Panda or Domino?

Hi all,

I’m planning a project which uses an FEZ board to communicate with a machine via RS232, filter and process the information and transmit it to a server on an IP network via Ethernet connection.

I’m not sure which board would be better, the Panda or the Domino?

Thanks in advance.

If you need an RTC (Real Time Clock) and microSD card socket then Domino, else the Panda is fine.

Thank you for the quick reply :slight_smile:

Both will do what you asked for

Panda can do “close to” RTC if you need - since you will have ethernet connected you can just sync to an NTP server.

SD card support will work in both.

USB Host is the big differentiator for Domino - if you might want to plug in a USB thumb drive and download data from the device, then you should go Domino.

@ Brett: So I understand that Panda doesn’t support USB communication ?
Am I correct to assume that if, for instance, I want to use USB instead of Ethernet I would have to use Domino?

What about a combination of Ethernet and USB I/Os on a single board? is that possible ?

EDIT:

Just to make it clear, when coding for Panda I wont be able to use

DateTime.Now.Ticks

because Panda is missing an internal clock ?

Panda has time like domino but it doesn’t support backup battery. This means if you lose power then the clock get reseted. This is not an issue to most users.

Panda doesn’t have SD connector on board but it has support for SD. See this microframeworkprojects.com - This website is for sale! - microframeworkprojects Resources and Information.
If you need to use SD and do not want to do the wiring yourself then use domino.

Panda has USB clinet support and this is hwo you will load and debug your application. And you can still customize USB any way you like. This is same on domino and panda

Domino has USB host but not not panda. So, you can’t save files on a USB thumb drive on panda but you can on domino. This is the main difference. If you need to use a USB keyboard or USB memory stick then you need domino; otherwise, use panda.

Panda is not limited by an means when it comes to the internal chipset/support. It is just a lower cost version where we striped out few parts to lower the cost (nor RTC backup and no USB host)

Finally, you should take a closer look at this page please http://www.tinyclr.com/compare/

I hope this clears things out for you :slight_smile:

As Gus said, “RTC” is real-time-clock and implies ability to handle loss of power (when you have a battery backup) and maintain actual system time. Panda on its own doesn’t have RTC but if you were designing something yourself you could use a RTC chip (DS1307 or similar). This has nothing to do with an internal clocking mechanism - system ticks are still visible in Panda.

Thanks that clears it perfectly :slight_smile:

Much appreciated.