Smallest/cheapest possible Python platform?

[Ross Ridge]

Roy Smith  <roy at panix.com> wrote:
>What's the smallest/cheapest/lowest-power hardware platform I can run 
>Python on today?

Not counting the Rasberry Pi, then probably a wireless router or one of
those cheap media streaming boxes running custom firmware.

>Performance requirements are minimal.  I need to monitor a few switches, 
>control a couple of LEDs and relays, and keep time over about a 30 
>minute period to 1/10th second accuracy.  Nice-to-have (but not 
>essential) would be a speech synthesizer with a vocabulary of maybe 50 
>words.

Unfortunately I don't think any of these devices would have the GPIO
pins you'd want for such a project.

>The Rasberry Pi certainly looks attractive, but isn't quite available 
>today.  Can you run Python on an Arduino?  Things like 
>http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7250 are 
>more than I need, and the $129 price probably busts my budget.

The Arduino uses an 8-bit micro-controller, so probably not.  (The ARM
emulator based port of Linux probably doesn't meet your performance
requirements.)

I think you may need to either wait for the Rasberry Pi to become
generally available or increase your budget.  You should also consider
whether any of these devices have Python bindings to interface with
their GPIO pins.  If not you'll probably have to end up writing some C
code anyways.

					Ross Ridge

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