A few bits and pieces for the onboard video recorder

Today I have received the last pieces that we are going to need for the video recorder based on the Gumstix Overo Fire. I took the opportunity to take some pictures.

First, the Gusmtix Overo Fire mounted on the Summit expansion board. Initially I planned to use the Pinto-TH breakout board, but for now we are going to need the terminal interface to the board, which is not available on the Pinto-TH. The Overo Fire and the Summit board weigh 23 grams together.

The Gusmtix Overo Fire embedded computer mounted on a Summit expansion board.

Power will come from a pair of 1 Ah LiPo batteries. We need two batteries since one cell can only give 3.7 volts and we need 5 volts. The batteries weigh 21 grams each.

1 Ah LiPo batteries to be used with the Gumstix Overo Fire video recorder.

LiPo batteries require special charging which is why I also purchased this Sparkfun LiPo charger. This charger is quite clever in that it allows the electronics to be connected to the battery even while charging. Unfortunately, we can not take advantage of this for the present setup because we will need two batteries connected in series.

LiPo battery charger from Sparkfun

The 7.4 volts from the two batteries is converted to 5 volts using a switching regulator. It was quite expensive but it has superior efficiency compared to classical 7805-type regulators.

Front view of the 5V 1A switching regulator.

Back view of the 5V 1A switching regulator

Finally, the Tobi expansion board. I use this one for development work because it allows convenient access to the Overo Fire via the Ethernet interface.

Front view of the Tobi expansion board for Gumstix Overo computers.

Top view of the Tobi expansion board for Gumstix Overo computers

There are more photos in the Picasa album. Enjoy!