[General] tinkering with embedded

[david]

I sort of fell into this product line but am happy I did: Waveshare.  
They did not ship any documentation or any software with the hardware I 
received and those things are available through their abysmally slow web 
interface, BUT, the agonizing slowness with which everything arrived was 
more than made up for in completeness.
Yes, they are in China but I didn't know that when I ordered the stuff 
from Amazon -- actually thought I was ordering just a 7 inch LCD screen 
for playing with the BeagleBone Black (BBB) from Element14 (out of the 
UK, I think.)  So glad I ordered what I did, as the Element14 screen 
usurps nearly EVERY pin on the BBB, while the Waveshare grabs only a few.
What I wound up with was the BBB expansion kit, option B.  It came with 
half a dozen daughter boards and two connector boards that are slightly 
larger than the BBB itself, the DVK530 and DVK531.  The best part of it, 
for me, is everything functioned without spending weeks searching the 
web for drivers!  All I had to do was move a few jumpers around to get a 
couple of the daughters to work.  Better than that, for me, is that they 
also include the source code for everything so you can use their 
examples to boost the effort in getting other boards to work with the BBB.

Not including the BBB, the whole package, including the 7 inch 
touchscreen LCD, was less than $100.  Shipping was free but via 
literally, "slow boat from China."

Boards seem to be of above average quality, too, but only time will tell.

They have several embedded processor lines, the largest appears to be 
the STM line.

Excellent learning tool!

Now, if I can just figure out how to use Qt and get the BBB back-end for 
it...

David Merchant

here's the link for what I got:

http://www.amazon.com/WaveShare-Connecting-BeagleBone-Cortex-A8-Development/dp/B00KM6YY0O/ref=sr_1_6?m=A50C560NZEBBE&s=merchant-items&ie=UTF8&qid=1405114515&sr=1-6