For a next-gen course I’m evaluating different platforms, and one of it are modules based on the NXP i.MX ARM architectures. In this article I have a look a the Variscite DART-6UL development kit which includes the NXP i.MX6Ultralite ARM Cortex-A7 plus a 7″ capacitive touch LCD:
Variscite VAR-DVK-6UL_LO Kit
One reason for me to buy the RIoT board was that it has a camera connector. So I had ordered the CAM8000-D module from Farnell (part number 2362812). The Farnell product page was not clear if it comes with the 30pin FPC cable, but luckily, it shipped with it:
Unpacked CAM8000-U Camera and Board
The wired Ethernet connectivity works out of the box with the Freescale RIoT board :-). But to make it more ‘IoT’ capable, a WiFi connection would be a big plus. The element14 site did not tell which WiFi dongles are supported, and a thread in the element14 forum on that topic has not really provided much information. With some risks I decided to order the Wi-Pi WiFi dongle which seems to be popular in the Raspberry Pi community (thus that Wi-Pi name?). And as I anyway have a Raspy, my thinking was that if it does not work with the RIoT board, I still can use it with the Raspy 🙂
Wi-Pi WiFi with the RIoT Board
I understand the challenges of board vendors: they produce many boards, and typically they have an early/first firmware version on it. And when that board gets shipped to customers, that firmware typically is old and outdated :-(. Same for the RIoT board I have received: I was desperately trying some advanced features, only to realize that the firmware on the board is an older one from this year. So time to update the Android on that board.
Freescale RIoT Board
I admit: I love command line interfaces. Because that gives me usually much more control than any GUI (Graphical User Interface). I like the fact that they have put a UART interface on the RIoT board:
J18 UART on the RIoT Board
At the university we have several projects with internet connectivity running. Yes, there is a hype around IoT, and in my view many false perceptions around this what it could or should be. Anyway, for these projects in many cases the Raspberry Pi boards are used, and I use a model B board of the Raspy too. I’m very happy with the Raspy, but I wanted to explore different options, so I ordered a RIoT board two weeks ago. When I looked at it the first time, I was thinking that this board could be a better (although larger) board than the Raspberry Pi one: more USB, more GPIO, micro-SD card, more processing power:
RIoT Board
Well, then this week the new Raspberry Pi B+ came out: more USB, more GPIO, but same processing power as the standard B model.
MCU on Eclipse 