ARMUS Embedded Linux Board

Presentation

ARMUS, an ARM robotic processing system designed by a team of fourth-year undergraduate students in electrical engineering and computer engineering. This project intends to replace the Handy Board, the current microcontroller system used by first-year undergraduate students in our curricula with a more powerful, versatile and up- to- date technology, while preserving ease of use. Our ARMUS processing system offers high processing and memory capabilities at low energy consumption, for a price of around 300$CAD.

Here is a paper describing the whole project: Article on Armus

Specs

The board is made to run Linux. We have sucessfully built and tested the first prototype. It ran Linux 2.4 with no big issues. Since then, we have designed the second version (proto2), but never built it because we graduated. Here are the specs:

• AT91RM9200 CPU (ARM920T core)
• On board 32MB SDRAM and 8 MB Flash.
• CompactFLash
• SD/MMC trough SPI
• 2 RS232 ports
• JTAG/ICE port
• LCD port on the memory bus, we used a graphical LCD of 64x128
• 10baseT Ethernet
• USB Host and Device
• CAN port
• Audio (TLC320AIC23B: stereo out, stereo in, microphone in, 44.1kHz 16 bits)
• 48 IOs and 10 ADCs on a PIC18F8310
• 4x dsPIC30f3010 for motor control (4 DC, 4 servo, 4 capture/compare, 4 quad encoder, 8 more ADCs)

• Power supply is done with two switching power supplies (3.3V and 5V) to minimize power comsuption.

Design Files

Here are the whole hardware design tree. These Project files were made using Altium designer 2004 SP4. They include the schematics and the PCB files. I would gladly post a PDF version, but somehow pins number and names get affected by the operations.

There is a free "Altium Viewer" license availlable at www.altium.com, one should be able to view the whole project with it.

Here are the Gerber files for Armus, All optimized for Sierra Proto Express, wich did a fantastic job on the first proto run at very low cost with their "no-touch 4-layer" service. To use any other fab house remember that trace/space is 6 mils, and minimum hole size is 15mils.

Software Drivers and Kernels

THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION, COME BACK SOON! I still need to get the software part together...

other boards that run Linux

• Linuxstamp
• Balloon board