Balloon hardware overview
There are various different flavours of balloon. Both iterations of the design, and different build options. The info on this site currently covers balloon v2.05 and v3.0. Versions prior to 2.05 are not described here in any detail.
Versions
- 2.01 and earlier - Prototypes, hardware info not released
2.05 - Production use by Toby Churchill.
2.05g - Production use by Guralp. Available to developers via Aleph One.
- 2.06 - Improved-EMC and manufacturability version of 2.05 that never saw the light of day.
3.01 - P1 and P2 Balloon3 (pxa270) prototypes, first run - March 2006.
3.21 - E1 Engineering build, November 2007.
3.32 - RoHS compliant build, December 2008. Updated NOR, OTG transceiver removed.
3.33 - Current build, with audio improvements, October 2009
Schematics and an imagemap of the board indexing connectors and datasheets are available for each version on the links above.
Variants
Currently there are 2 build options being made - 'CPLD board' and 'FPGA Development board'. Both are available from iEndian. The design allows for further sensible options and feedback from prospective users is of interest to us in order to decide what standard options to make available.
The various build possibilities are described in some detail on the Balloon3BuildOptions page.