Was in early today. Just relaxing a little bit figuring out what I am going to do today.
Been looking for a nice low power mini PC that can run Linux that I can use for Robotics and I think the Beagleboard XM is the best thing out there at moment. I think the main problem is that I don't want to spend 87625171651276 hours just trying to install Linux so I can run OpenCV and bullshit. Raspberry pi is backordered like hell and in all reality is really slow and doesn't seem to be able to compete with the Beagleboard. The Beagleboard xM is however over $100 but you get what you pay for. It also has really nice Linux support and alot of developers. It has plenty of GPIO pins. I think it should work out great.
I think the current problem with technology when developing something is that lots of it needs to be done for scratch. yeah it would be great to use an Android phone but you basically have to port a whole operating system first. I probably spend most of my time searching for the proper tools to build what I want to build than in actually building it!
I used to like to build things from scratch like when I wrote IP Sorcery and refused to use libnet. It could have made things alot easier but I wanted more control and to learn how to code better. If I had to do it again I probably would have coded it the same way but nowadays I think alot more about how not to waste my time on stuff I can just spend $50 on.
