Small Single Board Computers suitable for ROS

hardware

asked 2011-06-20 00:44:09 -0500

tom

1079 ●39 ●55 ●65

Hi,

I've been wondering which SBC's do ROS users recommend. I'm particularly interested in

small designs (less or around 10x10cm)
lightweight (less than 200g, preferably around 100g)
high processing power, approx. 2GHz (single or multiple cores), 2GB RAM, or more
2 or more USB's
5V or 12V DC power supply
preferably x386
ROS Diamondback friendly, ie. supports Ubuntu 10.04 or newer.

I've used BeagleBoard with ROS, but unfortunately I found it's processing power to little for my needs. I'm also aware of PandaBoard, but, after playing around with BB-xM, I think x386 architectures will be better suited for fast prototyping. I'm also aware of AscTec's Atom Board, but I find it too expensive (AFAIK it costs 1200Eur + VAT in Germany). The option I'm considering now is IEI's PM-PV-D5251-R10, but the manufacturer is only assuring it's compatibility until Ubuntu 8.10 (but there is good chance newer versions will work out-of-the-box, I suppose) - costs around 400$.

Am I missing something worthy of knowing?

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answered 2011-06-20 06:10:16 -0500

KoenBuys
2314 ●21 ●35 ●56 http://people.mech.kul...

I know of:

Advantech
Cogent
Toradex
Taskit
And a little bit larger Mini-itx

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4

answered 2011-06-20 04:24:30 -0500

Stefan Kohlbrecher

24361 ●173 ●299 ●444 https://www.energy-rob...

I can recommend the FitPC2 (http://www.fit-pc2.com/). We use it since years on our KidSize humanoid robots (though non-ROS for this application) and started using it on UGVs now. There's some trouble when you want to run an hardware accelerated X server with newer versions of Ubuntu (> 9.10) due to the Poulsbo chipset, but it otherwise works fine. The case can be removed if you want to have absolutely lowest weight, but we found it to be pretty robust and worth keeping (it also doubles as a heatsink for CPU and chipset).

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Thanks Stefan, can you tell (if it's not problematic) how heavy is a fit-pc without casing?

tom ( 2011-06-21 20:22:01 -0500 )edit

Hi Tom, while I´m not in the lab to be able to check it myself till monday, I found this website stating 90 gram: http://www.compulab.co.il/fitpc2/html/fitpc2-sb-datasheet.htm That looks pretty reasonable to me. Didn´t even know it´s available as SBC without case :)