A NETOS Users View

Hippo Solutions is a design house in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland's "Silicon Glen". We bought two CC 9P 9215 NET+OS kits from Solid State Supplies recently to evaluate the daughter module as a candidate solution for the requirements of a customer in the social/healthcare sector.

We were initially attracted by the unique architecture of the Digi NS9215 processor. The device has some pretty unique and frankly staggering features. Along with all the usual paraphernalia you would expect from an ARM9 it has two independent 300MHz coprocessors and a flexible 128 bit hardware AES encryption engine with DMA in and out, all housed in the same BGA package.

So how did we get on with the devkit? The first thing that jumps out at you when you open the box is the quality of the motherboard and the clearly informed design that has gone into its layout. Although the processor module itself is highly compact, the motherboard is thoughtfully laid out for the benefit of excited techies with scope probes and shaky hands! There are nice big connectors to poke around, clear readable legends in friendly yellow text for all connectors/LEDs/jumpers/switches...and wait for it: silk screened option explanations, more status LEDs than you'll see anywhere and, and I know no one will believe this: an ON/OFF switch!

The software on the CD installed simply and without difficulty. The IDE, Digi ESP, is a Very good spin of the popular Eclipse IDE. We particularly liked the fact that the introductory Wizard handholds you through the creation of a Web Server project so that you are familiarising yourself with the IDE from the word go, as opposed to just loading a preconstructed project which teaches you little. We've virtually never yet used the "Help" or looked at a manual. The kit will have you running a pretty respectable website within minutes of opening the box.

NET+OS is new to us but the areas we've explored so far look very promising and it seems to be a good choice for projects that need a compact OS with a clear, simple and powerful API.

It is early days for us with the kit but there are two non-technical threads that should be raised. Firstly, the support from Digi has been world-class. We have raised some very tricky technical enquires with Digi and have received informed, intelligent responses virtually "by return". Secondly, and I know I'm beginning to sound as if I've taken a "bung", the interest, enthusiasm and support from the team at Solid State Supplies has been so overwhelming that we've had to take our phone off the hook and change our domain name without telling them {:o)