[ros-users] Computer Recommendations

[William Woodall]

We have used the Zotac ION boards as well and we've had good success, I just
suggested the fit-pc2 because it uses less power, is inclosed, and is
smaller.  We had a few projects that demanded those things over processing
power.

We used the
http://www.zotacusa.com/zotac-ionitx-a-u-atom-n330-1-6ghz-dual-core-mini-itx-intel-motherboard.html
on
our autonomous lawnmower competition and we were running the robotpose_ekf @
~30Hz and the entire move_base system at 20Hz and a custom vision algorithm
at ~10Hz that involved a birds eye transform, several filters, a pattern
matching step, and at least one hough transform and sometimes two.  We ran
fairly well, though we had some performance problems from time to time and
ultimately for next years entry we have upgraded to a full on core-i7 system
because size and power is not a concern for us on the lawnmower.

Hope that gives you an idea of what the Zotac is capable of,

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William Woodall
Graduate Software Engineering
Auburn University
w at auburn.edu
wjwwood at gmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


2010/12/31 Björn Giesler <bjoern at giesler.de>

> Hi,
>
> I bought the PC for my robot a couple of months ago. I looked at the
> fit-pc2, which looked interesting, but ultimately I settled on this box:
>
> http://www.zotac.com/pdbrochures/ZBOX/ZBOX-HD-ID11_v1.pdf
>
> Main reason was that in addition to the Atom 550, it has an NVIDIA Ion
> graphics chip, which is supported by CUDA and offers a bit of extra
> performance for image processing. E.g. there are ports of SIFT/SURF feature
> detectors, Haar cascades and optical flow algorithms for CUDA. You can't use
> any of them directly on the Ion because they are mostly written for NVIDIA's
> big iron, but they should be easily portable. Not that I've tried yet.
>
> Zotac even has barebone motherboards with the Atom 550 / ION combination
> that take 12V from a power supply. I think this is currently one of the
> cheapest and most powerful solutions in this segment.
>
> Regards,
> Björn
>
> Am 31.12.2010 um 07:17 schrieb Homer Manalo:
>
> > Thanks for the infos. The fit-pc2 looks very interesting, how would you
> compare it with this:
> http://www.pcx.com.ph/index.php/intel-blkd510mo-w-intel-atom-dc.html in
> terms of image processing capabilities?
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 4:13 AM, William Woodall <wjwwood at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > If you are looking for a small, low power x86 type computer you should
> checkout the fit-pc2.  We've had good success with these computers.
> >
> > --
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > William Woodall
> > Graduate Software Engineering
> > Auburn University
> > w at auburn.edu
> > wjwwood at gmail.com
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 6:56 AM, Bill Mania <maniabill at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Homer,
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 06:24:22PM +0800, Homer Manalo wrote:
> > > I'd like to know what kind of computer are you using for your robots. I
> > > would also like to know what are your recommendations for a robot that
> will
> > > make a lot of use of image processing, say two stereo cameras. Are
> intel
> > > atoms sufficient for the job? What about beagleboards? Or the pico ITX
> from
> > > VIA?
> >
> > I'm in Chicago and building a hobby robot. I'm currently using an
> > old Dell notebook computer (with the display removed) and an AVR
> > microcontroller. I plan to have a single webcam, two motor
> > controllers, two ultrasonic rangefinders, a gyroscope and a GPS.
> >
> > So far, I seem to have sufficient computing capacity, but the
> > whole thing is a bit heavy. 8^(
> >
> > --
> > Bill Mania /'mæ ɲə/
> > dum vivimus, vivamus!
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> >
> >
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>
> --
> Björn Giesler
> bjoern at giesler.de
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> Umschlag?
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