Thibaut Rouffineau
on 20 November 2015
Snickerdoodle: the maker board with robotic powers!
Snickerdoodle is no ordinary maker board… it will let you achieve your wildest maker dreams from robotics to advanced networking! And their crowdfunding campaign is about to finish… so it’s your last chance to grab the”Raspberry Pi for Robots”
A maker board with super powers
Most makers will have experienced a feeling of frustration when realising that they’re out of I/O on their maker board… Or maybe looking for that little bit of extra computing power for video compression. If you can feel that pain, Snickerdoodle is for you!
Snickerdoodle has been built for makers who want to get more our of their existing maker board… Let’s look inside the board:
- It packs in a Xilinx Zynq System on Chip… This is not the ordinary processor you will find in your maker board. In addition to a Cortex A9 ARM processor it offers an FPGA which can be reconfigured to whichever parallel / low latency problem you will throw at it!
- It gives you reconfigurable 154 I/O to plug into!
- No need to attach a Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy or Wifi they’re already built in!
- You can find all sorts of accessories from a breakout board, Single board computer, a Gigabit Ethernet router option, and a high performance heat sink
- And with a price tag of $55 this is a bargain…
As Ryan Cousins Co-Founder of CEO of krtkl (the company behind Snickerdoodle) told us:
“Looking at what was available for people who can’t necessarily afford to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to try something out, or learn a new skill, or get started on a project, it was obvious that there was a huge gap between basic, low-end, ultra-affordable maker boards and high-end tools that professionals use – there was always some massive tradeoff that had to be made that would inevitably lead to disappointment and frustration. With snickerdoodle, we’re providing professional-caliber tools at maker-friendly prices and, in a sense, “democratizing” advanced technology in order to make it possible for makers, students, hobbyists, inventors, entrepreneurs, and engineers to truly create something different.”
And Ubuntu Core…
Snickerdoodle have now added Ubuntu Core support and that’s opening the door to even more possibilities! Combining Ubuntu Core support for ROS and the onboard FPGA makes it super simple to bring fast image recognition or image compression for drones and robots. Similarly combining Ubuntu Core and the Zynq bring advanced low latency routers only a few lines of code away. By using Ubuntu Core for your project, you’re also choosing a platform that will allow you to turn your maker dream into a commercial reality, with the tools to support and monetise your products over the long term.
Get it now!
There’s only 30 hours until Snickerdoodle’s crowdfunding campaign runs out! If you want to be the first to play with their board, you better jump on the opportunity!
PS: If you need help with your own crowdfunding project do get in touch!