Earlier than we had Raspberry Pis and Beaglebones, the artwork of placing a Linux system in a small, moveable mission was restricted to router hacking. The venerable WRT54G managed Web-connected robots with a cautious software of a Unix-ey firmware. Now, issues are completely different however there’s nonetheless a necessity for an inexpensive, moveable Linux system that’s simply adequate to get the job completed. Now, there’s an improve to the board that follows within the footsteps of that router hacking The Onion Omega2 Pro is up on Crowd Supply, and it’s received extra buttons, extra switches, and it’s nonetheless smaller than a breadboard.
The Onion Omega2 Professional is a slight improve over the breadboard-friendly SoM launched a couple of years in the past. The Professional model encompasses a 580 MHz MIPS CPU, 512 MB of RAM (Replace: that is 128 MB bodily RAM and 384 MB flash swap file), 8 GB of storage, and connectivity with b/g/n WiFi. In contrast to the earlier model, it is a way more useful system with a 30-pin growth header, assist for battery charging, a micro USB for charging and serial, and a USB host port. As a result of that is at its coronary heart the heart of a router on a growth board, you additionally get all of the enjoyable of WiFi networking. The growth header connects to numerous add-ons together with a GPS module, OLED show, and an Ethernet port.
Now we have now Raspberry Pis and different numerous boards based mostly on smartphone Programs on Chip, however generally you don’t want that a lot overhead. You don’t want bizarre Linux distributions coping with ARM bootloaders. Generally you simply want one thing easy, and the Onion Omega2 Professional does simply that.
