Tell me more ×
Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for electronics and electrical engineering professionals, students, and enthusiasts. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 2 down vote favorite

Basically what I'm looking for are compact (but I'm willing to sacrifice compactness in lieu of price) embedded boards that have just enough power and memory to run a linux kernel and a couple tiny applications, and can be network connected, either wired or wireless. I also require variants for battery operation as well as AC powered.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking for, and I don't care much about the architecture as long as it can run linux. I've looked at embeddedarm.com but I think all the boards they have to offer are over-powered and too expensive for my application. It's kind of silly in my opinion, when you can get something like a linksys wrt for 50 dollars.

What I'm planning on doing is cobbling together sort of a DIY home security system, so it will need to do things like monitor door/window sensors, and control an inexpensive USB webcam that can report and upload snapshots off-site based on image thresholds.

I'm aware of the implicit problems and reliability with DIY home security solutions--this is mostly for a project for myself as a hobby.

share|improve this question
3  
Take a look at this: raspberrypi.org. Its a $25 arm based computer with a single USB connection and an HDMI monitor output. – Faken Nov 10 '11 at 3:23
This looks just fantastic! I'll definitely be grabbing a bunch of these up once they come out... but until then... – andyortlieb Nov 10 '11 at 3:28
This is a shopping question, which we don't allow - we prefer technical questions with one right answer. Additionally, it's about purchasing something that's outside of the scope of the site: We're about how to design the motherboard for a system like this, not about where and what to buy. – Kortuk♦ Nov 10 '11 at 4:28
Understood, thank you. I can imagine the response to somebody asking where to buy backup software on stackoverflow ;) – andyortlieb Nov 10 '11 at 4:52

closed as off topic by Kortuk♦ Nov 10 '11 at 4:28

Questions on Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange are expected to relate to electronics design within the scope defined in the FAQ. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about closed questions here.

Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.