A SD/USB/Ethernet transport

[jkeny]

What about this as a platform for a SD transport, a USB transport or an ethernet transport http://www.cyantechnology.com/mcu/mcu_eCOG1X.php
• I2S digital audio output
• USB 2.0 480MBit ULPI Interface
• In Built 10/100 Mbps Ethernet MAC
• Dual Smart Card Interface
• External Memory Interface
• 4x32 segment LCD controller

Can use external clock - so low jitter clock could be sent back from an attached DAC
Free compiler & development tools - a number of library modules & applications already available.

Cheap boards - for instance €37 for this http://www.cyantechnology.com/acatalog/Module.html - It has 10/100m ethernet, USB2, SD, LCD interfaces & I2S outputs built-in - so it could be a standalone player using SDH cards

One problem I see is a slow ethernet throughput but I think that's not a limitation of the MCU just the UDP library module. Another problem might be that a MCU radiates more RFI than an FPGA - I don't know how significant this might be.

Any thoughts?

Edit: Oh and it uses C programming language - another plus as far as I'm concerned

 

[jkeny]

No interest in this then or is there a flaw that I'm missing?

 

[Tolu]

I am not a µC-programmer and don't know how to program C so it is way too complicated for me but perhaps other folks are capable to let it fly.

 

[berni8k]

Well im doing a small media server with a mcu as a part of the XMOS design challenge. It will play stuff too but not from a cd

 

[NeoY2k]

This is really interesting, and must be flagged!
Also look at the bigger ethernet/usb-SOLVED module from them.

 

[voodooless]

Just forget this platform. It's full of bugs and the support is horrible... They are not even capable of delivering a decent FAT library.. We've been using this stuff for some project at work, at we ended up debugging more of the libraries than our on code 😉

 

[jkeny]

And here's another nail in the coffin - a reply from them:

Unfortunately the performance required to handle audio and operate USB or Ethernet simultaneously is beyond what the eCOG1X can provide. A cut-down version (reading of an SD card and output on the I2S port) would still require some analysis before confirming whether this was definitely possible.

 

[NeoY2k]

Damn!
Does anyone knows a powerful and simple platform to work on that could be used to make a "multimedia box"?
(yes, an AMD Geode board running Linux would do the trick and be the simplest solution, I guess, but....?).

 

[voodooless]

Look at Cortex M3 variants or a bigger ARM 7 or 9?