SanCloud BeagleBone Enhanced

[dafields]

BeagleBone Black taken to a higher level. Backed by BeagleBoard.org and adding many new features

1GB RAM
Gigabit networking
Extra USB ports, 2 on board plus 2 via expansion header
Serial NOR flash for boot loader
6 axis gyro + accelerometer (we will fit 9 axis '+ compass' if target is reached)
Barometer pressure and temperature sensor

http://igg.me/at/scbbe

All in the same BeagleBone Black form factor.

[uncle_bob]

Hi

Seems a bit expensive, especially for an "at risk / early adopter" situation.

Bob

[fake-name]

If they dropped the silly accelerometer/gyro/barometer/"extra" USB ports, and stuck a SATA interface with a 4 or 5x port multiplier on the thing, it'd sell like gangbusters in the DIY NAS community.

There are no commercially available ARM boards (that I know of, at least) that have more then 1 SATA port. You can buy all sorts of variety of NASes that *use* an ARM CPU, but you can't buy a bare board anywhere.

[dafields]

If they dropped the silly accelerometer/gyro/barometer/"extra" USB ports, and stuck a SATA interface with a 4 or 5x port multiplier on the thing, it'd sell like gangbusters in the DIY NAS community.

There are no commercially available ARM boards (that I know of, at least) that have more then 1 SATA port. You can buy all sorts of variety of NASes that *use* an ARM CPU, but you can't buy a bare board anywhere.

The lack of SATA port on the AM3358 makes this very difficult on the BeagleBone HW. Only method would be USB to SATA bridge, then port multiplier. Throughput would be significantly impacted with this method and there is not enough room on the current sized board to do this. 

[uncle_bob]

If they dropped the silly accelerometer/gyro/barometer/"extra" USB ports, and stuck a SATA interface with a 4 or 5x port multiplier on the thing, it'd sell like gangbusters in the DIY NAS community.

There are no commercially available ARM boards (that I know of, at least) that have more then 1 SATA port. You can buy all sorts of variety of NASes that *use* an ARM CPU, but you can't buy a bare board anywhere.

The lack of SATA port on the AM3358 makes this very difficult on the BeagleBone HW. Only method would be USB to SATA bridge, then port multiplier. Throughput would be significantly impacted with this method and there is not enough room on the current sized board to do this.

Hi

USB to multiple SATA or USB to multiple Ethernet is not a really great idea on this sort of chip. There are just to many bottlenecks in the hardware and software when doing that.

The "ARM" chips you see with a bunch of cool ports on them are generally a "cool port" chip with an ARM tacked onto it. Put another way, they do a lot of development on the ports and port multiplexing. Very little work goes into the ARM. They charge for the custom port stuff and the ARM sort of tags along for free.

Bob