[TriEmbed] (POE) Ethernet microcontroller

[Glen Smith]

Basically what happened is I stay late at the office so I can go to the
TriEmbed meeting (I call it my Arduino Anonymous meeting). Boss is curious,
so I explain a little about Arduinos and he asks the inevitable question:
"Well what can they do?" Which as we all know is like asking "What can
water do?" So I try to explain using examples that people can relate to -
in this case, towards our business. As with any subject, your level of
expertise depends on who you are comparing yourself to. In this office, I'm
the electronics/computer guru, when I go to the TriEmbed meetings, I feel
like I'm wearing a life jacket and water wings and I'm still in over my
head. I'd love to get paid to bring our company a little more into current
technology, but for now I'm just working on projects that interest me.
Fortunately, there is enough overlap to keep the boss interested. It would
be great fun to walk into the office and set up a small number of demo
units.

I considered the R-Pi, but from some research and meeting discussion, it
appears that making the jump from research and prototype units to
commercial / production with the R-Pi is more difficult than with
BeagleBone Black or Atmel based devices. My personal home automation
project needed a head end, so I went with BBB. Next up is to learn enough
about Linux and the BBB to use it.

Glen


On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 10:13 AM, John Vaughters <jvaughters04 at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> Glen,
>
> Thanks for follwoing up. Since you are dealing with what seems like a
> production type issue. I would like to make a suggestion that you
> concentrate on the reliability of the solution or the troubleshooting time
> will kill any hardware savings. Spend the money up front and test test
> test. From your description, you may want to consider a fully embedded
> solution vs. an Arduino. You will get your sound and it will be quite good
> actually. Solutions like R-Pi may be a better bet. There are literally tons
> of options out there for a fully embedded solution, so look around.
>
> I personally have stayed away from ethernet as a reliable solution for
> Arduino. The logic being that the software is way to new and the point
> about the 8 vs. 32 bit just strengthened my belief. With an R-Pi and any
> other linux based embedded solution, you are getting very robust software
> stacks that have literally been in Development for decades. You also get
> serial UARTs that can be directly connected to Arduinos and UARTs have been
> around since computer interfaces have been around. Meaning about the most
> reliable software you can find. You can connect an arduino to an embedded
> system via UART and expect very reliable communication to a very reliable
> Linux OS. This is a production solution. Of course you could also extend
> the Embedded hardware for I/O, but I would rather preserve my embedded
> device as a simple computer and let the Arduinos fry in the expected event
> of hardware problems ie shorts and mis-wiring.  You can replace an Arduino
> for very little cost these days. Less than $10.
>
>   Concerning POE, you could look for embedded devices that accept it, but
> it seems to me that they jack the cost up higher than need be for that
> priveledge. You could also look for RJ-45 break out boards and some buck
> regulators which are super cheap and create your own POE break out
> solution. It really would not be that hard. Maybe search OshPark for a POE
> break out with a Buck regulator.
>
> When you are done testing and your hardware is selected, if you have a
> significant volume, talk to the vendors directly and see if there is
> anything you can do to make a bulk order and consider removing any hardware
> that you may not need. That may not be possible for manufacturing reasons,
> but I just do not know how much volume you are talking about. But this may
> help you with your cost.
>
> Good Luck and please share the results of your decisions.
>
> John Vaughters
>
>
>
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>
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