the visible guts T-800 look. The PB community has tackled both of these issues for me. Battery power seems to range from anywhere as simple as plugging the PB into a spare battery pack like those sold at airport kiosks for charging phones on the go, or building a small circuit to power the board from 3 rechargeable AA-sized cells or a even nice flat LiPo pack. As long as it provides between 4.5 and 5 volts with a peak capacity of 1.5 amps, it'll work. The touchscreen is a bit scarier to me though I found a nice kit at Chalkboard Electronics that I'm thinking of buying. My inspiration for a device like this is a kit I found over at Liquidware, though I wanted a larger screen. In fact, I almost sprang for the LW kit, despite the price, because I could be fairly certain that it would work as-is. I opted not to, as I didn't like the small screen and form factor. Let's be honest, it's fairly thick and brick-like. No, what I wanted was a larger screen so that I could position the board and battery side by side. That's what I hope the 10" screen from CE would let me do, but that's for later on once I get more comfortable with the PB.
I'm going to close with a rant, because I need to say that mainstream consumer mobile devices in general leave me very disappointed. I dumped my Archos tablet a year ago, and while I love my Droid X, I wish it did more. I've even gone so far as to root my DX and install Liberty ROM, but it's just not as complete as I want. These devices we carry around with us are immensely powerful despite the trade off for power savings and sleek form factor, yet they're crippled and limited to simple tasks by the software they run. Who said that I shouldn't be able to plug a USB thumb drive or keyboard into my tablet? It's clearly not a technical limitation, but our devices are "dumb" by design. Very few devices have USB host capabilities. Most devices are locked by the manufacturer so that the end user can't install the software of his choosing. The final nail in my Archos' coffin was that it was stuck on Android 1.6 at the time phones were shipping with Android 2.2. Thanks to it's locked bootloader, I was stuck with what it shipped with since Archos never sent an update. Shame on you, Archos. Shame on you not just for limiting my choice, but shame on you for selling me a device that was locked into running outdated, buggy software.
That said, my Pandaboard should arrive this Friday, and it should be able to run anything from Android, to Ubuntu, Meego, hell even the oft-maligned Windows CE!
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