EToy : the hackable of things

Thanks for browsing with sub part of SpritesMind.
This site is mainly a list of notes from myself.
If you don't like the look and feel, sorry but I don't think it will change soon !

 

Electronic devices were always a mystery for me.
Like any child, I quickly asked me "how is this thing working ?"
While I was a student, it tried to find some answers taking electronics course for one year.
But I was definitely more a developer than an engineer....

Several times, I browsed websites dedicated to ARM, AVR and other small CPU but assembler was not a language I wanted to learn (at that times...)

Hopefully, some years ago, Arduino was released, making electronics available to (almost) anyone.
I read, read and re-read documentations and posts about Arduino but it was too "Arduino only" for me.
I wanted a (totally) open system.
The only system I found which was open, usb, full of IO and not expensive was Teensy. (OpenWRT was too complex, with a few chance to succeed and with so few GPIO).

I quickly found Teensy was a perfect match for my Sega Megadrive experiment but what if I want to, for ex, make my own picture frame ?
Which software and, even more difficult, which hardware ?
I asked my friend Google and it told me Linux (or µcLinux) conquered the so called "embedded device" industry these last years, thanks for now cheap memory and such.

Open source, with small memory print and few requirements, able to work without reboot for years, just the perfect OS for embedded devices.

While Arduino and Teensy could be seen as hobby toy, embedded devices under Linux are more on a professional scale
Bonus, what you learnt is not to drop when you move to another device.
Working on small devices, with few memory and space storage is a real challenge and is pretty similar to the pleasure I have, working on Sega Megadrive or mobile.

So, I started to read books related to Linux embedded systems and, by now, tried to move from theoretical course to practical course.
I created this site to share what and how I slowly moved to Linux embedded.

If you're not already a Linux user, you should start by my Linux experiment page. I explain here how I first try a standard Linux distro, with embedded systems development in mind.
Else just look at any of my projects. You'll perhaps find I explain too much or I make a lot of noob errors but remember I AM a noob !


Systems I'm currently working on :

Yeah, I know : no RPi here! Sorry but for some reasons I can't explain, I dislike it...


Some useful links :