Thank you all for your kind and constructive remarks! I’ll respond to each of you individually.
DougieLawson:
Good advice – I actually hadn’t heard of the Compute Modules before reading your message. Certainly seems to be a good application since it’s designed for embedded systems. My one concern is that, cost-wise, it may not have much of an advantage over the Pi itself if you consider the cost of manufacturing the carrier card ($30 Compute Module + Carrier Card vs. $35 Raspberry Pi + $10 SD Card). If there would be significant advantages as far as computing power and longevity when using the Compute Module, then maybe that’d convince me more to learn circuit design (I’m going to at some point anyways, but this would just cause me to speed up this process).
So, to pose a specific question,
what are the pros and cons of using the Raspberry Pi Compute Module rather than the Raspberry Pi for an application similar to the dishwasher scenario?
rpdom:
Same question, what exactly are the benefits of using the Compute Module over the Pi? I see that you mentioned the eMMC vs. the SD card, which is certainly an advantage, although vibration may not be a huge issue in my actual application. Space isn’t an issue at all, so the extraneous peripherals of the Pi aren’t a problem.
Hmm, I’ll definitely take that into consideration. I do have experience with circuit analysis, just not circuit design, so that may be a possibility.
I really appreciate your last comment. It’s really easy (as an aspiring entrepreneur) to let my emotions either overexcite me or discourage me, so it’s nice to stay grounded.
pluggy:
I should have been more clear in my original post – a large part of the end product is the GUI, something that I don’t think an Arduino would be able to create (can an Arduino create a standalone interface at all? I’m actually not sure). My original plan was actually to combine the Raspberry Pi and Arduino, but I realized that the only point of the Arduino in that plan was to use the analog inputs, which an IC could take care of.
AndrewS:
Heh, actually, more than one of those things may be involved in the final product… I feel a bit embarrassed :X. Again, I should have been clearer my original post, but I’m actually not designing a dishwasher; that was just an example (I’m a bit protective/paranoid of revealing too much about a project before development is far). The Smartphone App is definitely a possibility. I might make the main GUI capable of streaming video (inputted from the App). That’s all up in the air at this point.
Yes, I can definitely see how that could seem difficult to accomplish with limited knowledge of circuit design, but it’s easier than you might expect. This (
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pi ... ne-can-use) is a good example – the 3D printer’s circuitry is essentially just a Sanguinololu paired with a Raspberry Pi. Although, even they admit this solution is “ad-hoc”, and I believe are currently looking for electrical engineers to design boards for this specific purpose. If you really disagree and think that learning circuit design is crucial at this stage, please let me know.
