The Gun Counter

Anyone know anything about them? We have a young engineer who wants to use one to automate some of our processes, as part of an internship.

No direct experience with them, though they are wildly popular with people doing intermediate/advanced hardware hacking projects - like process automation. Especially with combinations of off-the-shelf and custom sensors and outputs.

Its an ARM processor running one of several customized distributions of Linux. I'd expect it to be very suitable for running a single application 24/7 for a long, long time without any operating system troubles.

Have several projects running on them. They're fantastic general purpose boards that run a version of Linux.

Been running everything from print servers to routers for months on end, been hacking projects together for longer.

They're cheep enough that it should not be a problem to prototype it. If i used it for that id make sure to have spares and that it fails safely. Im not aware of any RTOSes for it...

I know a couple of hobbyists that like them. I saw one that had been installed with a monitor and keyboard inside a lunchbox.

I've heard it said that if you're looking for a controller, use an Arduino. If you're looking for a microcomputer, use a Raspberry Pi.

Darrell wrote:I've heard it said that if you're looking for a controller, use an Arduino. If you're looking for a microcomputer, use a Raspberry Pi.

This is true, you can also interface them with each other as well.

Darrell wrote:I've heard it said that if you're looking for a controller, use an Arduino. If you're looking for a microcomputer, use a Raspberry Pi.

and if you want something to do both, get a beaglebone black. Lots more i/o. Much faster chip, has USB Ethernet..

OK, so who wants to build one for me, in a water-proof box, with waterproof toggle overrides? (Oh, and controlling line power/three phase contactors.)

Precision, you said you were bored, right? How 'bout learning a new "cooking" skill?



The kid got convinced by his father that it was "too much for him" - which is BS - I can post, most, of the process here - will do so in a bit - but its simple.

No matter how you do it, have the designer document the hell out of it. You don't want to have something remotely process critical that no one else can work on. See the thread on Darrell's indispensability to his operation.