SIngle Board Computer

Hi! Forum,

After a long time watch and reading the forum I have finally come to the point to implement what I always wanted to do
Here it is


Now I have selected the following as my Dev/Test platform base MiniPC
www.embeddedarm.com/blog/practical-guide...ed-with-the-ts-7970/

I was concerned about ETHERNET PORT driver support on the Board.
Following is the response I got from the Vendor
>>>>>
On Tue, 29 Aug at 10:13 AM , Technologic Systems Support Team <support@embeddedarm.com> wrote:
Hi Ajith,

Ethercat later added support for all drivers in Linux.
"Since version 1.5, there is a generic Ethernet driver among the native ones, that spans all Ethernet devices supported by the Linux kernel. Although it is not usable with realtime patches like RTAI (because it uses the lower network stack layers), it runs perfectly with realtime preemption."

I'm aware of users on several of our boards using Ethercat with controllers that are not listed in that table.

The TS-7970 comes preinstalled with Debian, and that includes a toolchain onboard. Debian provides cross compilers with their distribution which is documented in our wiki.
wiki.embeddedarm.com/wiki/TS-7970#Debian_Jessie_Cross_Compiling

Best regards,
Mark
<<<
I would like to get the forum take on this choice.
thank you and wait for your response
-ajith

TS-7970 is rather expensive solution. Not sure if its perfect for industrial case. I wouldn't use it.
In terms of single board computers I know about a few problems with Raspberry PI, Banana PI and beaglebone. So computer solution could matter.
I don't understand "realtime patches like RTAI / realtime preemption". On Raspberry PI EtherCatDriver works.

HI!

I am looking at

www.minidis.eu/ebox

This
www.mouser.com/new/Intel/intel-nuc7-kit-optane-memory/

the latter seems expensive but looks wholesome and its Intel X86 right?

I'm pretty sure Rod runs a nuc and he's happy with it. The only issue I've heard with them is they run with best stability with RAM from the qualified list by the board manufacturer.

When you say Beaglebone, Andrew, are you talking about the Black ? What issues do you know about about it, apart from the slow graphics ?