Gumstix

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Gumstix, Inc.
Type Private
Founded 2003
Headquarters Portola Valley, California
Key people Gordon Kruberg, CEO
Steve Sakoman, Head of Software
Don Anderson, CMO
Industry Computer systems
Products Complete computer systems; gumstix basix, connex and verdex motherboards; and a series of I/O daughtercards and accessories
Employees Under 10
Website www.gumstix.com
Gumstix motherboard vs iPod nano
Gumstix motherboard vs iPod nano

Gumstix is a US-based technology company that designs, builds and sells full-function miniature computers and related products. The small form factor gumstix (in the words of Gumstix) "is just a computer".

The Gumstix product line consists of cased and single board wide computers. The platform is a motherboard and expansion card computer based on Marvell XScale processors running Linux Embedded. Gumsticks motherboards measure 80 mm x 20 mm x 6.3 mm, comparable in size to a stick of chewing gum (hence the name of the company). I/O options via expansion boards include synchronous and asynchronous serial, USB, Ethernet, Bluetooth and Wifi wireless interfaces. The motherboard schematics and design information are proprietary, but expansion board schematics and layouts are available online under the Creative Commons Share-alike license.[1]

Commercial customers use gumstix inside a range of devices while professors and students have adopted gumstix technology in a variety of projects,[2] including robotic fish and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

Gumstix products have no printed documentation but are supported instead through several different forms of online documentation spread between articles, FAQ lists, a user-maintained wiki and a mailing list archive. Gumstix products come with a 30 day limited warranty.[3]

Contents

[edit] Motherboards

The gumstix line of motherboards are single-board computers which fall into one of three categories: Verdex, Connex, and Basix. The Verdex motherboards provide a Marvell XScale PXA270 processor running at 400 MHz or 600 MHz with up to 128 MB of SDRAM. The basix and connex motherboards provide a Marvell XScale PXA255 processor running at 200 MHz or 400 MHz with 64 MB of SDRAM. All three run Linux 2.6 with the BusyBox utilities, and can be configured to use the uClibc C library to save on flash memory. The software is a full-blown Linux environment and a large range of Linux applications can run on the device.

Additional features can be added to all motherboards with expansion cards connected via one or both on-board buses. The motherboards draw less than 250 mA @4V at 400 MHz without Bluetooth and less than 50 mA while idling, waiting for input.

[edit] Verdex

The Verdex motherboards feature up to 128MB RAM, on-board strataflash up to 32 MB, an onboard 60-pin Hirose I/O header, a 120-pin Molex connector for connecting additional expansion cards and have Infineon Bluetooth as an option.

The key functions of the verdex motherboards over the basix and connex motherboards include: USB host and the higher RAM and flash memory options.

In volume, verdex motherboards may be ordered with processor speeds of 300MHz, 400MHz, 500MHz and 600MHz with any combination of RAM, flash and expansion board connectors.

[edit] Connex

The Connex motherboards also feature on-board 16 MB strataflash, an onboard 60-pin Hirose I/O header, a 92-pin bus header for connecting additional expansion cards and have Infineon Bluetooth as an option.

[edit] Basix

The Basix motherboards features 4 MB strataflash, an onboard 60-pin Hirose I/O header, an onboard MMC slot and Infineon Bluetooth as an option. Basix-xm models extend the 4 MB of flash to 16 MB.

[edit] Computers

Gumstix has two cased computer product lines: Netstix and Waysmall.

[edit] Netstix

The Netstix computers, based on the Connex motherboard, provide 10/100 Mb Ethernet connected computers with CompactFlash (CF) for storage.

[edit] Waysmall

The Waysmall computers, based on the Basix motherboard, have USB and serial connectivity with MultiMediaCard (MMC) storage capability.

[edit] Software development kit

Gumstix uses the OpenEmbedded software framework to track and fetch dependencies, cross-compile packages and build complete images automatically using BitBake. After building, the rootfs image and the kernel are transferred to the Gumstix through a serial connection, using compact flash or MMC type cards or through ethernet network (depending on the system configuration and what expansion boards are used)

Additional software can be either downloaded prebuilt directly from the Gumstix repositories or compiled using BitBake with the same method, and is installed and managed using ipkg packages.

[edit] 3D Visualization

This modeling environment for electronic product designers integrates popular design tools, 3D images, and software scripts intended to aid the design and visualization of new product enclosures and custom expansion boards, by combining 3D Gumstix product visuals with Google SketchUp, Google 3D Warehouse and Cadsoft's Eagle CAD software.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Gumstix schematics page.
  2. ^ Gumstix customer projects.
  3. ^ Gumstix warranty information.

[edit] External links

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