At a glance I would guess that by deleting the two expansion connectors it might be possible to reduce the area to say 80% of what it is now. I don’t immediately see how it could be made much smaller than that, though I am not a hardware guy and I might be terribly wrong.
If it’s only possible to shrink it to 80% of the existing size, would that be worthwhile?
Perhaps another ~10% shrinkage might be possible if the power jack, ethernet port and USB connector were removed, but that might be trimming beyond the point of usefulness?
As was mentioned in one of posts a key to reduce the cost is quantity. No matter how many chips or connectors are on a board, the more units are in production- the less cost per unit will be
Since the circuits are available for the bone it wouldnt be too
difficult to remove some items. But unless you could get sufficient
buyers (1000's) it would probably end up costing significantly more
than a bone.
The problem is everyone will want a different subset of the features.
I was personally thinking about a low power variant. The challenge
would be getting a variant of the bone that enough people would be
interested in.
I’m actually building one right now, 3352 cpu 600Mhz, 5x5cm core board contains eth, audio and 160pins , cost will be around $35-50 depending on qty, finishing soon, I will personally use about 10k per annual. it will be for both hobby use and industrial use, can share with your guys once its all good. people who are interested can mail me.
Since the circuits are available for the bone it wouldnt be too
difficult to remove some items. But unless you could get sufficient
buyers (1000's) it would probably end up costing significantly more
than a bone.
The problem is everyone will want a different subset of the features.
I was personally thinking about a low power variant. The challenge
would be getting a variant of the bone that enough people would be
interested in.
Should the BeagleBone use any extra power or generate any extra EMI
due to the expansion headers if they aren't connected?
If nothing is connected to a pin, it should not consume power, Unless the SW decides to add a pull-down or pull-up while driving the pin in the opposite direction, which has nothing to do with the connector.
It can generate some EMI if the software decides to toggle that pin which goes nowhere.
If nothing is connected to a pin, it should not consume power, Unless the SW
decides to add a pull-down or pull-up while driving the pin in the opposite
direction, which has nothing to do with the connector.
It can generate some EMI if the software decides to toggle that pin which
goes nowhere.
Gerald
Can I make a software configuration (kernel option?) in order to
eliminate or minimize either of these things since I'm not using the
expansion headers?
Sure. Don’t do anything to them. They default in most cases to inputs with either a pull up or pull-down on them. Don’t touch them and you will be fine. If they are not toggling, they will not generate any noise. Only SW can make them toggle.