Motherboard
October 3, 2009admin No Comments »I bought this Mini ITX motherboard with the new Atom CPU from Intel D945GCLF.
I choose this instead of buying a laptop because it is really cheap: you can buy it for 85$ in Denmark ! Add a 2Gb DDR Ram and a SATA disc and you are running !
As you can read in the PDF it also has a real serial and parallel com port, and where can you find these nowadays?
I couldn’t use my USB to serial converter to upload the Microcontroller testing program with my laptop. When i got the D945GCLF and hooked the microcontroller to the serial port there was no problems at all uploading the test SW.
How do i connect this motherboard with a 12v battery ?
You buy a picoPSU-60-WI (find it on ebay at 40$). It will supply the motherboard and you can supply it from 6-26V ! thats really impressive. The picoPSU-60-WI will deliver 60W – I only use 24W so i guess i can use the remaining power for other power needing boards onboard the robot.
If you want to use the picoPSU then remember that you can NOT use 3.5″ HDD or 5.25″ CDROMS because of the high power consumption.
I had an old slimline slot-in CD drive from a mac-mini that is is perfect for the robot. I got anIDE converter from dealextreme for 5$ which fits at the back of an slot-in drive so that it can be connected to IDE.
Then I added a wifi/bluetooth PCI board from dealexteme for 25$ (worldwide shipping is free!).
In total with a 2.5″ 80Gb SATA HDD, 2Gb Ram, CDrom, Wifi/BT PCI and a logitech webcam it draws 2A which is around 24 W. I think its okay for now, but i have to see when i try in real life conditions.
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