Evening, everyone!
Now, I'm sure this has been asked a million times, but I'd just like to at least take a moment to explain what I'm working on and maybe it will be a bit more interesting.
I'm working on building up the control unit for what's basically a GPS-controlled Mars rover. Four wheels, each with an independent drive motor, GPS and compass for navigation, most likely a PIC32MX or PSoC 5LP (since I'm familiar with the two) to manage hardware control.
The part I'm torn on right now is getting I/O to a remote client in order to do rerouting and manual control. Our original thought was to make use of some small SBC to host a Linux environment which would A) handle software storage of GPS routes and whatnot, and B) serve an HTML page using NginX to allow anything with a web browser and the password to access controls. This would interface with the MCU via RS232. Simple enough. (Let it be noted that this setup was decided upon for various design constraints from both us and the end user, so the foundation likely won't change.)
My question is this. We can't put a RasPi on something that might go into production, mainly because of sourcing, longevity, licensing, and all that. I don't have the time to kludge together an entire single-board computer; if this is the only option, I'll need to do it
now because while we have a PCB prototyping mill, it isn't going to be doing BGA or QFN work any time soon, and so it would need to be sent out, etched, and assembled. Basically, what is the most low-profile, barebones way of getting something running Linux that can interface with RS232, and operate a wireless connection? Or if there are any other thoughts, anything is welcome!
We'd looked into Intel's little Edison boards, but $70 is an awful lot for all it's doing, and a lot of the same problems still apply. Google isn't much help for this other than turning up hundreds of kickstarter projects that probably will never even reach production let alone be available for the next fifteen years.
Any thoughts are appreciated!
- M