Gumstix
 |
| File:Gumstix logo.jpg | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer systems |
| Founded | 2003 |
| Headquarters | Portola Valley, California |
Key people | Gordon Kruberg, CEO Steve Sakoman, Head of Software Don Anderson, CMO |
| Products | Complete computer systems; gumstix basix, connex and verdex motherboards; and a series of I/O daughtercards and accessories |
Number of employees | Under 10 |
| Website | www.gumstix.com |
Gumstix is a US-based technology company that designs, builds and sells full function miniature computers and related products. The small form factor gumstix (in the words of Gumstix) "is just a computer".
The Gumstix product line consists of cased and single board wide computers, which is a motherboard-and-expansion card computer based on Marvell XScale processors running Linux Embedded.
Commercial customers worldwide use gumstix inside a range of devices while professors and students have adopted gumstix technology in a variety of projects, including robotic fish and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).
Gumstix products come with no printed documentation, customers are asked to consult the official mailing list archives or the user supported wiki.
Expansion board schematics and PCB layouts are available online and are released under the Creative Commons Share-alike license. Gumstix motherboard schematics are proprietary.
All gumstix computers and motherboards come preloaded with the Linux operating system and, as such, is very much community driven. The Windows CE operating system is also available as an independently developed Shared Source project on Codeplex not associated with Gumstix Inc.
The motherboards measure 80 mm x 20 mm x 6.3 mm, comparable in size to a stick of chewing gum (hence the name of the company). I/O options via expansion boards include synchronous and asynchronous serial, USB, Ethernet, Bluetooth and Wifi wireless interfaces.
Gumstix products have a limited warranty of 30 days.
Motherboards
The gumstix line of motherboards are single-board computers which fall into one of three categories: 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. The basix and connex motherboards provide a Marvell XScale PXA255 processor running at 200 MHz or 400 MHz with 64 MB of SDRAM. All three run Linux 2.6 and a userspace toolkit based on the uClibc C library with 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 on-board 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 up to 128MB RAM, on-board strataflash up to 32 MB, 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.
The key functions of the verdex motherboards over the basix and connex motherboards include: USB host and the higher RAM and flash memory options.
In volume, verdex motherboards may be ordered with processor speeds of 300MHz, 400MHz, 500MHz and 600MHz with any combination of RAM, flash and expansion board connectors.
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 Waysmall.
Netstix
The Netstix computers, based on the Connex motherboard, provide 10/100 Mb Ethernet connected computers with CompactFlash (CF) for storage.
Waysmall
The Waysmall computers, based on the Basix motherboard, have USB and serial connectivity with MultiMediaCard (MMC) storage capability.
Software development kit
Gumstix uses the OpenEmbedded software framework to track and fetch dependencies, cross-compile packages and build complete images automatically using bitbake.
3D Visualization
This modeling environment for electronic product designers integrates popular design tools, 3D images, and software scripts intended to aid 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.
Third party projects
- GumstixIII is a third party, closed source project on Codeplex to run the Windows CE operating system on Gumstix hardware. Source code is available under a NDA and for a $300 fee, while binaries are available for free download under MS-PL license and have a limited support.