Dr. David Cofer over at NeuroRoboticTech has announced significant progress on the Jetduino project for the NVIDIA Jetson TK1 Development Kit. You will certainly want to sign up for the NeuroRobotic Technologies newsletter for this one.
Jetduino Background
As you may recall from earlier articles here on JetsonHacks, Dr. Cofer is an active member of the Jetson community who has designed boards for interfacing with the Jetson TK1. You may also remember the in-depth article for adding SPI kernel support on the Jetson TK1.
Here at JetsonHacks we’ve also used the Jetson TK1 Connector board that he designed. Needless to say, we’re big fans.
You also probably know that there are a lot of little niggles in getting high speed communication channels working between the Jetson TK1 and other devices. The Jetson TK1 is a powerful SBC, but can be a little difficult to interface with COTS sensors and actuators. The idea behind the Jetduino is to facilitate connection of these types of devices using industry standard Grove and Dynmixel compatible connectors, camera interfaces ports, more USB ports and a mounting point for a SATA hard drive.
There is also a large prototyping area plus an option to add an Arduino Due which is helpful for low level device interfacing.
Status
The prototype boards have been ordered, which is the first step towards launching a crowd funding campaign to build the Jetduino. So why is this interesting? The NVIDIA Jetson TK1 Development Kit is a great tool for developing for the Tegra TK1. With the addition of the Jetduino, the combination becomes a great tool for developing entire hardware projects.
Certainly go check it out and see the large detailed feature list for yourself, and sign up for the newsletter.
We will cover this story as news becomes available.