Gumstix
| File:Gumstix logo.jpg | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer systems |
| Founded | 2003 |
| Headquarters | Portola Valley, California |
Key people | Gordon Kruberg, CEO Craig Hughes, CTO Don Anderson, CMO |
| Products | Complete computer systems; gumstix basix, connex and verdex motherboards; and a series of I/O daughtercards and accessories |
| Website | www.gumstix.com |
Gumstix is a US-based technology company that designs, builds and sells full function miniature computers and related products to customers in over sixty (60) countries around the world. The highly-functional products can be used in network computing, Product Design, robotics markets and a wide range of other gumstix-based commercial projects because the gumstix "is just a computer".
Gumstix has become synonymous with their product line of very small cased and single board wide computers, which is a motherboard-and-expansion card computer based on Marvell XScale processors.
All gumstix computers and motherboards come preloaded with the Linux operating system. The motherboards measure just 80 mm x 20 mm x 6.3 mm, which is comparable to a stick of chewing gum. A range of expansion boards is available which can extend the I/O function of the system in a wide range of possible ways. I/O options via expansion boards include synchronous and asynchronous serial, USB, Ethernet, Bluetooth and Wifi wireless interfaces.
Motherboards
The gumstix line of motherboards are single-board computers featuring the three main motherboards: verdex, connex, and basix. The verdex motherboards provide a Marvell XScale PXA270 processor running at 400 MHz or 600 MHz with up to 128 MB of SDRAM, Linux 2.6 and a userspace toolkit based on the uClibc C library with the BusyBox utilities.
Both the basix motherboards and the connex motherboards provide a Marvell XScale PXA255 processor running at 200 MHz or 400 MHz as well as 64 MB of SDRAM, Linux 2.6 and a userspace toolkit based on the uClibc C library with the BusyBox utilities. The software is a full-blown Linux environment and a large range of Linux applications can run on the device.
Additional features can be added to all motherboards with expansion cards connected via one or both onboard buses. The motherboards draw less than 250 mA @4V at 400 MHz without Bluetooth and less than 50 mA while idling, waiting for input.
verdex
The verdex motherboards feature 128MB RAM, on-board 32 MB strataflash, an onboard 60-pin Hirose I/O header, a 120-pin Molex connector for connecting additional expansion cards and have Infineon Bluetooth as an option.
connex
The connex motherboards also feature on-board 16 MB strataflash, an onboard 60-pin Hirose I/O header, a 92-pin bus header for connecting additional expansion cards and have Infineon Bluetooth as an option.
basix
The basix motherboards features 4 MB strataflash, an onboard 60-pin Hirose I/O header, an onboard MMC slot and Infineon Bluetooth as an option. Basix-xm models extend the 4 MB of flash to 16 MB.
Computers
Gumstix has two cased computer product lines: netstix and waysmalls.
netstix
The netstix computers, based on the connex motherboard, provide 10/100 Mb Ethernet connected computers with CompactFlash (CF) for storage.
waysmalls
The waysmall computers, based on the basix motherboard, have USB and serial connectivty with MultiMediaCard (MMC) storage capability.
Software development kit
The gumstix development kit SDK is available at no charge and does not require gumstix hardware.
3D Visualization
This modeling environment for electronic product designers integrates popular design tools, 3D images, and software scripts to accelerate and simplify the design and visualization of new product enclosures and custom expansion boards by combining 3D gumstix product visuals with Google SketchUp, Google 3D Warehouse and Cadsoft's Eagle™ CAD software.