Sponsored By
Efika 5200B Project
A Complete PPC Pluto home Control systemin category Hardware
proposed by Udance on 29th September 2006 (accepted on 7th October 2006)
Project Summary
Develop the design for/and port the Pluto Home Control system for a complete PPC based low power components.Media Directors would be a low power system quiet and small utilizing the EFIKA as the platform base.
Core system would be modularized versions (or multiples) of the EFIKA as the platform base.
Potentially a hand-held orbiter would be based on the EFIKA as well. (some research needed in this area).
Project Blog Entries
Definately seems to be some potential in these cards/chips. Not having much luck finding a source for them however..
More later...
Not completely happy with any of the choices I seem to have available to me. Would Ideally like the OPTION of having a solution that could both play back to TV (various resolutions supported), as well as record (ideally two sources).
I don't have a solution that allows me to meet all those requirements just yet. Hopefully further investigation may yield something that works.
Perhaps the Volari cards might hold a solution.
Have the initial download of Pluto Home sources setup and divided up into portions that run on the Core Director Component and portions that run on the Media Director Components.
Only concerned with porting the Portions that run on the Media Director Component to PowerPC at this point.
Need to devise a good method of testing the quality of THE EFIKA on board sound. Is this good enough for audiophile quality output? Or will I need an optional add-on component to support this? (investigate soon).
Reviewed the specifications for over 50 case designs that were commonly available that fit my initial criteria:
- Room for EFIKA, Graphics Card, CD-Rom and Power Supply
- In a form factor that was consistent with standard Home Media Appliances (DVD player etc).
- Print point to make it reasonably affordable in small quantities.
After reviewing all the specifications I've placed orders for samples of 5 different designs that look like they should fit my needs. (will put up links to these resources a bit later).
Placed orders for various other components to test a full blown configuration in each case (power supply/CD-Rom/etc)..
Hopefully the lead times on these cases is somewhat shorter than initially quoted.
After an intensive week of playing around with the Initial EFIKA configuration as a Core Director I've come to the conclusion that this is probably _NOT_ a good fit. There is some possibilities as a SMALL Core Director but this plateform is insufficient for mainstream needs as a Core Director.
Not to discouraged on this point as I initially suspected this would be the case. The main plan was for fast/low power Media Directors and potentially Mobile Directors (more on the case evaluations and such later).
Really need to figure out how to use these tools to portray better things like graphics and outside resources.