Novena is an open hardware computer by Bunnie that recently raised over $780,000 in a crowd funding campaign. The Ben Heck Show is building a custom computer around this platform. Everything is custom on this laptop build and no details are rushed including the difficult keyboard LED lighting.
“Features:
- Freescale iMX6 CPU — same footprint can support dual-lite and quad versions:
- Quad-core Cortex A9 CPU with NEON FPU @ 1.2 GHz
- Vivante GC2000 OpenGL ES2.0 GPU, 200Mtri/s, 1Gpix/s (*)
- NDA-free datasheet [1] and programming manual
- Internal ports & sensors:
- mini PCI-express slot (for wifi, bluetooth, mobile data, etc.)
- UIM slot for mPCIx mobile data cards
- Dual-channel LVDS LCD connector with USB2.0 side-channel for a display-side camera
- Resistive touchscreen controller (note: captouch displays typically come with an embedded controller)
- 1.1W, 8-ohm internal speaker connectors
- 2x USB2.0 internal connectors for keyboard and mouse/trackpad
- Digital microphone (optional, not populated by default)
- 3-axis accelerometer
- 3x internal UART ports
- Fun features:
- 100 Mbit ethernet — dual Ethernet capability allows laptop to be used as an in-line packet filter or router
- USB OTG — enables laptop to spoof/fuzz ethernet, serial, etc. over USB via gadget interface to other USB hosts
- Utility serial EEPROM — for storing crash logs and other bits of handy data
- Spartan-6 CSG324-packaged FPGA (PVT uses LX45: 43k logic cells, 6.8k slices, 54.5k ff, 401kb distributed RAM, 58 DSP48A, 2088kb block RAM) — has several interfaces to the CPU, including a 2Gbit/s (peak) RAM-like bus — for your bitcoin mining needs. Or whatever else you might want to toss in an FPGA.
- High-speed I/O expansion header”