Intel Edison Projects

You must purchase an Intel Edison

One of the projects in this course involves Embedded System development and Internet of Things communication. The former is something that (in addition to being fun) many of you are likely to do, and the latter works with key key issues from our discussions of Distributed System Security. To do this project you will need to purchase your own Intel Edison (a low power IA32 architecture System on a Chip which Intel has developed for the embedded system market. The development system we are using is I/O pin compatible with the (slow but) extremely popular Arduino board. The combination means that the Edison can exploit numerous Arduino shields with much much more sophisticated software running on a Linux system. It is a compelling combination, for both course and personal projects.

Because this course is based on Open Source texts, we will not be requiring you to purchase any Operating Systems texts. It seems ironic that we are asking you to purchase a development system that costs just about as much as a text. But I suggest that you will get more fun and future use from your Edison than you would from an OS text ... and if you don't it will probably have a better resale value on Ebay.

What you need to order

Intel Edison Kit for Arduino Antenna (EDI2ARDUIN.AL.K). This is an Arduino-compatible Edison board with a dual-core 32-bit Atom processor with Bluetooth, Wifi. It is available from all the usual places: Amazon, NewEgg, Sparkfun and Mouser.
A power-supply (9v, 650ma, 5.5x2.1mm center positive) for the Edison board. These too are available from all of your favorite sources, such as Amazon and Sparkfun.
High performance micro-USB power cables. These too are available from multiple sources (e.g. Amazon). I do not understand why, but I am told that you should not trust standard USB-to-micro-USB cables that you may already have.
A Grove Sensor Starter Kit for Arduino. This is a set of Arduino-compatible sensors (sound, light, touch, angle, ...), switches, displays and actuators that you can use to build all manner of cool projects. These too are available from multiple places including Amazon.

Because of the possibility of problems with finding, ordering, receiving and bringing up your Edison development system, it is strongly encouraged that you order it immediately, and do the basic bring-up as soon as it arrives.

Additional Information

Intel has a set of tutorials on setting up your Edison.

UCLA has created a basic set of tutorials on bringing up, communicating with, installing and developing software for the Edison: