Gumstix

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Gumstix, Inc.

Type	Private
Founded	2003
Headquarters	Portola Valley, California
Key people	Gordon Kruberg, CEO Steve Sakoman, Head of Software Don Anderson, CMO
Industry	Computer systems
Products	Complete computer systems; gumstix basix, connex and verdex motherboards; and a series of I/O daughtercards and accessories
Employees	Under 10
Website	www.gumstix.com

Gumstix is a US-based technology company that designs, manufactures and sells miniature computer motherboards and expansion cards to the general public. Their product line is based on these very small form factor computer components.

The Gumstix product line consists of encased and single board computers. The platform is a motherboard and expansion card computer based on Marvell XScale and TI OMAP processors running Embedded Linux. Gumstix motherboards measure 80 mm x 20 mm x 6.3 mm, comparable in size to a stick of chewing gum (giving the company its namesake). I/O is provided via expansion boards including synchronous and asynchronous serial, USB, Ethernet, Bluetooth and Wifi wireless interfaces. The motherboard schematics and design information are proprietary, but expansion board schematics and layouts are available online under the Creative Commons Share-alike license.^[1]

Gumstix have been used notably in commercial projects and in educational and hobbyist settings.^[2] including robotic fish and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

Gumstix products have no printed documentation but are supported instead through several different forms of online documentation, such as articles, FAQ lists, a user-maintained wiki and a mailing list archive. Gumstix products come with a 30 day limited warranty.^[3]

[edit] Motherboards

A side-by-side size comparison of a United States Quarter, a Gumstix Overo Earth, a stick of gum, and the Gumstix Summit expansion board.

The gumstix motherboards are single-board computers which come in two different configurations. The brand names for these are Overo Earth and Verdex Pro. The Overo Earth uses a TI OMAP 3503 processor running at 600 MHz and have 256 Mb of SDRAM, while the Verdex Pro motherboards use a Marvell XScale PXA270 processor running at 400 MHz or 600 MHz with up to 128 MB of SDRAM. Both boards run Linux 2.6 with the BusyBox utilities, and use the OpenEmbedded build environment to provide a full-blown Linux environment and a large range of Linux applications.

Additional features can be added to all motherboards with expansion cards connected via one or both on-board buses. The motherboards draw less than 250 mA @4V at 400 MHz without Bluetooth and less than 50 mA while idling, waiting for input.^[4][5]

[edit] Overo Earth

The Overo Earth was released in July of 2008. ^[6] It provides improvements over the previous designs, including upgraded memory (it has 256 Mb of flash and 256 Mb of SDRAM), use of a new processor (a 600 MHz TI OMAP 3503 processor), and a new connector system employing two connectors to the daughtercard, allowing for stabler board stacks.

[edit] Overo Water

The Overo Water was released in the beginning of July 2008, and is their most recent product line offering. It provides improvements over the previous designs, including upgraded memory (it has 256 Mb of flash and 256 Mb of SDRAM), using a completely new processor than its counter part (Overo Earth). It, instead, uses the Texas Instruments OMAP 3530 600mhz procsesor.

[edit] Verdex pro

The verdex pro motherboards have up to 128MB RAM, on-board strataflash up to 32 MB, an onboard 60-pin Hirose I/O header, a 80-pin Molex connector for connecting additional expansion cards. The boards can be ordered with Infineon Bluetooth as an option.

In volume, verdex pro motherboards may be ordered with processor speeds of 300 MHz, 400MHz, 500 MHz and 600 MHz with any combination of RAM, flash and expansion board connectors.

[edit] Discontinued motherboards

The Verdex, Connex and Basix motherboards will be phased out at the end of 2008.

[edit] Verdex

The Verdex motherboards have up to 128MB RAM, on-board strataflash up to 32 MB, an on-board 60-pin Hirose I/O header, a 120-pin Molex connector for connecting additional expansion cards and have Infineon Bluetooth as an option.

The Verdex is an upgrade from the Basix and Connex motherboards, adding the following features to the aforementioned product lines: USB host capability(12 megabit/second), higher capacity RAM, and higher capacity flash memory options.

Volume orders of the Verdex motherboards can be placed for computers with processor speeds of 300 MHz, 400MHz, 500 MHz and 600 MHz with any combination of RAM, flash and expansion board connectors.

[edit] Connex

The Connex motherboards have on-board 16 MB strataflash, an onboard 60-pin Hirose I/O header, a 92-pin bus header for connecting additional expansion cards, and have Infineon Bluetooth as an option.

[edit] Basix

The Basix motherboards have 4 MB strataflash, an onboard 60-pin Hirose I/O header, an onboard MMC slot and Infineon Bluetooth as an option. Basix-xm models uprade the 4 MB of flash to 16 MB.

[edit] Computers

Gumstix has two encased computer products, under the brand names Netstix and Waysmall. Neither product supports connecting to a desktop monitor, although the company sells expansion boards that allow the use of a variety of small LCD touchscreen displays.^[7]

Instead of connecting input devices such as keyboards or mice directly, users access the device through a serial port, using the keyboard and monitor from a host PC running a terminal emulator. ^[8]

[edit] Netstix

The Netstix computers, based on the Connex motherboard, provide 10/100 Mb Ethernet connected computers with CompactFlash (CF) for storage.

[edit] Waysmall

The Waysmall computer product line uses the Basix motherboard and connects to a host computer via USB using a serial connection and a terminal emulator ^[9]. It has an onboard MultiMediaCard (MMC) read/write device, and can read and write to external memory via this interface.

[edit] Software development kit

Gumstix uses the OpenEmbedded software framework to track and fetch dependencies, cross-compile packages and build complete images by using BitBake. After building, the rootfs image and the kernel are transferred to the Gumstix through a serial connection, using compact flash or MMC type cards or through ethernet network (depending on the system configuration and what expansion boards are used)

Additional software can be downloaded prebuilt directly from the Gumstix repositories or compiled using BitBake. Software is installed and managed using ipkg packages.

[edit] Engineering and Expansion

Gumstix provides design tools for end-users and integrators in the form of a ^[10]. These tools include 3D images, software scripts, and electronic schematics with the stated purpose of "...aid[ing] the design and visualization of new product enclosures and custom expansion boards...by combining 3D Gumstix product visuals with Google SketchUp, Google 3D Warehouse and Cadsoft's Eagle CAD software".

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Gumstix website
• Gumstix users wiki
• Gumstix Support links
• Gumstix mailing list archives on nabble
• Gumstix Aims At Mobile Apps
• Tiny Linux SBC steps up to PXA270
• Gumstix Computers Now Support Displays